Research overview: snaring, bushmeat trade, and incidental big-cat mortality

This overview reviews how wire snaring set for bushmeat indirectly drives big-cat conflict and mortality, a growing threat across Africa and Asia. It synthesises evidence that snares intended for antelope and other prey routinely maim and kill lions, leopards, and tigers, and that depletion of wild prey by the bushmeat trade pushes cats toward livestock, intensifying direct conflict. The literature discusses snare-removal patrols, de-snaring of injured cats, and the linkage between prey loss and depredation. The survey frames snaring as a dual conflict driver, both a direct source of indiscriminate predator death and an indirect cause of livestock depredation through prey depletion, underscoring the entanglement of conflict with the wider wild-meat economy.