Earlier this month animal welfare charity and REVIVE coalition partner, OneKind, along with the charity Scottish Badgers, had planned to host a demonstration outside the Scottish Parliament calling for a complete ban on the manufacture, sale and use of snares. However, the event was postponed following the death of the Queen.
A new date has now been announced – Saturday 29th October 2022 – and the demonstration will now run in conjunction with another demo, led by another REVIVE coalition partner, the League Against Cruel Sports, calling for a ban on fox hunting.
Thousands of snares are deployed on game-shooting estates every year, which maim and kill animals in order to protect stocks of red grouse, pheasants and partridge for ‘sport’ shooting. It’s currently legal to snare some species (e.g. foxes), despite the inhumane method, but as snares are indiscriminate up to 80% of species caught are non-target species, according to DEFRA figures, and these species include badgers, otters, deer and pet cats and dogs. This shocking report from the REVIVE coalition for grouse moor reform provides more detail.
The timing of this demonstration couldn’t be better as the Scottish Government is currently reviewing its snaring legislation and is also considering the new Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill which has the potential to introduce an effective ban on fox hunting.
A couple of days ago, the Welsh Government published its Agriculture (Wales) Bill which intends to introduce a ban on the manufacture, sale and use of snares in that country (see here and here).
Will Scottish Ministers follow? They will if enough people make their views heard and this combined demonstration is the perfect opportunity to do just that.
For more details about the demo and to register your interest, please click here.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Cannot go but happy to email whoever you suggest.
Sent from Samsung Mobile on O2
This is definitely down in the diary, I only live 25 miles away. Unfortunately I can’t locate it at present, but there’s an article in one of the journals of the Scottish Ornithologist’s Club from around the beginning of the Millennium about the predilection capercaillie have for putting their heads in snares. The article was co-written by a retired gamekeeper who had been really concerned at what he’d seen, but it looks as if he didn’t feel comfortable raising the alarm while in the job….I wonder why?
Even if we believe every non target animal caught can be restrained without any direct harm from the snare, and when the lovely gamekeeper comes to check every 24 hours as required by law they release it (perhaps giving it a little kiss and hug first) it’s still been unable to feed or shelter from the elements in the time it’s had a wire around its neck or even limb. The animal’s still been physically and mentally stressed, and that’s the very best case scenario.
Calling ‘sporting’ estates Victorian/Edwardian in their mindset is being kind, they’re effing medieval. So much that should’ve gone decades ago is being dragged into the 21st century thanks to them. A part of a dog’s anatomy keeps getting damaged because it’s expected to do something that’s clearly hazardous for it? Solution – cut off that part of its anatomy, so the law to ban the tail docking of dogs in Scotland was partially relaxed to keep gamekeepers happy. Then there was the proposed legislation to knuckle down on airguns those killers of wildlife, pets and the occasional child. We still got it thankfully, but absolutely no thanks to the likes of the SGA and ilk with their kneejerk reaction towards absolutely anything they think in anyway will make life a bit more complicated for the huntin, fishin, shootin set.
Don’t forget either that whilst it’s stuck in the snare it is susceptible to predation and unable to escape its would-be predator. Doesn’t bear thinking about.
Cheers, forgot to mention that, you’re absolutely right. Even an adult badger that realistically won’t be predated by any other wild animal in the UK will still have the primal urge to seek safety/cover from the bigger predators we used to have. The sensation of being trapped for any animal must be horrendous. Snares can never be ‘humane’.
Hi Les,
Is this the paper you are refering to: Cosgrove P. and J. Oswald Western Capercaillie captures in snares Scottish Birds Vol 22 no. 1 28-30
Click to access sb-vol22-no01.pdf
The reason the shooting industry fights the obvious* tooth and nail is that snaring is a very effecient use of man-hours – once you have your ideal locations identified and modified (knowledge often handed down from incumbent keeper to a new keeper) and your lines and middens / stinkpits are set up it just takes a few hours each week to keep an eye on and maintain several hundred killing devices. Every snare checked everyday on a big estate with a lot of snares = total shite, except maybe with binoculars where snares are in the open.
While there are excellent alternatives (.243 or similar rifle & hi tech night vision kit) in the hands of every estate these days…it’s as if they don’t want to put in the hours! It’s as if they need that time for other things! I wonder what that could be?
A look again at the LACS Calculating Cruelty report along with the todays ‘dead buzzards’ blog post on this site might interest people and offer a possible answer to the above.
*that it is impossible even for even the best most skilled practioner to run a big snaring operation without a high percentage of collateral damage & suffering to a hell of lot of wildlife and a good few pets too.
Well done to Wales…. and here’s hoping Scotland shows compassion and follows suit. Put England and Northern Ireland to shame!