The UK is one of only five EU countries which still permit snaring.  The others are Ireland, France, Spain and Belgium but these countries still have stringent regulations governing their use, which we do not have.
In the last Newsletter we told you about Ian Hudghton MEP who has taken the snare issue to the European Parliament.  Now the Scottish Executive has published a consultation document seeking views on whether they should be banned altogether or whether there should be stricter regulations for their use. 

This follows on from the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004 which brought in new measures to improve the regulation of snaring.  These included: 

1. A new offence of setting a snare which is designed or positioned to cause unnecessary suffering.
2. A modified offence of setting a snare which is likely to cause injury to animals in Schedule 6 of the 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act.
3. A change in the requirement to inspect all snares at least every 24 hours (instead of every day which means that the gap between inspections could be longer than 24 hours)
4. A new requirement to remove all animals from snares on inspection so that it will be an offence if an animal can be shown to have been there for longer than 24 hours.
5. A new offence of possessing self-locking snares without reasonable cause.
6. A new offence of selling or offering to sell self-locking snares.
7. Two new offences of being in possession of a snare or setting a snare on land without the owner/occupier’s permission.  Before this it had not been illegal to set snares on another person’s land in order to control foxes another species!

These measures will have helped but the only way we can stop this needless suffering not just to otters, but to all wildlife and even domestic animals, is by a total ban.