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Listen to HERD Elephant Manager, Tigere Matipedza’s #STOPSNARING message:
Setting out snares is just one of the tools that farmers throughout the world utilise in preventing the decimation of their crops and herds and therefore their livelihoods.In America, bobcats are opportunistic predators raiding farms for chickens, sheep, goats and domestic turkeys, while in many African countries, lions, leopards and a horde of hungry carnivores help themselves to a rich bounty of easily available domesticated livestock.Elephants are known to decimate the crops of subsistence farmers struggling to eke out a living in a hard and unforgiving environment. That this conflict between elephants and farmers results in deaths on both sides is unsurprising and the resultant mutual grudges compound the problem.Watch as Wildlife Vet, Dr Peter Rogers explains the effect of snaring:
The Bigger Picture
While we sleep, spiders weave their webs of gossamer light silk, each and every strand fastidiously placed and precisely engineered for maximum effect and when we wake, they hang, half-hidden in the early morning mist, covered in fine dew droplets that sparkle with the captured sunlight of a new day. These oh-so beautiful snares will be the end for millions of flying creatures.Spiders and humans, or at least their ancestors, have been ensnaring their dinners for hundreds of thousands of years, digging traps and setting snares is simply a way of life for arachnids and hunter gatherers. It is thought that the very reason for the existence of a large-brained erect hominid (us) is because of the success of our hunters, that successful hunting in groups allowed us time for storytelling and cave wall painting. Possibly setting out multiple traps and snares allowed our forebears the luxury of spare time.
