Station Road, Beckford, Nr Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, GL20 7AN Tel: 01386 882288 Email: info@valewildlife.org.uk Registered Charity No: 702888
Vale Wildlife Hospital & Rehabilitation Centre
Snares & other constriction injuries
Over the years we have had to deal with countless wild animals that have suffered horrendous injuries after
being caught in snares.
Most of the snares used in these incidents are perfectly legal and those that set them will have the public
believe that they do not cause any suffering and that
once an animal is caught in one it will not struggle but
will sit quietly until it is dealt with.
The photographs on this page show that this is simply
not true - a wild animal will struggle relentlessly once trapped causing horrific, major injuries to the part of
the body that is constricted.
Vale Wildlife Hospital fully supports the League Against Cruel Sports campaign and petition
to ban the use of snares.
The League Against Cruel Sports believe that snaring is a cruel, indiscriminate, and wholly unnecessary practice that has no place in
modern society.
That's why they are calling for a total ban on snaring and an end to their manufacture,
sale and use in England and Wales.
Please sign the LACS petition and help to
get these barbaric,snares banned.
June 2010. Fox caught by the leg in a snare. The foot is very swollen & covered in flystrike. The fox made a full recovery & was eventually released.
The National Anti-Snaring Campaign website contains a wealth of information about snares and traps
and the damage they cause.
Major wounds to a badger caused by a snare.
Still alive when found. Put to sleep. April 2011.
Any animal that is found with any type of constriction around a part of its body, should NEVER be released immediately,
even if there are no obvious wounds.
Very often the area where the constriction was will start to break down after a few
days (a process known as pressure necrosis) and the whole site will become a deep, infected wound.
Therefore, any animal caught in this
way should be kept for a MINIMUM of
7 days to monitor the affected area.
Left: October 2010. This photo was taken after we had removed the badger from the snare.
You can see the snare is fixed at the top of this gate post but the actual part that was round the neck of the badger was made with barbed wire!
Above: Badger in snare January 2012. Sadly his injuries were too severe to treat, with major damage to his neck muscles.
Left: The trench excavated by the badger in his attempts to get free. Middle: The snare just before removal.
Right: The damage caused by this legal, supposedly humane snare.
Snares are NOT humane, even the legal ones are deathtraps for animals, including many documented cases of domestic pets being caught in them. The legal requirement is to check snares at least once every 24 hours. Even if this does happen, an animal could have been caught & struggling to get free for almost a day, plenty long enough for it to suffer the type of injuries you can see here.
In our supposed civilised society, is it not time that we consigned these cruel contraptions to the past?
Please help to get snares banned.
Other constriction injuries
It is not only snares that can cause horrendous constriction injuries.
Here you will see pictures of more problems faced by wildlife hospital staff all over the country on an all
too regular basis.
The 7-day rule applies to all
these casualties.
Above & right: Fishing-related injuries. We regularly treat birds because of fishing line entanglement & hook ingestion.
Left: 2 seperate netting incidents involving hedgehogs.
Below: Fledgling blackbird caught in a tennis net.
Above: Badger caught in garden netting, & showing the swelling to the leg once removed.
Above & right: 3 seperate examples of the damage that discarded elastic bands can do.
We are seeing an increasing number of these, not surprising with the Royal Mail using 2 million of them every day.
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