Thank you for inviting me to give evidence at this committee meeting. I am truly grateful for the opportunity. I also thank Claire Bass and Elizabeth Mullineaux for assisting me in providing evidence in support of the petition. Advice from Libby Anderson from OneKind, Maree Todd MSP and others has also been invaluable.
In January this year, my co-petitioner, Lisa Harvey, discovered in a pet shop a female blackbird that had been trapped on a glue board, which had been placed on the ground by a pest control company—to catch rodents, I presume. The blackbird was still alive and had torn off her own leg, tail feathers and most of one wing in her attempt to escape. Lisa was so distressed by what she found that she reported it to the store and posted the story on social media. The story went viral, and many who commented on it said that they could not believe that those traps were legal.
As an online wildlife campaigner, I picked up on the story and contacted Lisa to ask whether she would be interested in setting up a petition to support a ban on those devices in Scotland. With my help, we did just that. As members can see, the petition gained just under 5,100 signatures in six weeks.
Since then, we have spoken to our local MSPs and other animal welfare organisations to garner support. Consequently, the Humane Society International and I put together an open letter to the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, Roseanna Cunningham, which was signed by 10 prominent wildlife organisations. We await her formal response to that letter. All members should have a copy of the letter and a copy of the SSPCA’s written evidence, which very much supports asking for a ban on glue traps.
Generally, we are concerned that rodent glue traps are a crude and often ineffective method of wildlife control that inflicts unnecessary suffering. They are indiscriminate and are used and misused excessively and inappropriately. Rodent glue traps are widely sold and are available for public purchase across Scotland for as little as 99p for two traps. Their use is completely unregulated and it has not been possible to establish how many traps are sold and used each year. Given their prevalence in shops and online, it is likely that the figure is many thousands.
Glue traps are designed to trap and immobilise mice and rats but not kill them. Trapped animals may suffer in many different ways: the glue can clog eyes, nose and ears, and the animal may tear and chew off fur or limbs in an attempt to free itself. If the person who has set a trap does not return frequently to check it and dispatch the trapped animal, ultimately the animal will die a slow death from starvation, dehydration and/or exhaustion.
Animals that are caught on a glue trap are defined as being under the control of man and are thus subject to the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006, which dictates that animals must be dispatched humanely. In practice, members of the public or poorly trained professionals are often unaware of their responsibility to deal with a trapped animal and are unwilling or unable to dispatch trapped animals humanely. A YouGov poll that was commissioned by Humane Society International in 2016 revealed that a significant percentage of the public would dispose of live trapped animals in dustbins, inflicting slow and agonising deaths, or would even drown them.
The majority of glue trap manufacturers do not supply appropriate warnings or instructions on their packaging, so users often commit offences under the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006, inflicting unnecessary suffering, and are unaware that they are doing so. Additionally, it is an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to set glue boards in a place where legally protected species might be caught. Nonetheless, many instances of trapped birds, reptiles, amphibians and even pets have been recorded. Such instances are, doubtless, underrecorded, as the unwitting perpetrator will not report their own crime and the evidence is easily disposed of.
In 2010, the Pest Management Alliance issued a code of best practice for glue boards. Those principles are not statutory, but they state that glue boards should be sold or used only by adequately trained and competent professionals; that all other options for rodent control must be considered before glue boards are used; that glue boards must be inspected within 12 hours of placing; that detailed records and location plans must be made and copied; and that trapped rodents must be dispatched humanely. However, as glue boards are widely available to the public, the very first of those principles is being totally ignored by shops and manufacturers, and the guidelines are not supplied with the majority of glue traps—nor is the application of the principles policed in any way. That, in effect, renders the entire code of practice ineffectual and rather pointless.
We believe that the current widespread use and misuse of glue boards in Scotland is causing significant and completely unnecessary suffering both to target and non-target species. There is absolutely no logic in allowing the sale of these items to the untrained public for do-it-yourself control. We would not dream of allowing the sale and use of such products to catch, for example, feral cats. The suffering that the products inflict on mice and rats is equally unacceptable.
The professional pest control industry may argue that glue traps should be regulated for use in certain situations in which other control methods cannot be used or have already failed. In considering that point of view, we refer the committee to the regulations that are in place in New Zealand, which tightly restrict the use of rodent glue traps to professional pest controllers in only very limited situations.
These crude, indiscriminate and horrific devices do not belong in any progressive, forward-thinking country. We urge the committee to recommend legislative action to prohibit the public sale and indiscriminate use of glue traps in Scotland. We suggest that there be consultation with a range of expert groups, which we can recommend, on the implementation of primary legislation or potential amendment of section 11 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to prohibit glue boards as a method of taking wild animals. Such a ban would enjoy broad public support and would show that Scotland takes the welfare of all animals—pests or otherwise—seriously.