Campaigners claim Gloucestershire hunts are breaking the law
HUNT campaigners have reacted angrily to suggestions almost two-thirds of hunts are breaking the law by continuing to hunt foxes and deer.
The League Against Cruel Sports claimed 62 percent of hunts are breaching regulations, with the Gloucestershire having the worst offenders.
Furious hunt supports have slammed the figure as 'utterly unprovable' and urged the League to press charges against those hunts they claim are still breaking the law.
The League said almost one in five complaints about hunting related to the South West, with Gloucestershire being a main offender.
Chairman John Cooper said: "Hunters will tell you the Hunting Act doesn't work because people break it, but they don't say the Theft Act doesn't work because people steal. Disagreement with the law isn't justification to break it."
The League's report claimed during the last hunting season, 62 per cent of hunts were 'acting in a manner consistent with traditional hunting practices'.
These ranged from people witnessing hunts and hounds chasing foxes or deer, to hounds trespassing in gardens, roads and railway lines. The League said if hunts stuck to the ban by converting to drag hunting, fewer incidents would occur.
Hunts in the South West say the region's figures were only high because it is the last remaining place where hunts are consistently monitored by anti-hunt campaigners, who submit 'spurious' complaints.
Jill Grieve, of Countryside Alliance, said: "This makes a preposterous link between seeing a few stray hounds having a spot of bother, with a hunt setting out to break the ban"
Comments
by Joe K, Barton & Tredworth
Friday, May 28 2010, 10:02AM
“Again with this. I have no strong feelings about hunting one way or the other, but I do have strong feelings about logical argument.John Cooper's makes as much sense as Anne Widdecombe's blather comparing hunting to crime or disease. That made an impression on people who didn't examine it too closely as well.
In short, we know stealing is wrong, just like we know murder, and fraud, and libel/slander is wrong. The clue is that *they* are all illegal activities, and anyone who can be proved to have committed any of them should be punished. The hunting ban, on the other hand, covers a 'thought crime', like when the police shoot an innocent person, or suffocate someone in their custody. If they don't *think* they were doing anything wrong, they weren't. QED.
Hunt protestors want the element of reasonable doubt removed from the ban. Well, fine, I'd like to assert that everyone who drives while holding a mobile phone, or ten miles over the speed limit, or through a red light, is perfectly aware that they're endangering the lives of other people, besides themselves, but I can't persuade the police of that, so why should there be a greater fuss about foxes?”