by Betsy Swart

About the author: Betsy Swart is the national program director of Friends of Animals, an international animal rights organization.

Wild animals are trapped, clubbed, strangled, and stomped by the millions every year to serve the relatively few people who wish to wear fur coats. Animals killed for fur in the United States include raccoons, red and gray foxes, beavers, otters, coyotes, wolves, lynxes, bobcats, opossums, badgers, nutria, and muskrats. It takes between 30 and 60 of these beautiful animals to make one fur coat.

Most wild animals killed for fur are captured in steel-jaw leghold traps. Although 64 nations have banned the use of these cruel and indiscriminate traps, the powerful U.S. fur lobby has limited regulation to just a handful of states. The steel-jaw trap is legal in all but 11 states.

The consequences...