Hello, I live in Cowiche, Washington.  I am sixteen years old and I have trapped one season so far.  I had a good first season and I have loved trapping ever since.  This first season I caught two beaver, eight muskrats, one otter, and a skunk to top it off.  I trapped a lot of the season with my younger brother.  Together we had a lot of memorable experiences, like the first skunk.  We caught our first skunk in a box trap and that made it even more exciting.  During this summer some friends told us that some skunks were eating their chickens.  So we set some more conibear traps in the holes that the skunks had dug under the fence to get at the chickens.  We caught eighteen skunks from those traps within two weeks.  And that is a because they lost twenty-seven chickens in two nights.  That is before we started trapping.  Another close to home example of predator over-population is that there once was quite a few cotton tail rabbits around my house and the coyotes ate all but a couple of them.  There are so few of them now that they aren't seen around here at all.  And these are both in my little area.  So now I am going to trap the coyotes to keep their population in balance.

 Animals can also do damage to property and crops.  There is a whole bunch of examples that I could give for this topic but I will just name a few.  First example is that beaver have come out of the creeks and drainage ditches and cut down all kinds of nice trees on private land, including apple trees in the orchards. Also, raccoon can raid corn fields and make the farmers lose a lot of money that supports his family.  Muskrats have actually dug dens in the banks of sewer ponds and that made the banks give way and the waste went into the creek and killed many fish.  The damage from that muskrat and the costs to rebuild the banks was very great.  Otter have made their way into fish hatcheries and have killed hundreds of fish.  In conclusion, trapping helps the animals so they don't have to fight for food, die from diseases, and ruin crops and property.  And that is why  love to trap animals.