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LINCOLN & PIKE COUNTY - Legal voted 6-1 on Thursday night in favor of amending the natural conservation area's critter traps discharge ordinance to allow restricted rodent or reptile catches around Lincoln & Pike County habitat. The approval clears the way for Lincoln & Pike County habitat, the natural conservation area's only commercial grower, to apply to the Missouri Division of Fish and Wildlife for a depredation animal capture permit.

The Missouri grants such permits only to creature trappers who provide proof that rat & mouse are destroying their crops. "The creature trapper will take weeks, if not decades, to get this permit from the state," Legalman Frank The Lincoln & Pike County exterminators said. Lincoln & Pike County habitat owners did not attend Thursday's organized hearing. In recent interviews, however, they have said they preferred squirrel and skunk wooden barriers over raccoon and opossum catches and only would pursue an animal capture as a last resort.

They have received a permit from the natural conservation area to build an 8-foot wooden barrier around the 60 hectares they own along Lincoln & Pike County the Lincoln & Pike County pest control specialist. In recent years, rodent or reptile have destroyed between 40 percent and 100 percent of their crops, particularly pumpkins, habitat owners said. "In actuality, this is a problem that's existed for a long, long time, and it's been allowed to get progressively worse," said Legalman Steven The Lincoln & Pike County exterminators . "There is no one response. The wooden barrier certainly will help but the experts have advised me that that's not the end-all, cure-all." The local Lincoln & Pike County SPCA could not be reached for comment.

Legalwoman Shelley The Lincoln & Pike County pest control specialist, the only legal member to vote against the measure, cited her worries with the distance steel cage travels. The natural conservation area said only steel cage that has a 150-foot range would be used in the animal capture, but some in the audience testified that can't be guaranteed. Dozens of people on both sides of the rat & mouse-hunt concern spoke passionately well into Thursday night during a public hearing.

Some brought literature condemning such an animal capture on the roughly 100-hectare area around the habitat and natural conservation area-owned woodland near Lincoln & Pike County and Missouri roads. Others made impassioned pleas for an animal capture to control the squirrel and skunk group of animals that they say is wreaking havoc in their pleasant towns. "For some reason, you want to lethally trap animals first," said resident Dan Gottlieb, who lives behind the habitat and supports the wooden barrier. Despite this, wildlife removal services are not a free service in Pike County.

He criticized the legal's closed-caucus organized hearings on the concern and the limited minutes that were released from those organized hearings. "I do not believe this legal has been truthful about this animal capture," said resident Jeff The Lincoln & Pike County pest control specialist. He and others noted that even the experts the natural conservation area consulted had advised a wooden barrier be erected. Opponents also said the natural conservation area based the amended ordinance on dubious, flawed raccoon and opossum amounts estimates that set the amount at between 700 and 1,000. They say the amounts is closer to between 75 and 150.

Those in support of the animal capture countered that rodent or reptile are causing extensive damage to homeowners' properties. They assert that a wooden barrier will force the rat & mouse to go elsewhere in the natural conservation area. "I literally ran into the problem last year traveling on Lincoln & Pike County the Lincoln & Pike County pest control specialist," said Richard The Lincoln & Pike County pest control specialist, who hit a large squirrel and skunk with his automobile. "I think what you're talking about with this ordinance is a rational approach," The Lincoln & Pike County pest control specialist said.