As a Hunter.. not a trapper the link is substantial:
There isn't many hunters out hunting small game anymore Beaver, Coon, Possum, etc... So those populations tend to grow unchecked in some aspects.
We have higher road kill incidents, rabies incidents and we know beavers create dams where it suits them to build and it alters waterways sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
Either way it leads to tax payer money and diverted wildlife funds to do the job that trappers and hunters once filled.
if it wasn't for trappers nuisance species such as nutria and other exotics would have free range and destroy natural habitat of our native wildlife as well.

I am a trapper and the link to hunting is so vastly important that people don't understand, without hunting there is a very very few ammount of trappers and not enough of them to protect it from being outlawed by animal rights coo coo heads, we are under the umbrella of hunting and the NRA and without it there would no longer be one of the most precise ways of taking care of nuisance animals such as beavers, muskrat and coon. So the combination between hunters and trappers is vital if hunters turn against trappers there will be nobody except the trappers left to defend them, destroying another beautiful and god given right in this country.

When I was in high school I trapped some but got away from it. Various folks in my family were against it. They would never give a really good reason for their bias against trapping. I think there is an amount of that out there. I am still not anti-trapping.

Personally, I see where it ties in with hunting. And what 86Ram was saying about the control of pests makes a lot of sense too.

Moishe for President---first term only.