Tim Bonner: The cruelty of the Hunting Act

On Monday the Daily Telegraph reported on concerns about the impact of the Hunting Act on the fox population. There do seem to be fewer foxes in many areas and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has recorded a significant drop in fox numbers through its ‘citizen science’ BBS survey with 46% fewer fox records between 1995 and 2021. The situation is likely to be more complicated than straightforward decline, however, and anecdotal evidence suggests that fox numbers in many upland areas may have increased, rather than decreased, in recent decades. In such areas, which are less likely to be included in the BTO survey, fox predation seems to be having a very significant effect on ground nesting birds such as the curlew, as well as lambs and other livestock.

These scenarios are not incompatible, and both were heavily flagged up during the legislative process that led to the Hunting Act. Jim Barrington, the Alliance’s animal welfare consultant, has argued since the day he left the League Against Cruel Sports, that removing the fox’s status as a quarry species in traditional hunting areas would only bring it harm, whilst Lord Burns’ independent inquiry into Hunting with Dogs and Lord Bonomy’s more recent review in Scotland both concluded that that the use of hounds was critical to effective fox control in the uplands.

These arguments are as valid now as when the Alliance was making them during the passage of the Hunting Act. Indeed, they will only become stronger as the consequences we predicted before it was passed in 2004 are supported by evidence of what has happened since.

The political reality, however, is that the next debate over hunting legislation has already begun and it is about enforcement of the law, not the management of wildlife. Last week’s local election results have only increased the likelihood that Labour will form the next government after the general election that must happen next year and when Shadow Defra Secretary Jim McMahon recommitted Labour to strengthening the Hunting Act last Boxing Day, he justified the policy of ending trail hunting because it was “a ‘smokescreen’ for illegal activity.” Labour originally banned hunting because it had a moral objection to the concept of a sport which involves the killing of animals (as Welsh Labour has recently made clear in relation to game shooting), as well as a deep prejudice against what it perceived to be the hunting community. This position has remained immune to the application of evidence and logic in the past, and unfortunately, that is unlikely to change in the future.

The pressing concern for hunting must therefore be to change widely-held perception, especially amongst Labour politicians, that not all hunting is being carried out legitimately. In the short term this is the only game in town because unless we are able to stave off the worst intentions of hunting’s enemies in the Labour Party and the animal rights movement, there will be few, if any, hunts left. It would be the most Pyrrhic of victories to ultimately win a debate about hunting’s role in wildlife management, but to find that in the meantime the infrastructure of hunting has been dismantled.