Claims County top of list for illegal fox hunting – League
GLOUCESTERSHIRE has been named by the League Against Cruel Sports as the county where suspected illegal fox hunting incidents are allegedly most rife.
New figures from the charity are said to show the extent of illegal fox cub hunting taking place during autumn across England and Wales. From midAugust to late-october this year, there were more than 300 reported incidents of suspected illegal fox cub hunting.
The Hunting Act 2004 makes the hunting of foxes with hounds illegal, although the League Against Cruel Sports alleges that 16 of the 300 reports across England and Wales included eyewitness accounts of foxes allegedly being chased and killed.
The Countryside Alliance said LACS “has spent the last 18 years making ridiculous claims about hunting, yet nearly every time it makes allegations to the police or a court they are found to be false”.
The suspected illegal hunting has been happening across the map, and has apparently taken place in 56 different counties by 108 separate hunts.
Out of these 56 counties across England and Wales, Gloucestershire topped the charts as being the county with the most suspected illegal hunting incidents, according to LACS.
Our county had 43 cases within the observed time period, and one hunt in our county is supposedly the group with the highest number of incidents across England and Wales.
The Duke of Beaufort’s Hunt has been named by LACS to allegedly be the hunt with the highest number of
suspected illegal hunting cases, with 21 incidents being held to their name.
In October, members of the LACS filmed a fox which appeared to be chased by hounds through a barbed wire fence in South Gloucestershire, and uploaded it to Youtube. Beaufort Hunt claimed that the footage had been edited by LACS, and said that the hounds were called back but that this part of the video was cut out.
Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns at LACS, said: “Cub hunting is a monstrous activity which has no place in modern day society – there is a clear need to strengthen the Hunting Act by outlawing ‘trail’ hunting and removing the ridiculous exemptions being exploited by the hunts just so that they can carry on killing animals in the countryside.
“Polling indicates that the vast majority of the British public are opposed to fox hunting in whatever form it takes, and it’s now time to end it once and for all.”
Beaufort Hunt has hit back at claims made by LACS, saying that its claims are ‘ridiculous’.
It supplied a comment from Tim Bonner, of the Countryside Alliance, who said: “LACS has spent the last 18 years making ridiculous claims about hunting, yet nearly every time it makes allegations to the police or a court they are found to be false.
“There have been hundreds of thousands of days’ legal trail hunting carried out by hunts since the Hunting Act came into force and only a handful of convictions relating to registered hunts. LACS’S behaviour is utterly irresponsible at the best of times, let alone in the middle of a pandemic.
“All its fictional allegations achieve is to waste police time and resources”