 Hey, I'm behind the Fish and Wildlife Department, and I'm on the Fish and Wildlife Board, welcome. Thank you all for coming out. I want to call it maybe our second summer evening that we've had. We're finally getting our summer weather, and now we can barely ache how hot and warm it is in Muggy. A little while ago we'd say, gosh, it's just too cold. But for those of you I haven't had the pleasure to meet before, my name is Mark Scott. I'm the director of Wildlife for the Fish and Wildlife Department. Our mission here tonight is primarily to hear from you. Every comment you give us or question, we're going to jot it down. We're going to spend some time collating all of that. I'd like to share it with all of you individually. All the comments here tonight if you leave us your email address. But if you don't want to do that, that's okay. We'll have it all up on our Department website for you to see all the comments. Every comment since we started this process back in April when the Fish and Wildlife Board changed our furbear management rule. And basically the topic was creating best management practices for legal regulated trapping in the state of Vermont. And to make changes and regulations on people that hunt coyotes with the aid of dogs. So the department staff worked with many of you in this room, different constituents in the whole past year. Have been working to create rules that make both of those activities more safe and more humane. As we were asked to do by Vermont legislature to do that. I can't thank you all enough for spending the time here tonight to come. Because we need to hear from each and every one of you. The format that we have set for tonight is we'll have a little overview from our staff, Kim Royer, who was our furbearer project leader for decades here in the state of Vermont. She graciously accepted to come back and help us through this process. She'd be tired to do that. And along with Major Sean Fowler, the Assistant Director of law enforcement, we'll chat a little bit about the regulations on hunting coyotes with the aid of dogs. So those two people are going to try to set the stage. And then we have a lot of department staff here. And we're going to ask your cooperation and help to get into some breakout groups so that each and every one of you will have a chance to be heard tonight by us and recorded. And then we'll present all that information to the Fish and Wildlife Board. Speaking of the board, that's the primary regulatory body in the state of Vermont that deals with most of the hunting, fishing and trapping regulations that legislature gives the authority to do. I know I've seen some board members here firsthand. So if I can kind of quickly go all around the room, we'll start over here. Brian, I'll put you on the spot to go first, but stay who you are and then what county you live in. Well, Irisburg, Orleans County, Orange County, Harlem Arctic, representing California County. Thank you. I hope to spend it going through the introductions of our other department staff. They're going to be at the breakout tables working with you and you'll get to meet some of those folks here tonight. Again, this meeting principally is what we want to hear from you. We're going to try to set the stage here in the next 20 minutes or so and then we're going to need your help and cooperation to get into some breakout groups. We kind of had a little curveball thrown at us here in the late innings of this game where we had a different room set up, but we are the tables. The tables are out back in the hallway and depending on how we can manage that, we'll probably have a few folks in here working with department staff. So again, on behalf of the Fish and Wildlife Board and the department, I can't thank you enough for giving up your evening to come here tonight. This is important. So I'm going to turn it over to Kim Royer. If Kim, you want to walk us through on the Furbear Management changes. Sure. Thank you, Mark. So I'm going to walk through the Furbearer best management practices, proposed regulations, and then Major Fowler will take over and he will walk through the hunting coyote with hounds regulations. So we're talking about best management practices for trapping. We are actually the only state in the nation, as far as I know, that has tried to take what were recommendations and convert them to regulations. So there was no template for us to follow. So this has taken us quite a while. We've actually been working on this for almost a year. I think we started in July of last year. And we began with the 2022 legislature. They passed Act 159. They directed the department and the board to come up with recommendations for best management practices for trapping that would improve specifically animal welfare and selectivity. They went on to say the BMPs shall be based on investigation and research conducted by scientists and experts at the Department of Fish and Wildlife and shall use the best management practices for trapping in the United States, issued by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies as the minimum standards. And you'll see the picture on the board up there is the picture of this monograph. This is a prestigious Journal of Wildlife Management monograph that actually presents an overview of the BMP research project that's gone on for the last 25 years. National Research Project. So let me just talk a little bit about one slide about what are best management practices for those of you who don't know. And in this case, there's a national research effort, like I said, started in 1997, I believe. And basically there have been 2,000 pairs of trappers and trapper technicians out on the land state across 41 states testing traps. Vermont actually participated in this effort, maybe 8, 10 years, something like that. And those technicians would send back the data to statisticians who would then analyze the data to ensure that the bias was eliminated. The protocols for the data and the protocols for the whole study were actually set up by the international organization for standardization. And they resulted in best management practices for trapping. And some of you may have seen the booklets that are available that help to show you what types of traps and trapping systems you might use for different species. The goal behind this effort was improving animal welfare, improving selectivity, efficiency, practicability, and safety. And based on the international standards, which like I said is the premier standardization setting group in the world, they basically 59% of the traps pass and 41% failed. So we used the research and the information that we got from the Association of Fish and Wildlife agencies as closely as we could to try to develop these best management practices. Actually 9,000 animals were sent to veterinarians for necropsy and that's how they determined whether or not these traps passed or failed by the injury rates. So the legislature actually outlined seven directives and we tried as closely as we could to stick to those directives and I will refer back to these as we go through the regulations just so you can see which regulations actually address which directives. But I'll go through these one at a time right now. So they directed us to proposed trapping devices that are designed to minimize injury to a captured animal. They directed us to establish criteria for adjusting or maintaining trapping devices so that they operate correctly and humanely. They required that we recommend trapping techniques including appropriate size and type of traps for target animals, use of lures or other attractants, trap safety, methods to avoid non-target animals. They recommended requirements for the location of traps at a safe distance from public trails, class 4 roads, playgrounds, parks and other public locations where persons may reasonably be expected to recreate. They directed us to develop criteria for when and how live captured animals should be released or dispatched. They directed us to revise the Trapper Education Materials which I think the Association of Fish and Wildlife agencies is in the process of doing and we already have information about best management practices for Trapper Education classes. And then they directed us to estimate what it would cost to fund replacement traps. And we did this estimate, we submitted it in our report to the legislature in January but as yet I don't believe there's any funding that's been tagged for this. So what are the recommendations? I'm going to go through these one by one and you'll see that there are, there's the text that's black and then you'll see highlighted portions in yellow. And what this is, the board passed the text in black last April. And then the department has subsequently made some recommendations that I've put up there in yellow. When you go to your breakout groups there'll actually be materials at the table that will allow you to review these again because it's very dense, there's a lot of information here and I'm actually going to read through it in case you can't really see it that well but again, don't feel like you have to memorize any of this. Those materials will be at your breakout tables and you'll be able to look at them again. So basically, this is a trying to address legislative charges one, two and three. So again, remember one is designed to minimize injury to captured, designed to minimize injuries to captured animals. Directive two is to establish criteria for adjusting or maintaining trapping devices so that they operate correctly and humanely. And three is to recommend trapping techniques including appropriate size and type of traps for target animals, trap safety and methods to avoid non-target animals. So these one, two, three, four, five bullets. The first one is that trapping system should have base plates that feature a center chain mount with a swivel with free moving chain and at least, and we changed the, we're recommending, I shouldn't say we changed it because this is just a recommendation, that the board consider changing that from one swivel to two. Additional swivels that allow mobility for captured animals. That foothold traps on land must be anchored with a maximum of 18 inch chain, extra swivels and or shock springs can be added to the chaining system. Foothold traps on land must be triggered by down, that all traps that are triggered by downward pressure must be adjustable for pan tension. Foothold traps on land must be padded or offset and laminated with a minimum jaw thickness of no more than five sixteenths of an inch or fully encapsulating the foot. Foothold traps on land must have a jaw spread of no more than six and, actually I need my glasses to see the little, six and a quarter inches measured inside the widest expanse of the jaws. The board in the last vote actually included legalizing drags and the department is recommending that maybe that be taken out until drags have been tested through the BMP research effort. Issue two, body gripping traps and this one is addressing legislative charge number three again, which is to recommend trapping techniques that include appropriate size and type of trap for target animals, trap safety and methods to avoid non-target animals. So again, 4.6, a person shall not set a body gripping trap with a jaw spread opening greater than 60 square inches measured inside the widest expanse of the jaws unless the trap is five feet or more above the ground or in the water. The board voted no meat-based baited body gripping trap shall be set on the ground unless placed within an anchored enclosure with an opening no greater than 60 square inches and with a trap trigger that is recessed at least 12 inches from all openings. The department is recommending take out the meat-based and say no body gripping trap shall be set on the ground unless placed within an anchored enclosure, blah, blah, blah. 4.8, the board voted meat-based body gripping traps with a jaw spread up to and including 60 square inches can be used on land if the trap is placed at least five feet above the ground. Again, we are recommending that body gripping traps with a jaw spread up to and including 60 square inches can be used on the land if the trap is placed at least five feet above the ground. The changes by removing meat-based basically means that all body gripping traps have to either be five feet off the ground in the water or in an enclosure that's anchored. Issue three, baits and lures. This again addresses legislative charge three which directed the department to address the use of lures and other attractants. And this is to minimize the capture of non-target species, particularly avian species. 4.9, all meat-based bait shall be covered at the time that a trap is set. Covering shall include but are not limited to brush, branches, leaves, soil, snow, water or enclosures constructed of wood, metal, wire, plastic or natural materials. And issue four, trails and public highway offsets. So the board actually voted to require that foothold traps honor within 25 feet of a traveled portion of a public highway or trail must be in the water or five feet above the ground. And the department is recommending mostly for simplicity's sake that both foothold and connevere traps an offset should be 50 feet. So it reads, the recommended reading right now is no body gripping traps on or foothold traps shall be set honor within 50 feet of the traveled portion of a town trail, public trail or highway unless set in the water. This setback requirement shall not apply to public trails and class four highways located in wildlife management areas. And the reason for that is wildlife management areas have been many, many of them have been purchased with dollars from hunters and trappers and are there for wildlife-based recreation including hunting and trapping. The definitions and it's important to understand the definitions as they apply to this particular proposed regulation. So public highway for the purposes of this rule means roads including class four roads shown on the highway maps of the respective towns made by the agency of transportation but does not include foot trails or public roads. Public trail for the purposes of this rule means a pedestrian footpath on Vermont state-owned public land open to the public and designated a map by the managing agency or department, again not including wildlife management areas. And then the department's recommending that we add town trail which shall mean a public right of way as defined in 19 VSA 301-8 shown on the highway maps of the respective towns made by the agency of transportation. So it's hard to see this but this is the town of bridge water. Basically all the lines on that map would require a 50 foot offset. Issue number five, humane dispatch and this covers let's see I guess let me just see here which one is it the directive number five. Yep, so develop criteria for when and how live captured animals should be released or dispatched. So the board voted at the last in the April meeting to include the following language. Dispatch of trapped animals. Upon discovery a trapper show immediately dispatch a live trapped furbearer with a muzzle loader gun, crossbow, or bow and arrow. This provision may be amended upon receipt of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agency's recommendations regarding humane dispatch. This subsection shall not be interpreted to prevent a trapper from releasing an unharmed captured animal or a domestic pet. And the reason why they put in the part about the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agency's is there's actually a working group that's working on dispatch guidelines right now but they haven't quite completed those and once they send those to us we might revisit this again. So that's basically all of it in a nutshell. If you have if you want more information you can go on our website to the top web address and you'll see the report that we submitted to the legislature which is a previous iteration of all of this so it's not the same language as what I just went through with you tonight but also other materials and if you want to learn more about best management practices Bryant White and Nathan Roberts for those of you weren't there gave a presentation at the November public meeting and that is on our website on a YouTube video and it goes into way more depth than I went into tonight on what best management practices are and what went into creating them. So I will pass it over to the major. Thank you everybody. Welcome everybody. So the other reason we are here is to talk about the practice of pursuing coyotes with the aid of hounds. So Legislative Act 165 which came out of the 2022 legislative session put a moratorium on the practice of pursuing coyotes with the aid of hounds with a couple of pretty stringent exceptions for landowner and damaged type situations. Moratorium went into effect on July 1st of 2022 and essentially there was no coyote hounding in the state of Vermont until such time as the Fish and Wildlife Board and the Department of Fish and Wildlife could come up with regulations to govern the practice. The legislature also put more restrictions on it. The legislature basically said they don't want any more than 100 permits issued in a given year and only 10% of those permits can be issued to non-residents and that is based on the number of resident permits from the previous year. They also put in there for training season for non-residents and we'll get into the training seasons and hunting seasons in a little bit. The training season for non-residents is tied directly to the home state of that houndsman. So if they don't have an open training season in their home state, they can't come to the state of Vermont and train their dogs here. And then the other part is there's more restrictions for this practice when it comes to landowners. So a coyote hounder cannot go on posted property unless they have written permission from the landowner where they are running their hounds. Then above and beyond that, if the property is unposted and the property owner does not want hounds on their property and then they inform law enforcement and then law enforcement informs the hound hunter or a member of their hunting party, then that hound hunter cannot go back to that piece of property and if they do, there's penalties which we'll get into in a little bit. So when the department looked at it before they brought stuff to the board, basically what we did was we took the bear hound rule and adopted much of it for the pursuit of coyotes with the aid of hounds. So a lot of the stuff is going to be very, very similarly. There's some notable exceptions. When we get to them, I'll kind of point them out. So the other parts of this that the legislature mandated is there needed to be a limit on the pack size, so the number of dogs that can be on a hunt for coyotes. There was a prohibition on the substitution of dogs, so no relaying, which is already in the bear rule. So if folks did that, they should be used to that already. Then there was a definition of control that would minimize the likelihood that dogs will enter land, post it against hunting, or where the pursuit of coyotes with dogs is not authorized. It goes back to what I talked to you a few minutes ago or a second ago about the landowner stuff. There is also a requirement for all coyotes that are killed during the pursuit with hounds. They have to be reported to the Fish and Wildlife Department. They also said that the board should consider seasonal restrictions and dating. So as a direct result of that legislative act, there was two new laws that came into effect in November in 2022. This is one of them. It is Title X VSA 5008, and it is titled, you know, Hunting Coyotes with the Eight of Dogs. This is where it lays out and gives the commissioner permission to have the permits. It lays out the number of permits, which is 100 permits total annually. It lays out that only 10% of those permits can go to non-residents based on the total number of permits from the previous year. It also lays out the training season for non-residents as tied to the home state. And then it lays out the fee structure and basically for a resident, it is $50. For a non-resident, it is a $10 application fee. And then if they are granted a permit, it is $200 to obtain that permit. The other law that came out is Title X VSA 5009, and that is the pursuing coyotes with the Eight of Dog, and that is the landowner permission. And that is the actual statutory language of what I just described to you just a few seconds ago about. If it's posted, written permission is required ahead of time. If it's not posted and the landowner doesn't want the hunter there, they have to notify law enforcement. Law enforcement has to notify the houndsman or someone in their party, and then they cannot go back. It also lays out the penalties for this in this state statute. If you look down at C, the first offense of a person who violates this, it shall be considered a minor fish and wildlife violation, which would result in five-point violation. There has not been any fine associated with it yet. That will come later. And then number two, it basically lays out that any subsequent offenses would be a ten-point violation. So as far as the legislative mandates, the limit of dogs, so there's terminology in there, and it is department registered dogs, and basically what that means is when the department issues a coyote-hound permit to a hunter, it will come with brass tags that are fixed to the dog's collars with numbers on them, and that is what would constitute a registered dog with a department. A pack of dogs, so if a hunter is out, they are only allowed four dogs to pursue coyotes, which is down from bears. The bear, it is six, so it is more restrictive than that. The other part of it is legal method of take, which falls in line with virtually every other piece of hunting that we do in the state of Vermont. So the legal means of taking coyotes with the aid of dogs include the utilization of a muzzle loader gun, bow and arrow, or crossbow, basically lays out that if someone chooses to use archery equipment, whether that's a compound bow, longbow, whatever, or a crossbow, they have to have archery head that's being folded into all new regulations just to have everything kind of standardized. And then the same thing with the last bullet point down there, it discusses the minimum standard for a broad head, which is 7 eighths of an inch with two sharp cutting edges, which is standard in many of our regulations. Definition of control. So I will read this one to you verbatim. The transportation loading or unloading of dogs from a vehicle and the handling, catching, restraining, releasing dogs to pursue coyote. GPS collars with track log and training slash control functions or separate gps and training collars, training control collars, shall be required to locate and track dogs at all times when in pursuit of coyotes. At no time shall a dog be in pursuit of coyotes without a gps track log being maintained by the permanent holder. So essentially what this means is if they are out there pursuing coyotes with hounds, they have to have a collar that tracks and a training collar that get down below it, training and control collars is any in a family of collars that delivers electrical stimulation of varying intensities and duration to the neck of a dog via a radio controlled electronic device incorporated into the collar. So they will have to have both of those or one collar that has both of those functions. So it has to be a tracking collar and it has to be a control collar. Required reporting. So every coyote that is taken with the aid of dog, the permanent holder is going to be required to report all of those within 48 hours of the close of the season in a manner that has been required by the commissioner and the commissioner has yet to establish that. But that will get done later on in this process. And then at the very bottom it basically says no coyote carcass will be taken out of the state of Vermont and reported in the manner directed by the commissioner. Seasons and shooting hours. So the coyote hound training season for Vermont residents and nonresident permit holders is June 1st through September 15th. Bearing in mind for nonresidents they have to have a training season open in their home state to come here to train. June 1st to September 15th falls in line with virtually every other dog hunting and training season that we have. I already talked about the nonresidents. So the coyote hunting season will be December 15th through March 31st for those pursuing with hounds. The regular hunting season isn't affected by this. It's just ones that are pursuing coyotes with the aid of hounds. December 15th through March 31st. Legal hunting hours. Most other things are the same. One half hour before sunrise until one half hour after sunset. And that it is in a nutshell for the coyote hounding part. Mark? Stay here in each section. So it's really easier just to just fight the thing outside because it's either night or day or night. People are endless for you. Question time is really important. I'm going to get a quick one on these right here. After we go through that facilitate a process with staff. People are welcome to come on back. We'll talk about where we're going to go from here in the next steps. In the next board meeting, legislative committee on legislative rules. We're going to do that. And also if it's not too late, we'll be happy to entertain any other comments from people in a recent talk. So why don't you appreciate your cooperation and if you may have an incident, there's a bathroom. Okay, if we can have everybody who wants to take a seat. If you could, we'd like to wrap this up and then also entertain time if anybody wants to share any other comments or other questions for the board and the department. So you got the slide up here July 19th. The Fish and Wildlife Board will be doing a second vote on the rules that you heard tonight on both of those subjects all within the rule of furbearer management. Then the department will be pulling together the second vote trying to schedule a meeting ahead of time with the legislative committee on administrative rules that's made up of both the House and the Senate. Their main guidelines are to look at the rule and to make sure that it follows the intent of the legislature and the naval authority that the board had the authority to create the rules that it did to do that. They usually get a letter from the chair. I still refer it to the Fish and Wildlife Committee. I know they changed their names but also the Senate Natural Resources Chair too usually weighs in on every rule that's done to the rule of those committees of jurisdiction our rules on Fish and Wildlife make sure that it's kosher through the process that's being done. So depending on what LCAR does we hope for positive reaction but from it I think we've done a good thorough fair process and this can work with the board. Then we'll move back to the board and ask them for a third vote. The whole goal is to have this become effective by January 1, 2024 to be the law. We will be putting a place holder in the law book on both of these activities to alert hunters and trappers to go to our website for the current regulations that they need to abide by in 2024. I can't thank you all enough. Thanks to the board for coming here and volunteering your time and serving on the board. I was pleasantly happy, thrilled to see the participation. I got to get around every group. I thought everybody was respectful. I can't thank the department staff for doing due diligence of recording all the comments and being patient as people talk and make sure that they recorded in their verbiage of what they had to say to do that. I want to encourage all of you if you have any more comments at all please send them in with the open public comment period to the end of this month, June 30. I can give you an email address but I think the easiest way is to just go to the department website and you'll see right on our homepage you can click on public comments for this and you can submit an email to the department. Even if you came here tonight, gave us your comments please feel free to go back in and share any more comments or you want to emphasize a point if you have more information that would be helpful for the board to do this we will collate every comment all the questions we've received last night, tonight and tomorrow night we're going to be doing a virtual public hearing we will do a responsive summary for all those and provide it to the board it will also be on our website. Someone asked me in one of the work groups if they can think about these questions more will they be on the website? Yes, they will. I can't know if they're on the website right now but I'll make sure by tomorrow we get them up there with the presentation that Kim, Royer did and Major Sean Fowler. So you can see that again we'll be showing that same tape presentation that you saw here tonight tomorrow night and then we're going to allow people to comment again on these same questions depending on the number of people that connect with us tomorrow night we'll try to figure out how much time we can limit people to comment so on behalf of the department and all the staff hats off to the staff for doing a great job here tonight and the board for being here I can't thank you enough and particularly the people that came here tonight whether you enjoy hunting, trapping or just wiling from the state of want this is important we take every comment in your questions seriously so thank you that closes our formal part of the group but we are also willing to take record any other comments that somebody wants to share with the group I'll ask you to address your statements or comments to me and to keep it within two minutes or so just to be respectful of people's time but otherwise if you want to hit the road and go home I guess there's still a little daylight thank you for coming here tonight and safe travels so if anybody's got a comment and you might I would just encourage you to maybe come down halfway down the hall and project your voice so people can hear you so I'll go ahead in the back, yep answer questions tonight through the time the process but we want the questions so we can record it and everybody here will see our response to your question not only the people that are here tonight those who went to the meeting last night those who go on our website through this own process so we have a question for you we've got the light just recorded your comments so I've got staff writing them down in case you have a malfunction so my question was did you want to consider requiring what APA to use APA like the old model APA has the MPs specific for each station they have like 14 different MPs the MPs that are here tonight are insufficient they don't protect our station so that was my question if you really want to follow APA's the MP process and the wildlife then you should be requiring the MPs specific for each station APA's website they have that listed all of your courteries the MPs for each station and the MPs that have not really explained all the nuances and complexities of legislators in the public at six and a quarter of an inch level the job might be okay or ideally the job would be okay for a great box or a stump or a small room so why do you think they're really the MPs and so I guess I'm going to answer that also one last thing MPs, regulations for the very reason instead of a two complex regulations so it seems like in response to the bill the ban on local trust this is all there has to be a ban on local trust which is made important to me and the use of MPs but now we're really explaining all the nuances I think it's really important for those who want to understand better what we have on the website and it was recommended by Mr. Wallace that we not for any special okay, so I have a couple questions here and some comments so I know we've got all that and I have three minutes I should ask everybody to like to speak if you would just state who you are your residents, your town residents I'm running out of time so thank you, thank you for that okay, anybody else want to make a statement or comment I'm going to go through some Florida law the clarification on the 50 foot rule for the letter ways last straight I'm going to go across the property to find the land is that going to be favorably still to be taken on that property that's one of my questions the comment is for the hundred residents that are going to be given up I believe you should have a 100 less or a 100 less to survive yes, do I think you're not going to be able to deal with that can I stand up, can you just say where you are from I'll tell you what George said I could proceed going forward if more than 100 people apply for permits it should be done with a water system like everybody it shouldn't be first come first serve it should be done with water thank you come over this slide far back you're the one thank you I want to speak to the EMP also the legislative mandate in act 159 directed the department to produce a little suffering by introducing BMPs but yet there's no change to the use of the Connovera 220 for Fisher Traffing I've provided a research paper done by researchers Ferris Food Canada at the BMP testing laboratory that proves that I quote although the Connovera 220 trap is often recommended as an alternative to the steel level trap it is unlikely that it has a potential to mainly kill Fisher so I want to know why it is then excluded in the Fisher BMP still I've asked the project leader the department I have a question I would really like to know why a trap has not passed BMP testing the research facility has been in a lot of use do you have a copy of the scientific paper in your evidence can't find it okay thanks anybody in the small section see anything here tonight on the left on the right Jerry the makeup Roxbury I want to speak on behalf of the document best managing practices in the Vermont Trafford Regulations I'm in Trafford I'm in Trafford in 1950s I'm a member of the Vermont Trafford Association and I was involved in the BTA that's how best to improve better practices to address the due legitimate concerns of safety and welfare of trap areas BTA spent many months discussing and developing best management practices of the known BMPs with which presented to the department tonight you will hear you will receive comments from the recreational lobbyists from several anti-monthly and anti-trafford which is about the cruelty of trap and other arguments that trap should not be allowed but this here it should only be about the methods this is about the merits of adopting these BMPs only there are arguments that these regulations are unenforceable this is a specious argument that's responsible people act responsibly when these BMPs are adopted the trap is unknown BMPs that BTA is not the known irresponsible trap mostly anti-trafficking arguments really describing one of them this one has this is an act to go back to that incident that dog that unfortunately was caught in a trap as I mentioned BTA is not the known irresponsible trap and works with law enforcement to have these people monitored I have never heard any of these anti-trafficking anti-groups disassociate themselves from the anti-terrorist neighborhood I would also like to speak in favor of the chunks continuing on the coyotes and not hunting coyotes without less important activity Massachusetts with limited traffic hunting opportunities exist there are numerous recent accounts of coyotes that happen to people because these animals are not under the applause of people county reinforces that fear fear will likely reduce it thank you thank you quiet we have our anybody else from our comment yes thank you yeah, so I can say that I live in the park and so we're here to talk about the APS tonight and my issue is a little bit of a side issue as we do with public safety setbacks are one aspect of public safety another aspect is slightage for trapping areas I think it's really important that everybody think about this considering I think it should be a requirement my dog Clara was killed in December last year by a body ripping trap she died in my arms a half mile from my house and I carried her back to my car and took her home the game working thing the next morning and she got the trap off of her neck if there had been sightage at the front of that of the town of that road she would not have been killed that way I think the onus responsibility is on you trappers and the fishing wildlife department to make this a requirement I don't see any reason why it's not a requirement are you afraid that your traps will be sabotaged are you you don't want the idea of somebody telling you what to do on your private property do you feel it's a high risk responsibility to inquire property owner where you happen to be hiking that day hey you have traps on your property this fall us hypers there are 69% of us in the state according to your fish and wildlife department responsible management survey there are 69% of others who might not hike in the state and we are all at risk for 5 months out of the year man that's a long time so I would just like to put it on a record that I think this is something we really need to be considered this does not address the suffering and distress of trapped animals but it does help to maybe keep our pets a little bit safer and children and us as well thank you and we'll just leave Dr. Dahl address me hi whoop, turn the lights off I just saw Dr. Dahl I'm going to record Dr. Dahl so now I'm going to hold Dr. Dahl in my hand and as opposed to I have to open the door to Dr. Dahl and you go to Dr. Dahl as a dog official but if they eat my dog food I have to go to Dr. Dahl to get my traps before hey what do you want in my hand it's forced to pull I just want to share a lot of the conversations there was a good article about this I'm happy to give it to you it was a performing that many traps that are unfortunately trapped pets are traps that are set to be I'm not sure the circumstances of your particular pet if it was trapped illegally I personally trapped and I didn't know all the people that I know that trapped follow the rules to the T and if they did I don't believe that your dog would have been by me to treat or under water to enter an underwear I just think that's worth thinking of just in this whole pharmacy that these best management practices very often the pets on the arm don't lay any traps like football there's very good out of hold without that but it's without a management trap it's well black money and I honestly wish that that was more publicly known whether because the partners put out where they're like a dog and they don't find a good trap and people don't neglect to say whether it was set illegally or not and that's trapped in that money and it doesn't tell the whole truth thank you go ahead name and town name and town name and town and the lease law because it's so ironic that there's a lease law for pets but how do you do a lease law which is a trick second problem I'm thinking is about the the penalty that you put in place for pounds going in the posted land is completely inadequate and I want that on record to say you should lose your fucking license for life if your dog goes under a posted land if you're in control it shouldn't be a problem you're in control so why don't you let that happen thank you I believe you made that comment yeah I believe you wrote it down great awesome anyone else that has had that chance it's a science based non-profit that uses best cutting edge science for all of your work I wish the fish pond like recommendations are not informed by the current science that are understanding from studies that we're looking at is that trafficking can never be made to name so should we go beyond what you're doing here and say that these new issues will never make trafficking more to name I also just wanted to make a comment about the counting issue which is that out-raising owners are never going to control dogs they're only fishmongers who testify about this in March basically mentioned that the rate of owners don't work back up on my own range and that in actual ownership lines the owners don't work so my question is how do these rules that we propose that can actually be seconded by the rights and the rights of owners who are marks I've had a chance to have not spoken already I'll let you speak again Brandi after nobody else wants to speak I'm just trying to be fair and everybody's dying here tonight I don't want folks to travel to some business here so if no one else wants to speak here welcome to speak again Brandi I just really think that doesn't make any other point but it's my information that initial trafficking has something to do with it there are scouts in the spring that attract dogs to be taxed so to say that you know who travelers don't track domestic analysts and instead they get a trap in the woods and you leave for a day and say that doesn't count and it is being disingenuous so travelers this road you know you trap a dog to be taxed so I just want to have more of that kind of honest discussion and that no tracker wants to trap a dog or a friend not saying that it's required to report when it happens but to say that no travelers don't trap dogs to be taxed thank you thank you folks on behalf of the department and the board thank you so much for coming here tonight I would tell you we wouldn't be here tonight if we did just wrongly that we're working towards our legislative mandate to make trapping or to remain in safe instead of alone we work hard on that that's our goal and look forward that we get there so on behalf of the board safe travels thank you thank you