Our work
Snare Art Pieces
Would you like a snare art piece? By purchasing a piece, you are making a real contribution to protecting wildlife, combatting illegal hunting, and supporting local communities. All money goes directly to the artisans that made the pieces and to further support our work in removing illegal wire snares from Uganda’s most biodiverse landscapes.
Combating the Illegal Wire Snare Crisis
Illegal wire snares are the biggest threat to wildlife in Murchison Falls National Park. Snares are accessible, inexpensive, and portable which makes them the favourite tool of poachers in this area, especially for subsistence hunting, in which poachers have little money and are poaching mainly for food and small sales.
Despite this, snares remain one of the most damaging poaching methods due to their ‘indiscriminate’ nature. Snares catch any animal they ‘snare’, and this includes some of the most charismatic African species such as; lions, giraffes, leopards, and elephants. Across Murchison Falls, the impacts of snaring can be seen on a daily basis: elephants with shortened trunks or lacking tails, giraffes with snare scars, or lions with three legs.
This highlights the importance of removing these illegal and destructive snares. In collaboration with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, we remove over 10,000 of these every year- helping to save animals from thousands of potential snare injuries.
Empowering Local Communities through Art
Local Communities are central to our conservation ethos and everything we do. We work to not only secure a future for declining wildlife, but to empower local human communities.
Our main activity is in repurposing the illegal wire snares we collected from inside the national park into standout snare art pieces of Uganda’s much-loved wildlife, created by local artisans from the local communities adjacent to Murchison Falls.
We currently support 3 local community groups on the Northern Bank (located in Pakwach, Wadelai and Panyimur). Many of our group members are reformed poachers or youth susceptible to going into poaching. This craft, provides essential alternative and sustainable livelihood to these communities, enabling them to provide for their families.
Would you like your very own piece of snare art?
Why not take a look at our linked product catalogue for a list of current pieces (we also love commissions! Perhaps a life-size piece?). To order a piece or for extra information on prices, email us at: snarestowares@gmail.com.
If you live in Uganda, or are planning a trip, you can find our pieces at a number of locations across Uganda. Why not take a visit to one of those locations and pick up a piece for yourself.
Gallery of our work
