Caroline Lucas, Green Party candidate for Brighton Pavilion and MEP, today teamed up with campaigners calling for the use of snares to capture wild animals to be outlawed in the UK.

Dr Lucas, who is also leader of the Green Party, is backing the Sussex-based National Anti Snaring Campaign (NASC) in its calls for a ban on the manufacture, sale or use of the devices which it brands as "cruel and indiscriminate."

Snares - small wire nooses predominantly used by gamekeepers to protect game birds such as pheasants and partridges on shooting estates - have been found to cause great suffering to wildlife, including foxes, badgers, rabbits and hares, as well as domestic pets.

Animals caught in snares frequently suffer a slow, lingering death - particularly if those responsible for setting the devices fail to check the traps at regular intervals, as has been frequently documented by campaigners.

Caroline Lucas today said: "I am shocked that these cruel devices are still legal in the UK and fully back the campaign to outlaw their use. The wider targeting of wildlife by gamekeepers protecting game birds reared purely for sport shooting cannot be justified and is something I expect the public at large to be very concerned about."

Simon Wild, of the National Anti Snaring Campaign, said: "Since Christmas we have reported on around a dozen cats and dogs that have been caught in snares set for foxes, and several have died or lost limbs. In the South Downs National Park we believe there are large
areas where badgers are being wiped out by snares."

He continued: "Snares are not only indiscriminate, but experiments have shown them to be cruel, and DEFRA recently abandoned the idea of snaring for the proposed badger cull, because their tests showed they did not meet standards of humaneness."

Sussex - along with the home counties as a whole - is home to many prestigious game shooting estates and has been described as a "hotspot" for snaring and other forms of predator control.

Most recently, snaring and other predator control has been revealed as taking place at estates near Arundel and Midhurst, according to NASC. Following high profile campaigns by the group, several large Sussex estates, including Goodwood and Cowdray Park, agreed to stop using the
devices.

Graphic footage released today by NASC and the Green Party reveals the horrific cost of snaring to British wildlife, including badgers, which are protected by law.

Snares are outlawed in several European countries and the campaign against their use in the UK is growing. Several major charities - including the RSPCA - now condemn snaring, and the issue has recently been the subject of an Early Day Motion (EDM) in Westminster.

In Scotland, the Executive recently introduced a statutory code of practice to govern the use of snares, but rejected an outright ban.