AUGUSTA – The state’s coyote snaring program faced another public challenge Tuesday as supporters of a bill to ban the use of wire neck snares made their case to legislators on the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife committee.

For much of the past 25 years, Maine has paid snarers to go into deer yards and kill coyotes with the wire loop traps in hopes of protecting herds during deep winter snows in areas where habitat has deteriorated because of logging.

Since 2002, the practice has been particularly controversial, in part because of a study that suggested snared coyote had struggled for hours, or even days, as they slowly strangled.

However, residents of far northern and eastern Maine have demanded snaring to protect what they see as brutal predation of deer. Each time snaring is criticized, someone testifies to the gory details of a coyote feeding on the hindquarters of a still-breathing deer.

“Where is the passion for the deer? The deer that are being dragged down and eaten alive?” asked George Smith of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.

“Yes, coyotes eat some deer. That’s nature. Snaring is not,” countered Daryl DeJoy of the Wildlife Alliance of Maine, the Bangor-based group behind the bill.

Several bills to ban snares have been defeated in the past; and during the last legislative session, a bill to end coyote control was rewritten, its intent reversed to codify existing snaring regulations, before it passed. The arguments raised Tuesday were not new. But this time, opponents sought to ban only the snare and did not attack the concept of targeted predator control.

DeJoy argued that snaring is illegal because Maine banned the use of snares in 1939, only exempting their use for the trapping of “nuisance” coyote and beaver 40 years later. He, and other supporters of the bill, which included Maine Audubon, criticized snaring as posing an unnecessary risk to other kinds of wildlife, including federally protected Canada lynx and bald eagles, and proposed alternative means of coyote control, such as shooting the predators over bait – which is already legal.

“Let it be done individually and for cause, not by a mechanized indiscriminate killing machine,” said Don Loprieno of Bristol.

Mike Rovella, of the Maine Bowhunters Association called the animal protectionists hypocritical for endorsing baited hunting of coyotes, while some of the same individuals called for a ban on bear baiting just last week.

The concern over federally protected species has weight however. At least one Canada lynx and two bald eagles, both of which are federally threatened, have been snared in the past, and Maine’s snaring program is on hold indefinitely while DIF&W negotiates with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the potential for a federal permit that would absolve the state of liability if another animal protected by the Endangered Species Act were killed by a snare.

Meanwhile, there has been no coyote control program for two winters.

Some say that hunting has kept coyote populations down. But snarers, including Dan Glidden of Masardis, testified Tuesday that they believe snaring is the only practical solution when deer yards cover many miles and predation tends to occur in deep snow during the dead of winter. Hunters already are allowed to shoot coyotes all winter but few do, he said.

“The only thing that works all the time is snares,” said Bob Noonan, of Wildlife Control Technology magazine.

Supporters of the snaring ban recommended that DIF&W redirect its snaring budget toward improving deer habitat – solving the root problem behind coyote predation rather than focusing on the symptoms.

DIF&W described snaring as a very effective stopgap measure to keep deer herds viable while forests recover from clear cuts made 20 years ago in response to a spruce budworm outbreak.

“We’ve lost a lot of ground over the past two years,” said Skip Trask of the Maine Trappers Association.

But all the evidence supporting the program is anecdotal. The success of coyote snaring in Maine has never faced the scientific scrutiny of a study, opponents said.

“Let’s see the science,” challenged John Glowa of South China.

Snarers testified that skilled practitioners can set snares to target particular animals, citing an overall 6 to 8 percent rate of nontarget catches as reported to DIF&W during the last winter of the program in 2002-2003.

Well-set snares are also humane, they said, explaining that the traps can either be set with a spring to kill the animal on impact, or a release mechanism, which provides protection for lynx and other rare species.

But critics of snaring cited the state’s own audits of snarers from that same winter to indicate that many did not set their snares at the proper height, while others couldn’t even locate their snares. Sloppily set or maintained snares only increase the probability that a coyote or some other animal will die an unnecessarily cruel death, DeJoy said, calling snaring “an archaic, nonselective and scientifically indefensible program that will most likely result in a lawsuit.”