Cruel slaughter of animals is our shame and it must be stopped

SCOTLAND the brave, the land where hunting the wildlife is the sport of the depraved.

We sell our country on the beauty of our landscapes and the wondrous creatures which roam our countryside, yet why is more not being done to stop the cold blooded slaughter of our animals for kicks?

Hunters from all social classes, from country and council estates alike, relish in the ghoulish pleasure of the kill.

This week animal rights activists released a ghastly showreel of incidents that shows foxes being fed to baying hounds by “hunters”.

It follows another video that the Record highlighted two weeks ago in which Conrad Jones tossed a freshly killed fox to dogs and encouraged them to rip it apart at a hunt in Howwood, Renfrewshire.

But there are no repercussions for these actions, other than that faced by the animal through a tortuous death.

Fox hunting was technically banned in Scotland in 2002 to the relief of the vast majority but there are so many holes in the legislation it is positively threadbare.

And so while it is politically expedient to have the legislation in place it is meaningless in practice.

The “sport” is no longer the exclusive pursuit of nobility but we now have ignoble urban hunters, who hunt on foot and use hounds to flush foxes out from cover to face the firing squad of the group.

And, while foxes are being pursued, badgers and other animals which cross the hunt’s path are often ripped apart by hounds in an agonising death.

Incredibly, Forestry and Land Scotland, a Scottish Government agency which is a custodian of our forest estates, regularly allows these “footpacks” to access Scotland’s public lands to kill foxes.

So while the majority of the public are appeased assuming fox hunting has been banned, it’s actually being enabled by you the taxpayer. But fox hunting is only one hellish cruelty, in a long shameful list which includes dog fighting and badger baiting.

There is also the wide scale poisoning of birds of prey and the snaring of badgers, largely by gamekeepers, so they don’t interfere with wealthy landowners’ environmentally destructive grouse moors.

Dog fighting and the persecution of raptors is illegal but the punitive response of the courts is woefully inadequate and inconsistent.

Dog fighter Anthony Holloway trained terriers and lurchers to rip foxes and badgers apart, yet despite his crimes being branded “barbaric” in court, he was given a community payback order at Dumbarton Sheriff Court and banned from owning dogs for just four years.

Last week a 22 year-old thug was jailed for 20 months after stabbing and standing on a hedgehog, a heinous crime but no worse than dogs ripping foxes and badgers apart.

Recently a paltry £300 fine was given to a gamekeeper who recklessly killed an owl and a goshawk by trapping them in a cage on a Borders estate, leaving them to die from exposure and starvation.

In the case of Holloway the SSPCA pursuing the case had asked for a lifetime ban but time and again the charity is successfully taking cases through the courts only for perpetrators to face paltry punishments.

The lottery on sentencing has to end and the stakes must be higher for perpetrators if they are to have any sense of a deterrent.

The Government is currently reviewing the administration of powers to investigate wildlife crime and is considering handing them to the SSPCA.

Currently wildlife crime is the domain of Police Scotland, which already is overstretched dealing with crimes against the public.

An SSPCA inspector, often the first call reporting wildlife crime, can release a badger from a snare but has no power to investigate how it got there.

The SSPCA is free and already has skilled inspectors and statutory powers, so it is time to hand over the investigation of wildlife crime to it. As a nation we are proud of our wildlife and this cruelty and slaughter is to our shame and must be ended.