The pro-snaring lobby go to great lengths to put a good old glossy PR spin on their need to retain snares as a part of their ‘toolkit for the countryside’ but we all know that in reality the desire to prevent a ban on their use is driven by the simple fact that snares are a cheap and easy way of controlling animals perceived to be ‘pests’.
The notion of ‘cheap and easy’ was certainly confirmed in the recent conviction of a Linlithgow pensioner found guilty of snaring a badger near his home in West Lothian. The man in question set about to deal with the problem of foxes bothering his chickens by purchasing free-running snares with the intention of trapping the foxes which were worrying the chickens.
In Scotland, the regulations around the use of snares are the most rigorous in the UK and set out a number of conditions which must be met before a snare is set. While this may seem to be a good thing, in reality no amount of regulation will eradicate the real problems with the continued use of these traps which are the fact they cause terrible, unnecessary suffering and will never be target specific. A point this particular man found to be true.
Armed with his snares the gentleman, presumably believing he was doing no wrong, duly set them outside his garden where the chickens were kept. However, the snares were set just fifty metres from an active badger sett - a protected species – and in contravention of the regulations. It was in fact a badger which became the victim rather than the targeted fox. Under the regulations it is a legal requirement to undergo training before setting snares which is supposed to reduce these types of problems although no amount of training will ever turn a thin wire noose into a selective trap.
I actually almost feel a bit sorry for this man, who owned up to his crime and was fined £865 for setting a snare likely to cause bodily injury to protected wild animals on a pathway used by badgers, and setting snares without the landowner’s authority. The best part of a thousand pounds certainly didn’t work out as a money saving option! Obviously I don’t condone his methods of dealing with his fox problem but I do believe he was sucked into the belief that this was a cheap and easy option to protect his chickens.
It is this myth that we need to overcome as we campaign to ban snares not only in Scotland but in all parts of the UK. Snares may be cheap and easy to use but the suffering, pain and stress they inflict can never justify their cost effective reputation. There are alternatives which can be far more effective. In this case, the Scottish SPCA encouraged the man to use electric fencing around his chickens as a deterrent to foxes.
As this example, and countless others show regulating snaring is simply regulating cruelty. A ban on their use is long overdue. OneKind is campaigning for a ban in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland and also runs a dedicated website for members of the public to report snaring incidents. If you have witnessed an animal being caught in a snare you can report it online at www.Snarewatch.org and join our campaign by visiting the snaring pages of our website.