[ad_1]
A gruesome picture even for staunch rangers: In a private garden in Rheinau ZH, a fox was trapped in a murder trap for several hours. In the end, the ranger could only kill the poor animal. The kick trap is considered cruelty to animals and has long been outlawed.
Last Wednesday a ranger was called for a private garden in Rheinau. “One person informed us that there was a fox lying there,” Mathias Richter (53), president of the Marthalen-Rheinau hunting company, tells BLICK. The rangers weren’t expecting this surprising find.
“Something breaks my heart”
The fox was caught in a murder trap. The trap choked his air, his eyes bloodshot. “The fox must have suffered for hours,” says Mathias Richter. “It breaks my heart like that.”
“There was no other option but to free the animal from its torments,” says Richter. “Wild animals cannot be taken to the vet.” Treatment by a person is an unreasonable stress load for the animal.
These animal traps have been banned for years.
Animal traps like the murder trap have been banned since 1988. “They cause animals suffering,” says Mathias Richter. In this case, the Zurich canton police are investigating the violation of the Hunting and Animal Welfare Act.
Mathias Richter condemns the act: “These traps are clearly illegal.” The person in charge had accepted that an animal could be seriously injured. “He could also have hit a cat,” Richter said. Such cases must be punished severely.
Mathias Richter has been hunting for ten years. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. This murder trap is pure “barbarism” and has nothing to do with hunting.
