CAMPAIGN UPDATE
NATURE CONSERVATION (SCOTLAND) BILL TIGHTENS UP SNARE LAW
One amendment to close a loophole was agreed - it will be an offence not to remove a dead body from a snare, thus ensuring that corpses older than 24 hours in snares will always be illegal.
Amendments to ensure fixed stops on snares and to ban drag snares were withdrawn following an assurance from the Scottish Minister that he would look at regulations to ensure these points were looked at.
Amendments to require a snare identification scheme were withdrawn in the face of Ministerial objections to the bureaucracy.
So the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Bill at present tightens up the law to:
- ban the possession, setting or sale of all self-locking snares (the current law bans them only after they have caught an animal or if calculated to cause injury)
- bans other snares calculated to cause injury (it is to clarify this that we would hope for regulations to ban drag snares)
- bans snares "Likely" to cause injuries to badgers (as opposed to "calculated" to cause injury)
- bans snaring without the landowners' permission
- requires inspection every 24 hours unless there is a reasonable excuse
- allows Scottish Ministers to make further rules on types of snares of the manner of their use
Posted: 25.02.2004
