A Big Deal for Small Animals! UBCM Adopts Resolution for Provincewide Glue Trap Ban

For Immediate Release:
September 20, 2024

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

At the 2024 UBCM Convention earlier today, mayors, councillors, and municipal officials voted in favor of adopting Resolution NR54, which calls on the provincial government of British Columbia to pass a provincewide ban on the sale and use of glue traps—trays coated with a sticky adhesive that ensnare small animals, who can suffer for days before dying, their faces and limbs mired in the glue.

PETA worked with the British Columbia SPCA, Councillor Teale Phelps Bondaroff, Councillor John Rogers, and local activist Lavinia Rojas to build support for the resolution, which resulted in endorsements from a coalition of animal advocacy and conservation groups, animal hospitals, and wildlife rehabilitators across the province.

“Vulnerable animals caught on glue traps struggle desperately for freedom until they give up and slowly die, exhausted and terrified,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is celebrating this big step forward for tiny animals and is urging the public to contact their representatives in support of a provincewide ban on these inhumane devices.”

“I am grateful to all the passionate advocates who helped make this resolution a reality and hope the provincial government will step up and ban these indiscriminately lethal traps,” says Saanich Councillor Teale Phelps Bondaroff. “Animals caught in glue traps suffer horrific and prolonged deaths—and this fate is experienced by target and nontarget animals alike.”

Wildlife—including birds, snakes, lizards, rats, and squirrels—who get stuck in the glue try futilely to escape, sometimes chewing off their own limbs before succumbing to shock, dehydration, asphyxiation, or blood loss. Glue traps fail as a long-term solution because they neglect to address the source of the problem: As long as food remains accessible, more animals will move in to take the place of those who have been killed.

Earlier this year, the Glue Trap Prohibition Act (HR 7018), which would ban the sale and use of glue traps across the U.S., was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hundreds of companies and entities as well as two cities in California; countries such as England, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales; two Australian states; two Belgian regions; and more than 30 states and union territories in India have all banned glue traps.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.