- Snares are simple, low-tech, noose-like traps that can be made from cheap and easily accessible materials such as wire, rope or brake cables. Easy to set, a single person can place thousands, with one report warning that snares “are a terrestrial equivalent to the drift nets that have devastated marine and freshwater biodiversity.”
- Used throughout the tropics, one estimate says 12 million snares are present in protected areas of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, with the number likely far greater across the wider Southeast Asian region. Snaring is also common in Africa.
- While many hunters target smaller game to eat or sell, snares are indiscriminate, and often maim or kill non-targeted animals such as elephants, lions and giraffes, and endangered species including gorillas, banteng, dhole and saola. One report calls snares “the greatest threat to the long-term presence of tigers in Southeast Asia.”
- Snaring is difficult to stop. Hunters hide snares from their prey, which makes them hard to spot, though rangers are known to collect thousands. It’s “like a game of hide and seek,” says one expert. “Forest rangers hasten to dismantle snare lines even as poachers reconstruct them at other locations.” Behavior change is one solution.
Snares can be deadly. In fact, that’s the point. Hunters and poachers around the world use rope, wire or brake cables to make these simple, low-tech, noose-like traps. And they set them in the forest to catch animals.
While hunters mostly target antelope and other smaller game to eat or sell as bushmeat, the snares don’t care. They’re indiscriminate. They often maim or kill non-targeted animals: Elephants, lions, tigers, giraffes. Or a young, critically endangered Grauer’s gorilla like Iragi.
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