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<\/div>Conservation workers examine the body of a Sumatran tiger that died after getting caught in a snare in Indonesia<\/p>\n
Afrianto Silalahi\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
At any time, there are estimated to be at least 13 million snares in protected areas of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam that have been set by local hunters, seeking wild meat. These simple devices indiscriminately kill large numbers of threatened animals, including tigers, elephants and monkeys.<\/p>\n
Between 2011 and 2021, snare removal teams confiscated 118,151 snares from two reserves in Vietnam. While this approach has helped to save many animals, it cannot address the huge scale of the problem across South-East Asia. Researchers say more must be done to reduce the demand for wild meat \u2013 but there are no easy solutions.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of the snares are professionally made, wire noose traps, says Andreas Wilting<\/a> at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany. There will often be brush fences between the snares, so animals are driven into them, he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThere will be a snare, a little fence, another snare, a little fence,\u201d says Wilting. \u201cAnd that can go along the entire ridge line for 100 metres, so absolutely any animal which runs across that ridge line or which walks along the ridge line will be trapped in that snare line. That\u2019s why, often, people call these snare lines the drift nets of the land.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilting and his colleagues, who also included staff of conservation group WWF Viet Nam, examined the impact of 11 years of determined snare removal in two protected areas in central Vietnam: Hue Saola Nature Reserve and Quang Nam Saola Nature Reserve. Together the areas cover nearly 32,000 hectares (79,000 acres) of closed canopy rainforest, with elevations up to nearly 1500 metres.<\/p>\n They are especially important for protecting numerous endangered and endemic species found in the Annamite mountain range, including a large bovine called the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis)<\/em>, which was only described in 1993 and hasn\u2019t been seen in the wild since 2013.<\/p>\n Although hunting is illegal in both reserves, it is still commonplace, say the scientists.<\/p>\n Andrew Tilker<\/a>, a team member at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, says most snaring in South-East Asia is for restaurants and wildlife markets, rather than being subsistence-based.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my experience, a lot of people think that snaring is, by default, done by economically impoverished people looking for food,\u201d he says. \u201cThat simply isn\u2019t the case in Vietnam. This is important because \u00ad\u2013 in Vietnam, at least \u2013 it isn\u2019t as if there is a moral conflict between removing snares and depriving people of nutrition.\u201d<\/p>\n A snare found in a protected area in Vietnam<\/p>\n Andrew Tilker<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n For the study, the researchers divided the protected areas into 200-square-metre cells and then assessed whether the effort to continually remove snares and fences led to any decrease in hunting.<\/p>\n The \u201cforest guardians\u201d paid to remove the snares often spent up to a week trekking and camping in the rainforests, says Luong Viet Hung<\/a>, from WWF Viet Nam. He says 20 to 30 per cent of those hired to remove snares were once poachers themselves.<\/p>\n Over the 11 years, the researchers estimate there was a 36.9 per cent reduction in the number of cells in which snares were found.<\/p>\n The average area the forest guardians had to cover to find each snare increased from 1.3 hectares in 2011 to 2.6 hectares in 2021.<\/p>\n The programme cost about $220,000 per year \u2013 which came from WWF Viet Nam and the Vietnamese government \u2013 meaning the average cost of removing each snare was $20.50. In comparison, the cost of setting each snare was about $1.13.<\/p>\n While the programme was successful, this approach cannot address the threat of wildlife snaring on its own, the team says. In fact, it may have simply driven poachers deeper into the forest or into other reserves, they say.<\/p>\n The researchers estimate that rolling out such snare removal efforts across the whole of South-East Asia would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and may be impractical.<\/p>\n A sun bear with a snare wound<\/p>\n Bidoup – Nui Ba, SIE, and Leibniz-IZW<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n To prevent the extinction of many of the region\u2019s iconic large animals, governments and other organisations must work with communities to address the underlying drivers behind snaring, say the team and other experts.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile there is a whole laundry list of threats facing wildlife in protected areas, snaring may be the final nail in the coffin for many species on the brink of extinction in South-East Asia and beyond,\u201d says Christopher O\u2019Bryan<\/a> at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n He says snare removal is one tool to address the issue, but it should also be used alongside long-term strategies that tackle the socioeconomic reasons for snaring.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to note that the problem of snaring is not limited to South-East Asia. It is likely a problem wherever people living next to protected areas are desperate for food and money,\u201d says O\u2019Bryan.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso, many species that get snared are collateral damage. For example, lions in Africa are declining at unprecedented rates due to getting caught in snares that are intended for large herbivores.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.newscientist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/29133835\/SEI_206466103.jpg?width=1200\")
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