Women guilty of tampering with Incline bear traps
By AP
A mother and her adult daughter have been convicted of tampering with a bear trap at Incline Village in an effort to thwart wildlife officials’ efforts to capture the animals.
It’s the first such case prosecuted in Nevada, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported today.
Cheryl Ann Morrison, 63, of Truckee and Season Morrison, 35, of Reno each face up to $3,000 in fines — $1,500 for each of two misdemeanors.
Incline Village Justice Court Judge E. Alan Tiras found them guilty of obstructing or interfering with a Nevada Department of Wildlife officer and tampering with a vehicle.
The two women admitted during a daylong trial last month they deliberately tripped a bear trap set to capture a black bear that was becoming a nuisance in October. They said they thought state wildlife officials had set the trap illegally but the judge disagreed.
In his six-page ruling issued Monday, Tiras concluded the law cited by the defense that makes it illegal to set steel traps within 200 feet of a public road was written to target leg traps used to catch small fur-bearing mammals.
Those traps are “very different” than the large culvert-style traps used to capture bears, the judge said.
Prosecutors say state wildlife biologist Carl Lackey placed a motion-activated camera near the trap outside Incline Village that captured the Morrisons and a third unidentified woman tampering with the trap.
Authorities were able to identify by the woman by, among other things, Facebook postings regarding the incident. Their sentencing date has not been set.
The incident occurred during a year of mounting conflicts between people and trash-raiding black bears.
Critics say the Department of Wildlife is killing too many bears. State officials counter they’re having more and more trouble doing their job because people are interfering with efforts to capture problem bears, including tampering with traps.
Well ,then thats telling you something about the traps , Maybe take the damn traps away and things like this would not happen,
If they had actually thought the traps were “illegal”, why didn’t they call the authorities and report it instead?
Silly defense.
Kathy, your logic seems a bit off base. Would argue we should close banks to keep them from being roobbed?
Its not off base ,First time this happened ,waste of tax payers money get rid of the traps ,,
Maybe Kathy could start a Bear Legal Defense Fund.
Street signs also are vandalized Kathy, so by your logic they are a waste of taxpayer money and we should get rid of them?
Wow!
To many bears getting killed over in incline ,so sad ,
Get on the subject about bears , not
about banks or signs ,Where our you coming from ? .
I am already in a league for bears ,I enjoy it over here where I live and so do many more of us ,We are Bear smart,
Kathy, I apologize for trying to insert logic into the thought process of a Bear League member.
Silly me, I forgot it’s not part of their emotion based, hug a bear agenda.
I love our bears as much as ANY member of the bear League, and want to see them live and thrive in their natural environment. And sometimes that means a little human/bear interction is necessary, which sometimes includes traps.
Traps, relocation, and aversion therapy are the first line of protection for problem bears. Otherwise, they would be killed after their first offense. Is THAT what people want? I don’t think so.
Yeah, people who leave food out are STUPID. Fine them, too. But it’s gonna happen, and the bears are going to take advantage of it. Once they start, they MUST be retrained. Or they will die. Sux, but it is what it is.
Dog, you nailed it!
Not only is a fed bear a dead bear, but any bear that gets too comfortable in close proximity to humans (doesn’t Ann Bryant like to sit in the woods with “her” bears? Shame on her!) will end up a dead bear or end up harming a human, which means do not pass go bear, do not collect $200 bear, but DIE! Which Carl Lackey and his trapping program are trying to avoid.
Thanks, Big. Yeah. Exactly. None of us wants to see the bears killed.
Kathy: Take the traps away and maybe this won’t happen? You seem to ignore the fact that these two or three fools chose to tamper with a legal trap, breaking the law. Maybe we should take THEM away….like to Federal Prison! You and that complete nuisance Bryant are two of a kind.
Kathy, it may be the first time someone was prosecuted but the tampering has been going on for a while. It was Bear League’s and Lake Tahoe Wall of Shame FB posts which wrongfully declared to their fans that the trap was illegally placed. One of the defendant’s declared under oath that she tripped the trap because she believed that FB post to be true but it was far from the truth. When she did trip the trap, both BL and their fans supported her actions and L TWoS posted some cute quote about it. Now she and her mom are guilty of misdemeanors and fines while BL continues to post false information about at a recently placed bear trap at an Incline home. That post incited people to verbally attack homeowners. However, BL’s information was all wrong, once again. It is their desire to harass Tahoe residents based on emotion and often baseless claims that needs to stop. Some people actually believe the the misinformation that is spewed from these sites and they take action based on that. The spewing of misinformation and unsubstantiated facts must stop. I leave you with this, If it was illegal, why didn’t LTWoS trip the trap, or Bear League members? Why did they just tout that it was and leave it for someone else to handle?