With less than a week till the Parliament's vote on snaring, Glasgow vet and SNP member George Leslie explains why snares should be banned.
TWO weeks ago I addressed the Cross Party Group on Animal Welfare at the Scottish Parliament - including many MSPs - to state why I as a practising vet believe that snares should be banned outright in Scotland.
I have been an active member of the SNP for many years and I have pressed the Scottish Government to bring in such a ban. In December the SNP National Council unanimously supported a resolution which called on the Government “...to conduct a continuing review of its decision not to ban snares, and to investigate the success of wildlife conservation on landholdings which do not use snares.”
It is a great pity that Ministers have not acted in accordance with this resolution or in sympathy with the vast majority of public opinion. A TNS System Three Poll carried out for OneKind showed that 83% of SNP voters supported a ban, and many individual members have supported my campaign.
Along with Christine Grahame MSP, I conducted a packed fringe meeting at our Conference last October, at which many members were distressed at the pictures of animals caught in snares which may in optimal conditions be only checked once every 24 hours.
As a vet who has mainly worked in an urban Glasgow practice, I have only seen a few snaring cases, but the following four cases are representative.
- A dead fox with the snare embedded in the neck which had been strangled relatively slowly.
- A badger still alive with a snare round its abdomen with a wound infested with maggots which would suggest that the wound was at least 48 hours old. The badger had to be euthanased.
- A dog which had caught its leg in a snare while walking with its owner. The dog panicked and it took the owner more than 15 minutes to release the dog. Although the damage looked slight a large piece of skin sloughed off the leg
- A cat with a snare round its neck and its left leg.
Both the cat and dog survived but treatment was lengthy and expensive.
Supporters of snaring admit that snares are not ideal and may compromise the welfare of animals caught but say that they are a necessity to control predators. Throughout the discussion on Section 13 of the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill, no evidence has been produced to explain this “necessity” or why the majority of landholdings in Scotland do not use snares and yet many conduct programmes of sensitive wildlife conservation.
I would call on all MSPs to vote for an outright ban on snaring or at least for a continuing review which would prioritise welfare issues and the extent of by-catch of non-target species.
George Leslie is a vet with a practice in Glasgow. He lives on a small farm in Ayrshire. In 2010 he stood for the SNP in the Westminster elections.
Photo © League Against Cruel Sports.The cat recovering from a snare injury is not the one featured in George's blog - many cats are caught in snares every year and this shows the type of injury that commonly occurs.