Above: Pakenham resident Ken White hopes the selling of rabbit traps does not get banned from local markets and swap meets.
By Justin Robertson
A PAKENHAM trap collector believes it will be “discriminatory” if rabbit traps are banned from being sold at local markets.
For the past six weeks, Casey Council has been investigating the sale of the steel-jawed traps at the Berwick’s Akoonah Park Market.
However, Ken White, who has more than 400 rabbit traps and has been collecting them for the past 20 years, said if the council and the RSPCA shut down stalls selling these traps, then collectors would have nowhere to buy them.
“There is a belief that, if these type of people get their way and stop the selling of traps in the market areas, swaps meets, garages sales, where then do collectors go to buy traps for their collection?” he said.
“These people go to a market situation, and point out the first two points of the Act. They will not point out to the stall holder, ‘ok if you are a collector you can buy that’. This is happening all over the state.”
The first two points in the Animal Cruelty Act state the selling of rabbit traps are prohibited, unless you are selling them to a museum or a collector.
Mr White said not only would banning the traps restrict buying, it would be a blow to safeguarding Australian heritage.
“As far as I’m concerned, traps are a part of Australian heritage and if it’s not collected and not held together, then where’s it going to go? The tip,” he said. “It’s just something we don’t want to lose.”
The Animal Cruelty hotline has received a number of calls from residents in the past two months informing them of animals caught in traps – some of them domestic animals such as cats – suggesting some residents are taking it upon themselves to catch pesky animals.
Mr White said he had only heard of two cases of domestic cats being caught in a trap and that purchasing a rabbit trap to catch a cat would be an expensive solution.
“My understanding, a cat should not be at large after sunset ’til sunrise. If cats were in their own house all night, not wandering at large, nobody would want to set a trap to catch them,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure people would not turn up to buy a trap to catch a cat, if they are going to pay $8000 for a dingo trap and up to $2000 for a rabbit trap.”
For the past 10 years, Mr White has been running a trap auction in Mildura on behalf of the Australian Trap Collectors. He has been collecting other goods like milk bottles, hurricane lanterns and scales since he was 11, and hopes wiser heads prevail over banning the sale of rabbit traps.
“Some of the collectors around Australia are in their 70s and use trap collecting to treat some medical problems they have,” he said.
“Trap collecting has brought them back into line and it’s a part of Australian heritage we need to keep.”
