CONVICTED (2023) | June Kershaw, born c. 1945, of Harbour Lodge Farm, Haworth Moor, Haworth, Keighley BD22 9RQ – killed two of her neighbour’s cats using snares.
Kershaw was convicted under the Animal Welfare Act of using snares in an improper manner and knowing that they could have caused unnecessary suffering.
She was prosecuted by the RSPCA in relation to Bengal/Savannah cat Marley and tabby Frankie, who were killed by snaring devices in April and July 2021. Both cats belonged to her neighbour, Richard Russell, with whom she didn’t get on.
Kershaw told the court the three snares, which she said she checked every day, had been in the same positions every spring for the last 14/15 years and had only ever caught rabbits attempting to steal growing vegetables from her garden.
Marley’s body was found by Kershaw on April 26, 2021. She told the court she spotted the animal on the branch of a tree while she was hanging her washing out that afternoon and removed the snare.
In court, she said: “I glanced over thinking it was a fox, I was horrified to see it was a cat.
“I could have put it in a bin bag and put it in the bin but I never thought of that.”
Kershaw told the court she was too frightened of her neighbour to tell him or throw the animal over his fence, instead thinking he had a tracker on the cat.
Police attended Kershaw’s house on May 22, 2021, to view CCTV footage of the cat dangling from the tree.
When an RSPCA officer asked Kershaw about the incident, she replied by saying “It is only a cat”.
The second cat, Frankie, was found in a snare on July 28, 2021.
Prosecuting, Charlotte Kenny highlighted that one of her neighbour’s cats died in a mint trap on Kershaw’s land in April 2019.
She said: “That should have put her on notice. Despite that, she continued to set the snares.”
Kershaw and her defence insisted that she did not know her neighbour owned cats, something the magistrates refused to accept.
Following the verdict, Luke Steele, Executive Director of Wild Moors, said: “We cannot continue to ignore the suffering that snares inflict on our wildlife and the risk they pose to pets which may become entangled in them.
“It’s time for landowners to take responsibility and prohibit their use, and for governments to ban snares altogether.”
An RSPCA spokesperson said the charity is “opposed to the manufacture, sale and use of all snares – which are sadly legal to catch certain wild animals such as foxes and rabbits – and any trap which causes suffering. Snares can’t distinguish between animals and it’s thought many victims are not the intended species.”
Sentencing | ordered to pay £300 per charge, plus prosecution costs of £1,300 and £34 victim surcharge.