[KegRiver]

A bit of prospective might help calm some folks a bit.

When I started trapping no one could sell a line, or any assets.
Lines are crown land, always were. Trappers used to put a lot of work into their lines and if they gave them up for any reason they received nothing for their investment.

I'm not sure when that changed, I think it was in the 1980s, anyway, changes were made so that trappers could sell improvements, nothing more.

That's the way it stands today so far as I know.

Yeah some sold for a lot more then what the improvements were worth. But that was not the intent and it was not what trappers asked for.

Then the anti trapping activists managed to turn people against fur and the fur market collapsed. That made it very tempting for trappers to sell to the highest bidder and with few looking to get into trapping, (because it no longer paid the bills,) outfitters saw an opportunity and exploited it.

In recent years we have had a resurgence of interest in trapping, a good thing. However, a lot of the new trappers heard stories of the good old days and started dreaming of owning their own line.
Seeing that a lot of lines today were not being fully utilized they lobbied for changes.

Which leads to where we are today.

Not being able to sell a line is not the end of trapping. In fact the day is coming when there will be NO registered trap lines.

Make no mistake, there are a lot of powerful voices crying for the end of registered lines. Logging companies, oil companies, outfitters and others do not like sharing the land with trappers.
Every day more land is sold or leased reducing the amount of land available for registered lines. Eventually there won't be enough left to resist the voices calling for the end of registered trap lines. It will happen.
But trapping will survive.

Will the new regs make life difficult for a few people, Of course they will. And so will logging and oil exploration and land development. In fact these others have been causing trappers pain for a lot of years, and it will only get worse.

Bottom line, nothing stays the same. We adapt and survive.
Trapping the way it was when I was young is dead and gone but it has been replaced by a new kind of trapping.
And this new kind of trapping is much harder to stop then the old way was.

When I was learning to trap, it was all about making a living. To stop it all the antis had to do was make it unprofitable.
This new trapping is about the love of the outdoors and that can not be stopped so easily.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try to change things for the better, I am saying, don't worry about it. Trapping will change, and it will survive.