WAWC calls for review of lethal traps

In a new position paper, the Wild Animal Welfare Committee has called for a wholesale review of the use of lethal animal traps in the UK.

The paper notes that lethal trapping is routinely deployed in many types of businesses but is under-regulated, particularly with regard to the welfare of the sentient individual animals captured in traps.

The WAWC paper raises concerns over poor accountability for trap use, poor welfare standards and adverse impacts on both target and non-target species populations. Many traps cannot be guaranteed to produce instant, irreversible insensibility in the target animal, which is widely regarded as the benchmark for humaneness.

To address these concerns, WAWC believes that a review of the need for trapping and of the methods employed is long overdue.  Any decision to apply lethal trapping should be taken on the basis of an ethical framework, and where lethal control cannot be avoided it must be carried out humanely.  The need for wildlife control should be justified with evidence that substantial harm is being caused to people, property, livelihoods, ecosystems, and/or other animals.