Today’s Stage 1 debate on the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill offers MSPs their first chance in years to take a long hard look at Scotland’s wildlife legislation.
The Bill was mainly intended as an update of the 30-year-old, much-amended Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, a revision of deer legislation, and some miscellaneous tidying-up on other wildlife issues.
Officials thought that the Bill did not have a great deal to do with animal welfare, perhaps because current legislation shows relatively little understanding of wild animals’ sentience and welfare needs.
However, as consultations and discussions progressed, it became clear that stakeholders expected a great deal more of this Bill than was originally proposed. Animal welfare issues, positive and negative, are actually embedded in it, with new close seasons for hares, new measures on poaching, new control orders for invasive non-native species, and revised deer management measures.
But nowhere are the issues of animal welfare more urgent than in the provisions on the use of snares. It seems unbelievable that these indiscriminate traps are still permitted throughout the UK, even though most other EU member states either ban them outright or severely restrict their use.
OneKind supporters know all about the years of lobbying, the scientific evidence and the overwhelming public opinion that calls for a ban on snares. And yet still, our nation is demeaned by the widespread suffering and death of wild animals in these cruel traps.
Both government and the land management industry tell us that the regulatory measures introduced in the Bill - six years after they were first proposed by animal welfare groups - will solve all of the outstanding issues.
They say that snares can be humane. They say that properly-set snares don’t strangle and eviscerate their victims. They say the problem snares that we discover and describe are the illegal ones, not set by gamekeepers, but by poachers.
Unfortunately, none of these assertions stands up in the face of the first-hand evidence that we have gathered - film, photographs and expert testimony – from sporting estates in Scotland this year.
Today’s debate covers the general principles of a wide-ranging Bill as well as a few new issues that have come up in discussions so far, such as the introduction of vicarious liability for those who condone or permit wildlife crimes - raptor poisoning, specifically - by their employees. The possibility of licensing shooting estates and the authorisation of Scottish SPCA Inspectors to gather evidence of wildlife crimes are also of great interest.
But for us, the debate has to centre on snaring. This Bill gives the Scottish Parliament a great opportunity to reflect the views of voters in Scotland - the 77% who want to see snaring banned outright.
At a later stage of the Bill, MSPs will be deciding whether to vote for an outright ban on snares or whether to opt for further complicated regulations. It’s up to us, now – we have a strong message to send them and we must get it across, loud and clear.
So if you live in Scotland and you haven’t already sent a message to your MSPs asking for a ban on snaring, please take action now, and tell them what you think.