Sign the Government petition to make the use of free running snares illegal
Also, if you wish to contact your your MP here are additional information:
- Snares are proven to be indiscriminate and cause suffering.
In 2012 DEFRA published a report: DETERMINING THE EXTENT OF USE AND HUMANENESS OF SNARES IN ENGLAND AND WALES
Code compliant snares with stop, swivel and breaking point were set to the letter of the law and codes. The Game Conservancy assisted with field trials and Central Science Laboratory with laboratory studies on rabbit snaring. It cost £224,000
The key findings were that as many non target animals as foxes were caught, mainly badgers, and that the snares caused significant injuries, with badgers and rabbits particularly suffering. With rabbits, most professional snare setters expected to find up to 30% dead, and the laboratory studies showed gruesome and slow asphyxiation.
- The Animal Welfare Act 2006 should protect animals from “unnecessary suffering, when in “the control of man.” But under 4 (3) (b) it states:
“whether the conduct which caused the suffering was in compliance with any relevant enactment or any relevant provisions of a licence or code of practice issued under an enactment.”
- So the DEFRA Minister has signed off and given its backing to the BASC code of best practice for snaring
This means “suffering” is officially sanctioned because we know that using code compliant snares that are set and inspected to best practice standards, the snares cause significant injury and death. Either way, police tell us as recently as April 2021 the code of practice is “code only” and “not something we enforce”.