When is a snare not a snare? Why when it is a Humane Cable Restraint of course!

There is currently much discussion about whether snares should remain legal due to the concerns about their potential to catch non target species, and to cause tremendous suffering in captured and escaping animals. The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) feels that this does not make them bad. Many organisations and individuals with a concern for wildlife and our natural environment disagree. The major UK charities concerned with preventing cruelty to animals are also opposed to the use of snares and there are a number of campaigns underway to bring about a ban on their use.

At this juncture one might expect that those game shooting bodies that use snares would be seeking other methods of ‘predator control’ or even considering whether blanket killing of ‘problem species’ is morally or ecologically appropriate. One would of course be totally wrong. The game shooting industry has a number of different approaches when faced with challenges to its archaic and cruel practices. Sometimes it is denial, as in the face of the mountain of evidence of wildlife crimes taking place on driven grouse estates. Sometimes it is silence, as when a gamekeeper is convicted of a particularly abhorrent wildlife crime. Sometimes it is virulent personal attacks on individuals who campaign against wildlife crime (often carried out by proxies) and sometimes it is rebranding.

It seems that GWCT (formerly the Game Conservation Trust) and their chums in The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (formerly just The British Association for Shooting) have opted to take the rebranding route with snares. In a news article on the GWCT website and a video on the National Gamekeepers Organisation YouTube site (available here) they are presenting snares as ‘Humane Cable Restraints’. Same device, same risk to non target animals (badgers, cats, dogs etc, etc), same potential to cause tremendous suffering in captured and escaping animals, but a new name. So that’s all right then.

The names of organisations and devices may change but their basic intent remains the same. To carry on regardless with the practices of the Victorian age. This policy is no longer sustainable. Times have changed. There is an increasing public concern about what is happening to our wildlife and natural heritage that no levels of rebranding can assuage. A newly retired senior police officer whose portfolio included wildlife crime asked recently “Why was I sitting in meetings with representatives of organisations whose members police officers were regularly investigating for and charging with wildlife crimes. This doesn’t happen with county lines drug gangs”. Why indeed?

Time for change. Not a rebrand.