War of words over attempt to outlaw trail hunting
ANTI-HUNTING protesters are to demonstrate outside a West Country council’s offices today, urging councillors to ban trail hunting on local authority-owned land.
The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) is to meet outside County Hall, Taunton, this morning to hand in letters which call on Somerset County Council to end trail hunting on land that it owns and manages.
However, Jim Barrington, animal welfare campaigner and former director of the League, says the group will be ‘wasting valuable council time’ when people’s priorities are focused on the cost of living crisis, however.
Mr Barrington, who worked for LACS until the mid-1990s and is now a consultant for the Countryside Alliance, accused the League of “fuelling division”.
Fox and deer hunting was outlawed in England and Wales in 2005 but the League said that, in the last four years alone, it had received reports of nearly 300 incidents in Somerset – marking it out as a hunting hot-spot.
Somerset, which has 15 registered hunts, is also one of only two counties in which deer are still legally hunted by three stag hound packs.
Letters calling on the council to implement a ban will be handed in by Nick Weston, LACS head of campaigns, Pip Donovan, founder of local campaign group Action Against Foxhunting, and a League staff member dressed as a fox.
But Mr Barrington said: “Trail hunting is a legal activity, which involves the laying of an artificial scent for hounds to follow. Somerset, like elsewhere across the country, is facing a cost of living crisis and clearly all attention should be on alleviating the anxiety that many in the county are feeling.
He continued: “LACS are either totally oblivious to the concept of reading the room, or they are deliberately attempting to waste valuable council time. This petition has nothing to do with animal welfare, but everything to do with anti-rural prejudice.”
He claimed the group were in “no place to lecture landowners”, given historic evidence of “appalling conditions of deer at their Baronsdown sanctuary”, which is situated near Dulverton, in Somerset. A report in 2002 revealed that dozens of deer at the their site were dying of starvation and disease, because the anti-hunting group refused to allow any form of culling. The League denies any failings.
This is not the first time hunting and Somerset County Council have been under scrutiny. In 1995, a resolution by the local authority to ban hunting on its land was found unlawful because it was passed on moral rather than administrative grounds.
Countryside Alliance members across Somerset have pledged to follow closely any action or developments in relation to the petition and the council.
Control of Somerset County Council was won by the Liberal Democrats earlier this month. It is about to become a unitary authority. Prior to the local elections on May 5, the local Lib Dem party manifesto pledged to “recognise and promote the importance of sporting, cultural, recreational amenities and facilities and creative events in improving quality of life and building resilient communities”.
Mr Barrington said the Lib Dems’ “noble commitment of promoting sports and culture” would be tested by its response to the League’s demands, but added that no council should be banning or curtailing a legal activity.