The New Mexico Game Commission today approved trapping of bobcats, foxes, and other wildlife throughout nearly all of the state, despite public opposition to the practice long criticized as inhumane and indiscriminate.

The decision reauthorizes the use of leghold traps, body-crushing traps, and strangulation snares that have killed and maimed endangered Mexican wolves and countless other animals. Last year five wolves in New Mexico were caught by private trappers. Such trapping is legal as long as the intention is to catch some other kind of animal.

It’s the 21st century. Isn’t it time this primitive, archaic, and torturous method of killing animals is done away with?