Celebrities including Judi Dench urge Labour to act on hunting as new season of bloodshed begins

Pressure is mounting on the Labour Party government to move forward with a promised trail hunting ban. In an open letter signed by Judi Dench, Mark Rylance, Ricky Gervais, Peter Egan, Megan McCubbin, David Oakes, Dan Richardson, and others, Protect the Wild calls on Steve Reed, secretary of state for environment, food, and rural affairs, to make good on his government’s commitment.

Trail hunting: just a smokescreen

The letter comes as the latest hunting season gets underway, which will undoubtedly see many wild animals chased and killed in the absence of the promised ban.

Theoretically, trail hunting is a practice whereby hunts follow artificial scent trails rather than pursuing and killing wild mammals. However, it has long been clear that many hunts use trail hunting as a smokescreen to continue persecuting wildlife.

This makes a mockery of the two-decades-old Hunting Act that outlawed the hunting of foxes and other wild mammals with packs of dogs.

The Labour Party committed to banning trail hunting in its 2024 election manifesto. But some three months on from the party being elected, no trail hunting ban is yet forthcoming.

The open letter calls on the government to act on the commitment it made to the British public. The letter stresses that:

Hunts continue to operate across the country, frequently breaking the law by chasing and killing wild mammals under the guise of trail hunting or using loopholes and exemptions to evade prosecution.

It also highlights a damning report released by Protect the Wild in September, which showed that nearly 600 wild animals were chased or killed across the 2023/24 hunting season.

Judi Dench: standing up for animals

The A Case for a Proper Ban on Hunting report revealed that foxes bore the biggest brunt of the persecution, with 335 reported incidents of foxes being chased by hunts and 29 foxes reportedly killed.

Crucially, the letter points out that the report’s figures:

relate solely to monitored or witnessed activities by hunts, meaning they offer only a snapshot of the illegal persecution that is occurring in the British countryside.

The letter’s signatories believe that now is the “time for change” to “put an end to the animal cruelty and criminality that is frequently observed during hunting seasons”.

These signatories are: dame Judi Dench, sir Mark Rylance, Ricky Gervais, Peter Egan, Megan McCubbin, David Oakes, Dan Richardson, Eduardo Gonçalves, Dr Mark Jones, and Protect the Wild’s Rob Pownall.

The call for action comes as wild animals across the country brace themselves for another hunting season.

Hunting season begins

Hunts’ fox hunting season gets into full swing towards late October each year. It follows the “autumn hunting” – otherwise known as cubbing – that takes place from August, which involves the training of young hounds by hunting fox cubs.

This year, wild animals are again entirely reliant on hunt saboteurs, hunt monitors, and wildlife protector groups, to try and safeguard them from persecution during the foxhunting season due to the absence of action from the Labour government.

As Protect the Wild has argued, the government must ultimately do more than banning trail hunting to stamp out hunts’ persecution of wildlife. This is why the organisation commissioned Advocates for Animals to prepare a new draft bill in 2023 to replace the Hunting Act. The resulting Hunting of Mammals Bill covers the range of measures needed to end the hunting of wild mammals with dogs once and for all.

Nonetheless, banning trail hunting is a critical part of the action needed from the government.

Judi Dench: trail hunting IS hunting

Protect the Wild’s Glen Black, who authored the A Case for a Proper Ban on Hunting report, says:

Hunting is a minority pastime, and its particulars aren’t easily explained to the lay person – including the magistrates that often preside over Hunting Act cases in court.

Trail hunting’s claim to ‘simulate traditional hunting’ is a way of gaslighting outsiders, convincing them that what they might think is hunting, is actually an innocent and bloodless alternative. That’s why the definition of trail hunting is intentionally vague and amorphous.

While banning trail hunting isn’t a magic bullet to stop hunts exploiting loopholes in the law, it does make this gaslighting much more difficult. It will make it clear to even the lay person that yes, if it looks like traditional hunting, that’s because it IS traditional hunting. Paired with other carefully worded legislation, a ban on the activity of trail hunting will take away the biggest smokescreen that the hunting industry has.

Featured image via the Canary