Trapping is a subject to which I've never given serious thought, perhaps because I grew up in a city and was never exposed to hunting and trapping. On the one hand, I guess I had always dismissed modern day trapping as somewhat cruel, while on some level buying into the romantic notions surrounding trappers like Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone. And trapping was certainly never something that I associated with the Adirondacks; to me, the Adirondack Park has always been a totally untouched, natural place. However, chapter 4, "The Price of Otter in China," and chapter 5, "The End of an Era," in Schneider's book corrected a few of my misconceptions surrounding trapping and the Adirondacks.
My first misconception was that trapping is an inherently cruel practice. Instead, as Toby Edwards explains, trapping, when practiced responsibly and in accordance with regulations, is more in harmony with the wilderness than most farming. In a way, trapping might reinsert humans into the "natural order" in the least destructive way possible. Schneider acknowledges that New York State "relies on trappers to control the burgeoning population of beaver" (72) and that "in the Adirondacks at least, conservationists have never won a major battle without the support of the trappers and their far more plentiful brethren, the hunters and anglers" (73).
Schneider next dispelled my romantic notions of the frontier trapper. I had always thought of frontier trappers as totally self-sufficient and one with the wilderness (as corny as that sounds). In my imagination, the Davy Crockets and Daniel Boones weren't indiscriminately killing off the deer and wolf populations just for a bigger payday. But, as Schneider notes, "The shooting of kittens and fawns and pretty much anything else that moved was fairly standard practice in what was a particularly gluttonous period of wildlife removal. In the Champlain Valley bounties would not be paid on wolf puppies whose eyes were not yet open, but only because the towns figured pups that young wouldn't survive long without their mother anyway" (83).
However disturbing such descriptions of past trappers may be, the newfound sense of ecological responsibility in modern day trappers such as Edwards and Inslerman is encouraging. Of course, the occasional alignment of trapper and conservationist agendas does not indicate that all trappers are environmentalists who love the wilderness. But, acknowledging that sustainability can be in people's best interest for reasons other than sentimental ones is a step in the right direction.
I think it is interesting to think about the trappers and conservationists being on the same side. Although it can seem contradictory at first, trappers are some of the people that are most familiar to the landscape of the Adirondacks, and really appreciate the value of wilderness. Although they do kill and take animals, sustainable trapping could allow trappers to continue their livelihood without dramatically shrinking the beaver or deer population. I think that trappers have the potential to be stronger conservationists and environmentalists than people who have never travelled to wilderness areas and cannot imagine what about the wilderness is worth preserving.
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