THEY SAY ‘HUNTS ARE AN HEALTH RISK’

 

Hunts are a health risk - ban them now!

Dear John,

Have you seen the news? Not only do hunts continue to flout the law and cruelly chase animals – they also put your health in danger.

The hunting community’s fallen stock business turns out to just be another smokescreen, as shocking footage has shown.

Many hunts operate a fallen stock business, being paid by farmers to collect fallen livestock to take it away and dispose of properly. This is another front by hunts to appear respectable and a legitimate part of the countryside. They are not.

Some of the UK’s largest landowners still haven’t banned hunting from their land, please contact them today.

Take Action

Footage collected by Ecotricity shows fallen stock collected by hunts - as well as the piled carcasses of unwanted hunting hounds – is being stored unsafely and illegally, a risk to human health. The Hunting Office denies any wrong doing, but the practise continues.

The Hunting Office cannot be trusted. Hunts cannot be trusted.

And yet some of the UK’s major landowners still have not banned hunts from using their land. How much more will it take?

Take Action

The Hunting Office’s now former director has already been found guilty of intentionally encouraging or assisting others to commit an offence under the Hunting Act. And this is yet another example of how hunting is a danger to the countryside.

Enough is enough. Hunts are nothing more than a community of law breakers and animal abusers.

Demand that these land owners take action now and ban all hunts from their land.

Take Action

Yours sincerely,

THE VERY CRUEL SPORT OF CUB HUNTING

Cub hunting, as the name suggests, is the practice of hunting fox cubs with young foxhounds. 

Contrary to what the hunters say, hunting a live animal does not come naturally to a foxhound. As such, the young hounds must be taught how to hunt in preparation for the main season. This is done by hunting fox cubs in a confined area of woodland, which pushes the fox cubs into the pack, rather than involving a long chase. 

Fox cub hunting remains a dirty secret of the hunting world. Despite the ban on hunting wild mammals with dogs this continues to be widely practiced as part of hunting. 

Cub hunting, as the name suggests, is the practice of hunting fox cubs with young foxhounds. 

How common was cub hunting in the 2021 season?

The hunts were active this season; we have collated 115 reports about cub hunting from this time period. 

While this is 50 per cent fewer reports than we received over the same period last season, it unfortunately does not mean there have been fewer incidents of cub hunting. More likely that repeated lockdowns made proactive research and investigations more difficult than usual. Equally, we don’t duplicate reports collated by other hunt monitoring groups, so there is in fact much more illegal cub hunting going on across the country than these numbers suggest.

Cub hunting as an activity is focused on cruelty to animals. However, this is not the only issue with this ‘sport’. Hunts have been known to engage in antisocial behaviour in the process of chasing down fox cubs. In the 2021 season, we received five reports of hunts trespassing on private land, and five further reports of hunts causing havoc; dogs running loose, the destruction of private property, and other antisocial behaviour in residential areas.

THE BRUTAL WORLD OF BRITISH BLOOD SPORTS

BLOOD SPORTS LOBBY IN TURMOIL

By Andy Knott MBE, Chief Executive of the League Against Cruel Sports

Last year was a disastrous one for the brutal world of British blood sports. This was best illustrated in the National Trust’s historic decision to ban trail hunting on its land, a landmark moment in the campaign to consign fox hunting to the history books. 

That and other victories for animals have exposed the blood sports lobby’s feeble excuses for killing our wildlife for fun. Nor are their arguments washing any longer with the public, politicians, landowners and – with the recent case of The Crown vs Hankinson proving trail hunting to be being nothing more than ‘a cover for old fashioned hunting’ – the courts. Yet the attempts to justify the unjustifiable  

END TO ALL HOUIND HUNTING - LET’S HOPE SO - IT IS BARBARIC

 

Enough is enough – let’s end hunting now

Dear John,

It’s time to say ‘enough is enough’.

Animals are being killed, people are being intimidated, land is being trespassed upon and the law is being broken. Despite the ban fox hunts, hare hunts and stag hunts in England and Wales have been hiding behind the smokescreen of ‘trail’ hunting to ride roughshod over the law for over 15 years.

How much more will it take for the government to strengthen the Hunting Act and end this barbarity for good?

We’ve launched a new nationwide campaign - ‘enough is enough’. From today we need you to contact your MPs to call on Defra to strengthen the ban.

Petition my MP

But that’s just the start. This campaign will feature panel events up and down the country to bring key voices together to discuss the issues surrounding hunting, and what can be done to stop it. Following these debates, we will work with you to launch local campaigns to tackle hunting where you are. It’s time to amplify the voices of those who want to say ‘enough is enough’ to those who would seek to do wildlife harm.

This is the beginning of the end for hunting with dogs.

You are amazing and have already made a huge difference – some of the UK’s largest landowners such as the National Trust and Natural Resources Wales have already banned hunting thanks to your efforts, and the League will continue to work to reduce the impact of hunting on wildlife.

We have already held a successful pilot event in Plymouth, the next being in Cheltenham in February. Other events are in the planning stage, so expect to see further announcements on this soon.

Petition my MP

Right now trail hunting is actively licensed on government land, including areas owned by the Ministry of Defence.

Please contact your MP and tell them enough is enough. Ask that they call on DEFRA for an immediate end to trail hunting on government land and to commit to strengthening the Hunting Act to end the cruelty of hunting for good.

I agree - Enough is enough

Thanks,

RETURNING LAND TO THE COMMUNITY AT A COST

 THIS POST IS REALLY ABOUT WHO OWNS BRITAIN

FROM RAPTOR PERSECUTION UK

\TARRAS VALEY VOLUNTEERS RECLAIM PHEASANT REARING WOOD FROM LANGHJOM MOOR 

In 2020 the community of Langholm in the Scottish Borders successfully raised £3.8 million to buy a knackered old grouse moor from the Duke of Buccleugh and transform it into a vast new nature reserve for the benefit of wildlife and the local community (see here).

Many blog readers supported and contributed to this fundraising challenge (thank you) and helped create what is now called the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

Kudos to the volunteers who have been busy in recent weeks clearing old fences, netting and feeding barrels from the woods which were formerly used for pheasant-rearing/shooting. 

(You can see their efforts - photographically - on social media)

In November 2021 the community began fundraising once again, to ‘finish what we started’, and has launched stage two of the biggest community buyout scheme in south Scotland to buy the remainder of Langholm Moor which would effectively double the size of the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.

If you’d like to make a contribution to help support this impressive lot, please visit their crowdfunder here.

A POTENTIAL ANSWER FROM HOUSE OF LORDS ABOUT STATUS OF PHEASANTS - LIVESTOCK OR WILDLIFE

FROM RAPTOR PERSECUTION UK

 Last week I blogged about how Green peer Natalie Bennett had posed a question in the House of Lords, asking the UK Government ‘whether they regard captive-reared pheasants released into the environment as wildlife or livestock?‘ (see here).

This question stems from the Government’s ongoing contortions relating to the legal status of pheasants, a status that seemingly is able to morph from being ‘livestock’ to ‘wildlife’ and then back to ‘livestock’ at various points in the year, which provides the pheasant owner/keeper with multiple opportunities to kill native predators and avoid legal responsibility for public damage all at the same time. This flow chart from Wild Justice sums it up well:

WELL HERE IS A SORT OF ANSWER

Conservative life peer and DEFRA Minister Zac Goldsmith has now responded to Natalie Bennett’s question as follows:

‘A released captive-reared pheasant may be regarded as livestock if it remains significantly dependent on a keeper for their survival, for example for the provision of food, water or shelter‘.

Hmm. That’s not especially helpful when ‘significantly dependent’ hasn’t been defined, although we do know from DEFRA’s new General Licences this year that supplementary feeding of pheasants does not count in this context. Hmm, it’s all very odd.

Wild Justice has taken legal advice on this issue this week and you can expect to hear more from them in due course…. and you’ll hear it first if you subscribe to their free newsletter here.

MORE PHEASANTS SHOT & DUMPED IN BLACK PLASTIC BAGS IN NORTH WALES

Here we go again, one of the most disgusting consequences of releasing approx 60 million non-native pheasants and red-legged partridges into the countryside in their millions. They’re shot for a bit of a laugh and then some of them are simply dumped. Undoubtedly this is driven by an over-supply of birds and little demand by consumers for purchasing game bird meat, especially when it’s contaminated with toxic lead shot.

Unfortunately for the game shooting industry, desperate to portray itself as responsible and law-abiding with the utmost respect for its quarry, this is yet another ongoing, criminal and widespread problem associated with gamebird shooting and such a PR disaster is drawing even more attention to an industry already under intense pressure to clean up its act.

Previous examples include dumped gamebirds in Cheshire, Scottish borders (here), Norfolk (here), Perthshire (here), Berkshire (here), North York Moors National Park (here) and some more in North York Moors National Park (here) and even more in North Yorkshire (here), Co. Derry (here), West Yorkshire (here), and again in West Yorkshire (here), N Wales (here), mid-Wales (here), Leicestershire (here), Lincolnshire (here), Somerset (here), Derbyshire’s Peak District National Park (here), Suffolk (here), Leicestershire again (here) and Liverpool (here).

Yesterday, four bin bags stuffed full of dead pheasants were found dumped behind a hedge in Tremeirchion, in Denbighshire, North Wales. Judy Oliver Hewitt photographs on social media:

This obscene behaviour will continue to receive attention on this blog for as long as the gamebird shooting industry demands licences to kill protected birds of prey for the purpose of ‘saving’ gamebirds.