Many people aren’t aware of what snares are, or may immediately think of a type of drum. Simply put, snares are thin wire nooses designed to catch animals by tightening around their neck or leg. The animal is held by the snare until the person who set it returns to kill them, or they die of their injuries or are killed by a predator. They might escape, but if injured they may still die later of those injuries.

When people do think of snares, images may be conjured of characters in post-apocalyptic films or someone stranded on a desert island, fighting for survival by using an improvised noose to catch a wild animal to reluctantly consume. How much of a problem can such a primitive and crude method of catching animals really be? Perhaps surprisingly, in the UK in 2021, a very big one.

So who still uses snares? Farmers are certainly known to use snares with some setting them as a misguided form of wildlife control to protect ‘their livestock’. This has backfired resulting in lambs becoming trapped in snares and suffering as a result. That’s one of the biggest issues with snares, it’s notoriously difficult to only catch the desired animals, usually foxes or rabbits. They are indiscriminate, trapping badgers, lambs, cats, dogs, deer and even humans. However, according to Defra, gamekeepers are huge users of snares while hunt investigators report that shooting estates can contain hundreds of wire traps.

Studies have shown between 21%-69% of animals caught in snares are not the intended ones. With these traps being notorious for catching other animals, only someone with true disregard for the lives of all animals would use them. Can you think of anything else that has such an appalling failure rate? In 2016, Samsung recalled 2.5 million of their smartphones after 96 reports of overheating batteries and fires (0.00384% of the phones in circulation). Their reaction reflected the seriousness of the situation, and the importance of preventing future harm, despite the relatively small number of actual incidents. The majority of animals caught in snares are injured and sometimes killed by mistake. How can a device, which as evidence shows us cannot possibly discriminate between species in the way it is intended, continue to be legal? Especially when that failure, or even success of the device, leads to terrible animal suffering and death. In one regard, snares fail terribly at their intended job, but in other ways they are almost too efficient, injuring and killing indiscriminately without arbitrary distinctions between species - and whilst it's terrible that there are so many accidental deaths, is an intentional death more morally justifiable? 

Gamebird shooting – the strange pastime of a cruel minority? Yes. But the issues caused by the industry are huge and wide-reaching. 57 million pheasants and partridges are released every year in the UK to be shot for ‘sport’ - an increase of 588% in the past 50 years. These birds are either hatched from eggs produced on UK game farms or are imported and then raised on UK farms. Shooting estates purchase young birds from farms and rear them in crowded pens before releasing them a few weeks prior to shooting season. There are also significant environmental problems related to shooting – including the burning of moorland to create a suitable environment for grouse, around half a million are shot every year, which has been linked to flooding.

Birds are just one victim of this blood sport, but many other animals suffer and are killed because of it. To release these birds into the wild, they first need to be bred and kept alive long enough to be killed during the shooting season. This means that any natural predators of these birds need to be controlled. Snaring is a cheap and low maintenance way for gamekeepers to control numbers of animals such as foxes, who may be a threat to their profits.

In 2016 MPs voted to ban snares, but the government instead introduced a Code of Best Practice. This code has failed. Violation after violation has been recorded by hunt sabs and investigators, as well as ordinary people who find themselves involved in this issue, usually because of some tragic incident involving their companion animals. You can see some examples of breaches of the code on our campaign video here: animalaid.org.uk/snares. Just typing ‘snare injury’, ‘snare cat’ or ‘snare badger’ into a search engine proves beyond any doubt that this code of practice is not protecting animals, that snares are indiscriminate and terribly cruel.

While the accidental deaths prove that snares frequently breach the government’s Codes of Best Practice - grounds alone for them to be banned - the fact that they cause any animal suffering at all means that their use is fundamentally immoral regardless of guidelines. In short, snares should be banned even if they didn’t breach animal welfare codes.

It’s time for the government to take real action. It’s time to finally ban snares.

Visit the #BanSnares campaign page at AnimalAid.org.uk/snares.

Jade Emery has been with Animal Aid for three years, and works on their wildlife campaigns. A vegetarian from age 10, she developed a passion for animal rights and became vegan in 2014 after watching Earthlings, and thoroughly educating herself on animal exploitation through a social justice and sociological lens.

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