General Election mass action – ban snares in England now!

In March, we reported that Scotland had become the second country in the UK to ban snares, following the lead of the Welsh Government, which voted to ban the use of these horrific traps in October 2023.

There is STILL no sign of a similar ban in England, despite extensive lobbying and widespread public support.

We need your help today. We need to show all political parties that nothing short of a Manifesto Commitment to ban snares will be acceptable. Snares are cruel and indiscriminate and have to go.

If you have a Twitter/X account, please tweet the following message (feel free to add more parties or use your own words):

Which of @Conservatives @UKLabour @LibDems @TheGreenParty will promise a ban on cruel and indiscriminate snares in England ahead of the general election? #BanSnares

Timeline:

Since our campaign on snares began, we have had incredible success in Wales and Scotland. More recently, we have engaged with the government and Defra in a more direct way to encourage them to follow the examples of the Welsh and Scottish governments and ban snares in England. Here’s a brief recap of the campaign.

• 29 March 2022 – Animal Aid’s government e-petition calling for a ban on snares passes the 100,000 signatures required to trigger a Westminster debate. The petition had the backing of numerous animal welfare and protection groups, wildlife conservation organisations and well-known public figures such as Chris Packham, Peter Egan, and Deborah Meaden – to name but a few.
• 9 January 2023 – Finally, a Parliamentary debate on banning snares takes place with good cross-party support for a ban. During the debate, Defra’s Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Trudy Harrison MP, states that she is ‘keen to understand how my counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are protecting wildlife’.
• 17 October 2023 – the Welsh Government bans snares.
• 15 November 2023 – Animal Aid meets Defra officials (at the behest of the Minister) to outline the case for a ban on snares. Those officials ask for information to counter arguments that had been raised by the shooting industry. The bloodsports lobby uses snares to kill wild animals to “protect” purpose-bred pheasants and partridges ahead of when the birds will be used as feathered targets.
• 21 December 2023 – Animal Aid and the League Against Cruel Sports send a full and comprehensive briefing to Defra officials outlining the many ways in which snares result in suffering, stress and death for so called ‘target’ animals (such as foxes), as well as non-target animals (such as cats and dogs). We also outline robust arguments against the shooting industry’s reasons for wanting snares to stay – including the financial cost of banning snares and point out that the so-called Humane Cable restraint is, in fact, a snare.
• January 2024 ­ Minster for Nature, Rebecca Pow MP, states: ‘We are engaging with key external stakeholders on the use of snares and, as part of our continued drive to maintain the highest animal welfare standards in the world, we are working to ensure the regulated use of the most appropriate trap and cull method which causes the least suffering whilst providing the greatest protection to crops, game birds or endangered species.’
• 20 March 2024 – An email from Defra officials, after Animal Aid chased the matter up, states that: ‘we have no news to share at the moment’. It would seem that, once again, the matter has been swept under the Defra carpet.
• 21 March 2024 ­– the Scottish Parliament votes to ban snares in Scotland.

There is no credible reason why England cannot ban snares – not least because the shooting lobby’s case for allowing snares to remain has already been very successfully dismissed by politicians in Wales and Scotland. Please support our mass action and be a voice for the tens of thousands of animals who will suffer and die in these horrific devices.