A power struggle is going on in Maine – a struggle that will profoundly change the management of wildlife. This skirmish is about coyote snaring, but the war is about power.

Coyote snaring is wrong. So wrong that snaring of any other animal is a criminal offense. Everyone knows it’s wrong, even its enthusiasts. It is scientifically unsupportable and worthless. It doesn’t increase deer numbers, and two decades of coyote snaring conducted by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has provided absolutely no proof that it does. It is costly in time and resources for an already strapped department. It jeopardizes domestic and other wild animals, including those that are threatened and endangered. Most damning of all, snaring is shockingly cruel. It is so cruel that it’s difficult to imagine that civilized people condone it. Even trappers know it’s cruel; ask them if they would want an animal they care about to be euthanized by strangulation in a snare.

Most Maine citizens care about wildlife. They value the predator-prey relationship and the ways wild animals fulfill their biologically determined roles. They know that coyotes naturally feed on deer in the winter and rodents in the summer, and that deer are distributed throughout northern and Down East Maine in exactly the numbers that natural preference, incidence of disease, and existing habitat will allow. They also know that wild animals have important jobs to do in their ecosystems, whether humans understand or agree with them or not.

These citizens know that sabotaging natural relationships is a betrayal of the responsibilities of wildlife stewardship vested in DIF&W. They also know that their values and beliefs are entirely consistent with scientific wildlife management, which is supposed to guide DIF&W policies. And they know instinctively that this ill-advised attempt to control coyote numbers to provide more deer for hunters is wrong, morally and ethically.

Extremists in the hunting community, Legislature and DIF&W have seen to it that coyote snaring continues in spite of a groundswell of opposition by Maine citizens, responsible scientists, the state’s largest newspapers, and an article in a widely respected outdoor magazine calling DIF&W a national “laughingstock” because of its coyote snaring program.

Believing that the power of the democratic process might provide relief from a wildlife program so out of sync with science and public values, citizens submitted bills to the Maine Legislature to end the snaring program. All but one member of the Joint Legislative Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife deliberately disregarded the reasoned and unemotional testimonies of citizens from all over Maine, wildlife professionals, and scientists who oppose the program. Instead, influenced by the trapping lobby, they cynically changed the intent of a citizen-initiated bill to end the program to one that expands and liberalizes coyote snaring.

This after committee chair Rep. Matt Dunlap’s remark to a reporter that even though legislators knew “something had to be done about snaring, we hate to hand a victory to the animal rightists.” Rep. Dunlap and other committee members blatantly abused their power, formulating wildlife policy based, not on scientific evidence, professional opinion or even the will of the citizen-owners of wildlife, but on a simple-minded, wrongheaded resistance to change.

Even as plans are being made for the next coyote snaring season, beginning Dec. 1, the state Attorney General’s Office has issued an opinion that, under the federal Endangered Species Act, “incidental take” of lynx and bald eagles by coyote snarers could result in $75,000 fines to the state for each animal killed. Although responsible biologists have expressed concern about the danger posed to lynx and eagles by snares and know that snaring in the habitat of these threatened animals is illegal without a federal permit, DIF&W officials never bothered to apply for one.

The permit that would make snaring legal under the ESA requires a lengthy process that includes a habitat management plan and public input, but extremists are still struggling against an erosion of their power. To this end, a top DIF&W staff member is attempting an end run around the process, pursuing a permit without public input.

Many Maine citizens are outraged. A DIF&W budget crisis, the threat of a tourism boycott, national embarrassment, scientific denunciation, overwhelming public opposition, the deliberate flouting of federal law, appeals for decency – nothing has been enough to turn these people away from their unrelenting pursuit of power.

But Maine is changing, and so are the power structures. Citizens who believe that all wildlife species have a right to be here and are vital to Maine’s healthy ecosystems are demanding a voice in wildlife management. We believe that wildlife does not belong to the few who hunt and trap it – it belongs to all citizens of Maine. We will no longer stand by and allow extremists to abuse the public trust where wildlife is concerned.

Arrogance, cynicism and intransigence is always the undoing of corrupt power structures. A string of expensive lawsuits and citizen-initiated referendums dealing with wildlife management looms in Maine’s future, beginning now. The DIF&W commissioner has always had the power to end snaring. Throughout this sorry episode, the missing ingredient has been statesmanship. It’s not too late for Commissioner Roland Martin or Gov. John Baldacci to fill that void.

Susan Cockrell studied wildlife biology at Colorado State University and lives in Holden. Daryl Dejoy is a Registered Maine Guide and lives in Penobscot. They are both founding members of the NoSnare Task Force.