Rangers find 109,217 snares in a single park in Cambodia

Snares – either metal or rope – are indiscriminately killing wildlife across Southeast Asia, from elephants to mouse deer. The problem has become so bad that scientists are referring to protected areas in the region as “empty forests.” 

Jeremy Hance

Tue 22 May 2018 08.43 BST

A simple break cable for motorbikes can kill a tiger, a bear, even a young elephant in Southeast Asia. Local hunters use these ubiquitous wires to create snares – indiscriminate forest bombs – that are crippling and killing Southeast Asia’s most charismatic species and many lesser-known animals as well. A fact from a new paper in Biodiversity Conservation highlights the scale of this epidemic: in Cambodia’s Southern Cardamom National Park rangers with the Wildlife Alliance removed 109,217 snares over just six years.

“Some forests in Vietnam don’t have any mammals left larger than squirrels,” Thomas Gray, the lead author of the new paper and the Science Director for Wildlife Alliance, said. “Given how diverse these forests formally were this must be having substantial impacts on ecosystem services and the [forest’s] entire biodiversity.”

According to Gray, the snaring crisis is worst in Vietnam and Laos, but is increasing in Cambodia – where he works – as well as Myanmar, Indonesiaand Thailand. In some places – even protected areas – it is so bad that scientists talk of “empty forests” where hunters have literally stripped the ecosystem of all medium-to-large animals. 

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Ramblers injured by wire snares set in Peak District NP to trap foxes

So far this year two runners have been injured by the snares – wire nooses intended to catch foxes which prey on red grouse – on open-access land owned by a large shooting estate in the Peak District National Park.

These injuries have highlighted the ongoing debate about the use of snares and the issue of what gets trapped in them. 

An investigation by the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) uncovered 100 snares set in a small area which is often frequented by runners, ramblers and dog walkers.

The setting of snares is legal and bound by the Countryside Act 1981. It stipulates that they have to be of a type that are free running and slacken once an animal is trapped.

The Act also says that they must be inspected every day and snared foxes must be killed quickly and humanely by a shot from a rifle at close range.

More controversially, though, snares often catch other animals. In the same area LACS found several ‘stink pits’ which contained the bodies of dead animals designed to attract foxes to the snares.

Among these bodies were remains of mountain hares, and the investigators also found a number of dead mountain hares laid out on paths near snares to act as a lure for foxes.

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Born Free Foundation outwits the poachers, crusading to remove snares in Kenya

JAMIE MERRILL

MERU NATIONAL PARK 

Saturday 15 November 2014

The stench of flesh rotting under the hot African sun hits before it reveals itself as a carcass and sun-bleached bones of a dead giraffe.

A closer inspection of the rotting remains reveals the metal snare. The animal has been poached, and lies forlornly at the bottom of a dried-out riverbed in the heart of Kenya’s Meru National Park.

Caught by a simple looped piece of wire, it most likely struggled itself to death before the hyenas came. The two-year-old creature the latest victim of a wave of bushmeat poaching that is “destroying the food chain” for lions and big game in the region.

Standing nearby is the actress and wildlife campaigner Virginia McKenna. Aged 83, she is in Meru on the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Born Free Foundation to launch a new anti-poaching scheme.

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Young mountain gorillas observed destroying poachers’ snares for the first time!

Some gorillas have learned to recognise and remoce snares - Sadly not all
July 2012. Field staff of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund observed several young gorillas in Rwanda, from a family of gorillas known as Kuryama's group, destroying snares set by poachers!

Deactivated 2 snares
"We knew that gorillas do this but all of the reported cases in the past were carried out by adult gorillas, mostly silverbacks," said Veronica Vecellio, gorilla program coordinator at the Karisoke Research Center. "Today, two juveniles and one blackback from Kuryama's group worked together to deactivate two snares and how they did it demonstrated an impressive cognitive skill."

Gorilla killed by snare - Second this year
Snares set by poachers are one of the worst threats to the safety of the mountain gorillas. The timing of this is especially significant in light of the death just two days ago, on Sunday, of juvenile Ngwino, who was caught in a snare. The rope made severe cuts into her leg, resulting in gangrene, as well as a dislocated shoulder caused by trying to escape from the snare. Although Fossey Fund staff intervened and, with vets from the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP), made every effort to save her, it was too late. Hers is the second death this year resulting from a gorilla being caught in a poacher's snare.

Young gorillas destroying snares
John Ndayambaje, Fossey Fund field data coordinator, reported that he saw one snare very close to the group; since the gorillas were moving in that direction, he decided to deactivate it. Silverback Vuba pig-grunted at him (a vocalization of warning) and at the same time juveniles Dukore and Rwema together with blackback Tetero ran toward the snare and together pulled the branch used to hold the rope. They saw another snare nearby and as quickly as before they destroyed the second branch and pulled the rope out of the ground.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/gorilla-snares.html