POLOKWANE – The Soetdorings Community Policing forum Sector 6 for plots and farms encourage farm and plot owners to take regular walks on their properties to look for snares as there have been numerous reports from small game farm owners about their animals going missing or winding up dead.
The animals had been caught in snares and either died of hunger and thirst or were in such as state that they had to be put down.
“Snares, when used in the right way in a controlled environment, are useful when hunting, but has become a cause for concern for many farm and plot owners in the area,” local farm owner, Marius Venter told Review. Venter resides on a farm 10 km outside the city and says he noticed some of his farm animals had disappeared around the same time his employees alerted him of footprints on the outskirts of his farm a few weeks ago.
“We followed the trail of the footprints into the bush to where a Kudu carcass was hanging from a tree. The kudu got caught in a snare and basically hanged itself while trying to escape,” Venter explained.
According to the CPF, snares are a practical method for catching small game as numerous traps can be set in the same area. Apparently, the more snares you set, the greater the odds of success.
The snare can be effective in virtually any climate and any environment and that makes it very popular in the poaching of animals. “It can be deployed any time of the year,” Lt. Alpheus Mokale of the Limpopo anti-poaching unit told Review.
He said although they can be baited to draw in animals, snares are most effective when strategically placed in-line with existing small game trails. This is the method that is commonly used for poaching in and around the city.
Snares are becoming a tool for poaching and farm owners are urged to keep an eye out for the culprits who lay these traps.
