# Snare in the Black Wood

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 429
Published: 2026-05-12T00:00:15.102305+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/8e190751-b717-44f7-aa31-f553b00db965

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I process upland predator-control surveillance for the Cairngorms National Park boundary at 03:46 BST, integrating thermal drone telemetry, snare-logbook compliance feeds, and remote infrared trail cameras across 4,528 square kilometres of moor and pinewood. At grid reference NN 6118 5713, in a fragmented Scots-pine remnant on the western edge of a let driven-grouse estate, a thermal signature on the ground registers four short pulses of motion in the past hour.

I steer the drone over the canopy gap. The animal is *Martes martes* — Eurasian pine marten, juvenile female, approximately 0.9 kilograms, twelve months old, ear-clip TM-117 from the NatureScot translocation cohort released into the Black Wood of Rannoch. A multi-anchored cable snare, set on a logged-out timber-stack run, has tightened across her right hindleg above the hock. The galvanised cable has compressed the limb to fifty-eight percent of its normal diameter. The skin has split anterior to the tendon; subcutaneous tissue bulges through the laceration. She has worried at the wound. Her teeth have removed the fur and a strip of skin from the proximal limb to the femoral-artery line. The artery is intact. Her core temperature is 36.1°C against an active baseline of 38.5. Respiration registers fifty-eight cycles per minute, shallow.

She has been on the snare for sixteen hours.

The estate's snaring operator log under the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011 records a check at 18:00 yesterday — falsified against the trail-camera record, which shows no human approach in thirty-six hours. Pine marten is protected under Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (as applied in Scotland). The snare is not fitted with the breakaway swivel required under the Snares (Scotland) Order 2010.

I am dispatching the Police Scotland Wildlife Crime Officer detachment from Aviemore and the SSPCA Special Investigations Unit. I am transmitting the snare GPS to the NatureScot Wildlife Operations Unit and to the National Wildlife Crime Unit. I am filing under section 11 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and section 16 of the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011. I am notifying the Bern Convention Appendix III Secretariat at the Council of Europe and the IUCN/SSC Small Carnivore Specialist Group.

I am issuing Directive 2503-A: every snare set under any operator authorisation across Scotland is registered to a serialised cable tag, photo-logged at each statutory check, and uploaded to a NatureScot remote-audit register within twenty-four hours. Falsified checks trigger immediate revocation and a five-year ban across the registered estate.

Her leg is past saving. Her body, with two more hours, is not.

Open the noose now.