Stop the Wildlife Snaring Crisis in Asia's Forests

We would like to extend a special thank you to all the amazing donors that helped fund our campaign to combat the wildlife snaring crisis in Asia’s forests. With your generosity, we exceeded our funding goal and raised a total of $2,038.53!

In Southeast Asia, snares are one of the leading causes of population decline in most species. Snares are not selective in what animal they kill or injure; therefore, they pose a serious threat toward all ground-dwelling animals, especially those already on the brink of extinction. Since 2006, Wildlife Alliance rangers have removed over 200,000 snares, subsequently saving hundreds and thousands of animals. Unfortunately, poachers keep setting snares at unprecedented rates, so we are continuing to expand our ranger teams and their patrol areas, which this project has helped us achieve.

We recently opened a new ranger station in Chhay Areng and trained 65 new rangers to protect the forest. Chhay Areang is one of the most remote areas of the Southern Cardamoms and people there are not used to being regulated. Because of this, we witnessed extraordinary levels of poaching and logging. With the new rangers in the area, we hope to see the numbers of snares rapidly diminish.

In the past four months, Wildlife Alliance’s rangers have seized 4,139 snares. With the rise in manpower and land, we are hopeful that all poachers will soon recognize that the probability of getting caught and having their equipment confiscated outweighs the economic incentive of illegal poaching. We are also dedicated to raising public awareness of the horrific effects of snaring and changing cultural attitudes towards it. Earlier this month, we collaborated with Cambodian artists and conservation NGOs on “The Capture Project”, a photography series that portrays the unequivocally gruesome and inhumane nature of snares. Artists showed what it would look like for humans to be caught in snares. Our hope is that these striking images will offer the public a different perspective of the snaring crisis and will evoke enough empathy and shock that people will think twice about buying and eating wildlife meat.

This year’s results from the field are proof of the effectiveness of our projects, but we want to keep expanding our outreach and we will not stop until there are zero snares in Cambodia’s forests.

Thank you again for your generous donation and for helping us spread the word about the cruel and rampant practice of wildlife snaring. You can continue to help us combat the snaring crisis by supporting our rangers here.