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Efforts to ban leg-hold traps in Montgomery County will redouble next year, months ahead of the November election, as animal welfare advocates vow to hold lawmakers accountable for their votes on measures that affect pets and other animals.

Contending that the traps are both cruel and ineffective, organizers announced a plan Monday to mobilize pet owners and animal lovers to press legislators in Annapolis to prohibit use of traps that can kill or crush the limbs of animals, including stray pets and untargeted wildlife that end up in their grasp.

They said that they will press again for a leg-hold trap ban but revise legislation that failed this year. The refiled bill will not be limited to "steel" traps for fear that specification could provide a loophole to allow similar traps made of other materials.

 "I feel confident if we can educate people, we can turn them to our side," said Ellie Trueman of Poolesville, who leads a volunteer group determined to make a ban on such traps in Montgomery the law, "whether it takes two or 20 years."

In this year's legislative session, a proposed ban passed Montgomery's House delegation on a 21-3 vote but encountered rare opposition to a local-only bill on the House floor. It still was approved in the House, 85-50.

The proposal, through an amendment to state law, applied only to Montgomery County.

But concerns in the county's Senate delegation killed the measure.

Proponents of the ban are scheduling meetings ahead of the General Assembly session's opening on Jan. 13, Trueman said.

And they are planning to register supporters and issue an "Animal Friendly Report Card" on a new Web site that is expected to go online later this month.

Trueman said volunteers for her Watchdog Constituency, a nonprofit organization, hope to register 10,000 people by June.

The Watchdog Constituency Council, a countywide group of 50 animal advocates, will rate lawmakers on their support for key issues, she said.

That council will help monitor laws and regulations that can affect animals in the county, she said.

The plans were announced at an awards ceremony honoring those who helped move the measure in Annapolis.

"We had more e-mails to our delegation on this bill than on the death penalty bill," said Del. Brian J. Feldman (D-Dist. 15) of Potomac, lead sponsor of the bill in the House. Feldman received the TLC (Trapping Legalizes Cruelty) Initiative Leadership Award for his work at a ceremony Monday at the Potomac Community Center.

"It's the same thing," chimed in Sen. Michael G. Lennett (D-Dist. 19) of Silver Spring, lead sponsor in the Senate delegation.

Feldman said he expects opposition to the ban to again be centered in the Senate.

Lennett, Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Dist. 20) of Takoma Park, Del. Tom Hucker (D-Dist. 20) of Silver Spring and Del. Craig L. Rice (D-Dist. 15) of Germantown also received awards for their work to pass the ban.

So did Megan Draheim, a researcher for Project Coyote; Humane Society of the United States lobbyist Tami Santelli; Takoma Voice columnist Michael Tabor; and Peter H. Eeg, a local veterinarian who is an expert in animal pain.

"There are detractors such as Sen. Rob Garagiola that fail to embrace the truth that a compassionate society cannot rise to its greatest potential for peace and harmony for its citizens while allowing the agonizingly painful protracted deaths of helpless creatures, some of them our own pets, at the hands of a few individuals who continue to press for the outmoded use of leg hold traps," Eeg said in a statement read by his wife at the event.

Garagiola (D-Dist. 15) of Germantown said that "a majority of the Senate delegation, not just one senator" kept the bill from going forward this year.

He said he has compassion for animals and is looking for new information about what impact such bans have had in states where they have been enacted.

Garagiola said he is concerned about the challenges faced by farmers in the county's Agricultural Reserve.

"If there's no other tool, what do we say to the farmer who's trying to protect livestock?" he said.