UK Nature and Environment

My TL;DR:

Doug Maw, who is campaigning for snares to be banned in England, was arrested last summer and charged with damaging and stealing dozens of snares and traps on the Duke of Norfolk’s Arundel estate.

Edward Fitzalan-Howard, the 18th Duke of Norfolk, has helped revive the endangered grey partridge on his 4,000-acre estate. Other nationally declining species thriving on the estate include skylarks, lapwing and linnet.

Maw argues that the grey partridge’s revival came at the cost of native wildlife inadvertently being caught in snares set to catch foxes, which feed on partridge eggs and chicks.

He said of the snares: “They are supposed to target foxes but they are totally indiscriminate, they will catch anything. They are incredibly cruel. We’ve got videos of pheasants, dogs, badgers, deer, foxes and hares caught in them. I’ve been caught in a few.”

Snares are designed to catch and hold target species such as foxes but studies suggest that about 70% of animals caught are “non-target” species, including dogs and cats.

Snares were banned in Wales last year and the Scottish government has promised to ban them, but they continue to be legally deployed across England.