Badger killed by snare in the Forest of Bowland

A badger in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire endured a long agonizing death at the hands of a legal snare.

The snare had been attached to a fence wire surrounding a plantation owned, according to notices, by Fountain Forestry. The ground around the snare had been heavily churned up indicting the badger put up a fierce struggle to escape.

By law a snare must be checked once a day but clearly this hasn’t happened here otherwise the badger would have survived.

The incident was reported to the RSPCA but to date no-one has been interviewed let alone charged despite the gamekeeper responsible being well known.

A spokesperson for the National Anti Snaring Campaigning said: “Once again this simply demonstrates the indiscriminate nature of snares. Not only that but the laws relating to inspection of fox snares are not being enforced either by the landowner or Lancashire Police. If a member of the public hadn’t spotted the dead badger it would have been another unrecorded incident, like thousands more around the country each year.”