In 2018, Trap Free Montana began our billboard campaign along major highways in Montana with our “End the Suffering” billboard helping expose the cruelty of trapping. We were granted exclusive permission to use this painful to see picture of a trapped and dying wolf. 

Trapping has historically been secreted and hidden. It will not remain so under our watch.

From less than 1/3 of Montana licensed trappers voluntarily reporting, an average of 50,000 wildlife are reported trapped and destroyed annually in our state. Not included are the trapped non-targets, i.e. pets, mountain lions, raptors, lynx, wolverine, deer, bears, and the collateral damage from orphaned young, the animals who escape with the trap or snare attached, and those trapped and released who later perish from the trapping.

We are their voice and their exposure of their suffering. Knowledge is power and with power comes change! 

Given the importance and impact of our billboard project, our “End the Suffering” billboard campaign continues. Our billboards have been scattered across Montana along major highways in Helena, Gallatin Gateway, Great Falls, Clancy, Billings, Florence and Basin. In the summer of 2019, we switched out one of our two Helena billboards for a look at some of the many trapping “Indiscriminate Victims” beautifully depicted and referred to as accidental, incidental, or nontargets” that are excused, condoned, forgotten, in the inherently indiscriminate act of trapping. In May of 2021, we added the beautiful “Importance of Beaver” billboard to respect and protect beaver for wildlife, water resources, and climate change. Montana allows unlimited and unreported recreational trapping of beaver for 5 1/2 – 9 months out of the year and with most of the state being the longer. 

To increase public awareness on the hidden secreted nature of trapping, we assisted our affiliate, TFMPL, in “See the Traps?, Neither Does She” featuring a girl and her dogs out for a hike on our beautiful public lands in Montana. This billboard is set in a very visible locale in Helena.

In 2022, we added two more designs to our billboard series. “Killing us Harms All” features two beautiful wolves and is prominently visible right in the town of West Yellowstone! This billboard is up also along the highways in Frenchtown and in Ramsay. “Trapping Hurts All” is a powerful billboard depicting half the face of a dog and that of a wolf. She secured a great spot in Clancy for vehicles headed South from Helena.

Thanks to our supporters, the summer of 2023, we branched out to other parts of the state, i.e. Glendive, Cut Bank, Red Lodge, and Libby. We created two more billboard designs in honor of wolves, grizzlies, Canada lynx, and wolverine and the need to protect them as the war on predators escalates in Montana.

The summer of 2024, we added 3 more billboard designs. Images to come! One, “Trapping Breaks Hearts” is of a boy and his beloved dog. Another is of a grizzly and consistent with our message “End the Suffering, Stop Trapping“. For our affiliate, TFMPL, the billboard “Vote for Wildlife, End Animal Cruelty” features the use of a snowmobile after a coyote, and is representative of chasing, running down, and over, LEGALLY, species classified as predators in Montana.

Each billboard exposes tens of thousands of the public, weekly, to the harsh disturbing reality of trapping or advocates for the incredible value of wildlife alive untrapped and respected as sentient beings and their rightful in the ecosystem.