Tigers are increasingly caught in snares set for other animals, causing severe injuries and death that add to the direct poaching pressure already threatening their survival.
Tiger snaring causes some of the most prolonged and severe wildlife welfare harms documented. A tiger caught in a wire snare may struggle for hours or days, inflicting terrible wounds on itself attempting to escape. Paw amputations from constricting snares leave tigers unable to hunt — leading to starvation that may take weeks. Even tigers that escape snares carry permanent injuries affecting their survival. The scale of snaring — tens of thousands of snares deployed across tiger habitat — means the probability of individual tigers encountering them is high. Anti-snaring patrols that remove snares proactively save tiger lives and prevent the suffering of non-target species simultaneously.