OneKind is pleased to present a guest blog from Irene Oldfather MSP - a strong voice for animals in the Scottish Parliament.
Today, Wednesday 2 March, I will introduce an amendment to the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill that means a great deal to me. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to see Scotland free of cruel snares and I decided to play my part in the fight against them by seeking to ban them altogether.
It’s too early to say whether the required majority of the Parliament will support my amendment, but I am so very grateful to colleagues in the Scottish Labour Party who have thrown their weight behind me - and to a number of individual MSPs in other parties who also see the need, as I do, to make Scotland a snare-free country.
So why do I think Scotland should ban snares? There are two main reasons.
Firstly, snares are cruel. These primitive wire nooses can do so much harm to animals and cause so much suffering. Whilst working on my amendment to ban snares I have been unfortunate enough to witness the graphic evidence of injury and death snares cause to animals. Animals strangled to death, others caught by the leg or around the waist and disembowelled.
In my own constituency, a fox was found trapped in a snare on a fence in Irvine on the second day of the year. Almost certainly, this snare was set illegally, but it brought home the reality of the problem.
Two months on, this young animal is still at Hessilhead Wildlife Trust recovering from his injuries - still not ready to be returned to the wild - and I think that gives an indication of the amount of damage that a snare can do.
It’s no surprise that in a recent independent report (OneKind commissioned) from Cambridge University, scientists concluded that “some pest control methods have such extreme effects on an animal's welfare that, regardless of the potential benefits, their use is never justified. Snaring is such a method.”
That they are set to catch and kill target animals such as foxes, rabbits and hares is bad enough. However, once a snare has been set, it can catch any animal that is unfortunate to come along. And this is my second point. Snares are unselective – shockingly, over half of animals caught may be non-target species.
They can catch farmed animals and other wild animals, including protected species such as badgers, otters, pine martens, mountain hares and even our endangered Scottish wild cats. They also catch and kill people’s pet cats and dogs.
In January, I met the respected veterinary pathologist Professor Ranald Munro. He had this to say about snares:“From the veterinary perspective, snares are primitive, indiscriminate traps that are recognised as causing widespread suffering to a range of animals.
At their least injurious, snares around the neck can result in abrasion and splitting of the skin. However, being caught in a snare is extremely distressing for any creature and vigorous attempts to escape are natural. These efforts cause the snare wire to kink, thereby changing a free‐running snare to a self‐locking one. Strangulation and choking follow.”
So will regulating snaring, as is proposed under the WANE Bill, make any difference to this terrible picture? In truth, it probably will improve some practices, but it is no answer.
Some of the measures proposed in the Bill are already in force, but snares set in defiance of the law continue to be found. OneKind’s indefatigable field research officer has found snares set on fence lines (where animals may become suspended and die of strangulation), snares that have clearly not been inspected within the required period, and drag snares.
As long as snaring is permitted, people will take chances like this and the public will not know enough about complicated regulations to know whether to make a complaint or not. A simple ban is much easier for all to understand.
We have not seen convincing evidence from the shooting organisations or even from farming bodies that a ban on snaring would have a serious impact on either industry. There are many more humane alternatives to snaring, if the incentive is there to use them - there is a whole chapter on alternatives in the OneKind Report on Snaring. Claims are also made that snaring protects biodiversity - but predators have their place in biodiversity too.
Bear in mind that the RSPB, Scottish Wildlife Trust, SNH, John Muir Trust, Woodland trust and even, I believe, the National Trust for Scotland manage vast areas of Scotland for nature, without using snares - for me, that’s what biodiversity should mean.
If our amendment is unsuccessful today, I will continue to work with OneKind and others until we achieve a ban on snares and Scotland can hold its head up proud as a snare-free country.
Irene Oldfather is pictured above with OneKind's Policy Director Libby Anderson at our recent briefing event at the Scottish Parliament.