Search Results for: trail hunting

Cheshire West | ‘Trail Hunting’ to go under the microscope

Posted on January 9, 2021January 9, 2021 by Charlie

Cheshire West and Chester Council has announced plans to set up a cross-party group to examine ‘trail hunting’ in detail. The move has been heavily criticised by a number of Conservatives on the group (apparently because they appear to think the Council can only concentrate on one thing at a time), but – reaching for the pro-hunt lobbyist playbook – has been welcomed by the pro-hunt lobby group ‘Countryside Alliance’: they are quoted in the report below saying that, “the local rural and trail hunting communities would hope to be able to provide input for this group to maintain balance and ensure it is not driven by prejudice”. The CA are evidently trying to appear ‘reasonable’ (a bit difficult after 15 years of slamming the Hunting Act and denigrating the many pro-wildlife members of those same rural communities). They may think that’s the clever option, but as they may learn, once statements have been put on the record they can come back and bite you. If “the local rural and trail hunting communities” were to detail exactly what they do (or more importantly list exactly what they know that they can and can’t do under the Hunting Act), it would be extremely hard to defend themselves if they were then subsequently caught out hunting again. The CA may just be giving local hunts enough rope to hang themselves with…

Cheshire Council ‘paves way’ to ban on trail hunting

Posted on December 11, 2020 by Charlie

As we noted yesterday, the reverberations from the secretly-recorded Hunting Office webinars released by the Hunt Saboteurs Association in November continue to be felt. In a landmark decision Peterborough Council supported a motion to ban so-called ‘trail hunting’ on its land, stating that “This Council resolves to do everything within its legal powers to prevent trail hunting, exempt hunting, hound exercise and hunt meets on its land”. And now Councillors at Cheshire West and Chester Council have backed a similar motion that paves the way for a ban, voting to devise a new policy reflecting the “damage” caused by so-called ‘trail hunting’

Language Matters | Smokescreen/Trail Hunting

Posted on December 1, 2020December 16, 2020 by Charlie

The so-called Hunting Office was burnt badly when webinars discussing how to avoid being caught illegally fox hunting were leaked by the Hunt Saboteurs Association. An interesting element of the reaction to the webinars has been the way many of us have seized upon the word ‘smokescreen’ that was used in the webinars. The word has a literal origin as in laying down a cloud of smoke to conceal military operations, but it is more usually used now to mean “something designed to obscure, confuse, or mislead”. Several of the speakers in the webinars used the term while suggesting ways to create an element of doubt about whether, for example, a scent trail has been laid or whether a hunt had ‘accidentally’ killed a fox or not. ‘Smokescreen’ will now forever be linked with these webinars, while we’ll happily take whatever stick foxhunting hands us to poke them with, it’s worth taking a pause here because hunts have actually already been using a smokescreen for fifteen years – and that’s the very phrase ‘trail hunting’ itself.

Hunting Office webinars | Why has ‘trail hunting’ been suspended?

Posted on November 28, 2020November 28, 2020 by Charlie

The secretly-recorded and leaked Hunting Office webinars, uploaded to the internet by the Hunt Saboteurs Association two weeks ago, continue to cause huge problems for proponents of so-called ‘trail hunting’ as the number of major landowners banning hunts continue to grow. What follows is pure speculation, but we’re idly wondering why they’ve suspended licences so quickly? All five organisations have been quoted saying that they have suspended licences while the police investigations of the webinars are ongoing. That’s an odd reason to give really. Hunts sabs and monitors will (rightly) say that police investigations can take years and the interview rooms down at the local nicks will have been barely warmed up yet, so what’s going on…?

Hunting Office webinars | National Trust suspends ‘trail hunting’ licences

Posted on November 26, 2020November 26, 2020 by Charlie

The once seemingly impervious walls that fox hunting had built around itself with the invention of so-called ‘trail hunting’ are crumbling fast. Following on from the decision to suspend ‘trail hunting’ by Forestry England because of the secretly-recorded and leaked Hunting Office webinars, the National Trust has just announced that they too have paused ‘trail hunting’ on their land and will not be issuing any licences for the remainder of the season (which ends in March). This is another huge blow for illegal fox hunting. A highly respected charity has taken another look at ‘trail hunting’ and decided that – at the moment at least – it wants nothing at all to do with it.

Hunting Office webinars | Forestry England suspend ‘trail hunting’ licences

Posted on November 25, 2020November 29, 2020 by Charlie

The fall-out from the leaked/secretly recorded Hunting Office ‘trail hunting’ webinars is beginning to look rather like an avalanche: the snowball that started the whole thing may have taken some time to roll down the slope, but boy is it picking up pace now. News outlets took some time to carefully go over the material and come to their conclusions, but stories began to appear, first off in The Canary (‘Leaked webinar catches retired police chief advocating a ‘smokescreen’ to help fox hunters’) on the 18th, followed by The Times and others, and most damningly early morning yesterday on the ITV news website. Now both The Telegraph and ITV News are tonight reporting another blow to the hunts: Forestry England have suspended licences for ‘trail hunting’.

LACS | The National Trust and Trail Hunting

Posted on June 13, 2020October 28, 2020 by Charlie

We’ve written many times about the National Trust (NT, one of the UK’s most important conservation charities) and its unfortunate affair with so-called ‘trail hunting’ (see a National Trust and Trail Hunting 101 for example). We’d rather not have to keep repeating ourselves, but so-called ‘trail hunting’ is a clear example of the war on wildlife, we exist to help tackle that war, and there is no good reason whatsoever for the NT to facilitate ‘trail hunting’ on its land. It’s not just us that thinks this of course: no-one outside of hunting thinks one of the country’s most respected charities should be allowing fox hunts to break the law on charity-owned land.

New Podcast : Protesting ‘trail hunting’ at the National Trust’s AGM

Posted on October 23, 2019November 15, 2019 by Charlie

In the following podcast, campaigners and activists (along with one anti-hunt and one pro-hunt National Trust delegate) talk about so-called ‘trail hunting’ and explain what is being done to put pressure on the Trust to stop issuing licences for so-called ‘trail hunting’ at its 2020 AGM.

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