News round-up (17th June 2021)
Mink hunts sabbed; angry hunt supporters; the mystery of supplementary badger culling
Mink Hunts confined to kennels across the country
On 12th June, whilst sat outside the kennels of the Dove Valley Mink Hunt, Manchester Hunt Saboteurs and Sheffield Hunt Saboteurs had a visit from six officers and three police cars, to determine what the anti-hunt group were doing. Along with preparing for the badger cull and being active in the supplementary cull zones, sab groups have been spending much of their time ensuring the local mink packs haven’t been able to leave their kennels.
Other groups in the North have had similar successes in keeping the mink packs confined to the kennels. Over the past few weeks, North Wales Hunt Saboteurs, Cheshire Hunt Saboteurs and Cheshire Monitors have been monitoring the Border Counties Mink Hunt and have experienced varying degrees of harassment. On 6th June, both groups reported disgruntled supporters and locals throwing bolts at vehicles, water thrown at sabs, and on 13th June, one incident saw an angry local reverse his vehicle at sabs.
On 11th June, West Sussex Hunt Sabs and Guildford Hunt Saboteurs caught Wealden Mink Hunt hunting along the River Adur in Henfield and ensured that the Wealden Mink Hunt ended their activities early.
On 7th June, the Hunt Saboteurs Association published a blog celebrating the success of the ongoing campaign to keep the mink hunts grounded over the past two months, stating:
Other groups around the country continue to gather intelligence on their local mink packs so if you haven’t seen sabs yet, don’t worry, your turn will come.
To find out more information about mink hunts and their antics, you can read our interview with Bristol Hunt Sabs here.
Hunting Leaks reveals Phil Spencer’s subscription to the Hampshire Hunt
Location, Location, Location’s Phil Spencer has been in the news again for his hunting antics. Last July, The Metro reported Spencer’s photo with a deer he had shot, saying:
I am absolutely chuffed to bits. It has been my ambition for a very, very, long time.
Spencer has always denied being involved with fox hunting, with the Countryside Alliance praising him back in 2011, after an article published in the Independent, quoted Spencer as saying:
I've never ridden a horse fox-hunting but I've been brought up around fox-hunts all my life, it's always been something I've been comfortable with
On 14th June, a tweet by Surrey Hunt Monitors stated that Spencer’s wife was one of the Hampshire Hunt subscribers, and how the Surry Hunt Monitors had witnessed Spencer with the Hampshire Hunt’s field riders, trying and failing to conceal his identity.
The Hampshire Hunt has been the subject of a recent Hunting Leaks exposé; the hunt’s finances and “considerable disquiet” was noted in a private email to Mark Hankinson, chair of the Master of Fox Hounds Association (MFHA), regarding the hunt’s levy owed to the MHFA. The levy detailed is calculated at 2% of a three-year average of their turnover, with a large amount going to hunt insurers AXA for legal fees insurance, something the Hunt are not particularly happy about due to the levy model based on income and not behaviour and regularity of requiring legal assistance.
Hunting Leaks notes the finances of the Hampshire Hunt as being particularly poor, and “well in the red”, but with them selling woodland off, they should be in line to make nearly £1,000,000, making the two £10,000 Covid grants given to them by the local council, seem like pennies in a wishing well.
Supplementary Badger Cull
Supplementary badger culling is now taking place, with licences issued by Natural England on 27th May for 11 new supplementary zones and ten existing supplementary zones, totalling 21 new licences altogether. These take place from 1st June until the end of January 2022.
The supplementary cull is designed to keep badger numbers down after the initial four-year cull, with an aim of 70% reduction in badgers relative to baseline population estimates. However, based on the reporting by anti-cull groups, many of those areas are already facing badger extinction and badgers in the other areas are barely hanging on by a thread.
Natural England does not pre-publish target cull figures but instead confirms to each licence holder the minimum and maximum numbers of badgers to be removed. Without any real regulation or objective insight into these targets, whole clans of badgers could be removed from any remaining setts in those zones, with cull contractors out as and when they deem necessary.
Pro-cull information website bovinetb.info details its concerns, stating that there was "no indication of how effort was distributed throughout the cull zones [that] appears to have been reported”.
In October 2020, Derbyshire Against The Cull published footage showing badger cull contractors delivering shot and bagged badgers from the Derbyshire cull zone to a barn near Bakewell. In the Badger Trust’s blog, published in October 2020, they state “the vast majority of the badgers killed in the cull policy are not being tested for bTB and over 90% are likely to be free of the disease.”
In another pro-cull article, bovinetb.info references the actual percentages of badgers carrying TB, concluding that with all the studies that have been underway, both for and against the cull, “the actual proportion is not known and can only be speculated”.
Somerset Against The Badger Cull highlighted the frustrations with a lack of clarity and transparency regarding published numbers, boundaries, and rates of bTB in culled badgers, stating it was “beyond ridiculous and utterly contemptible that information like this is kept secret”.
On 15th June, the First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford gave an impassioned speech in the Senedd regarding bTB, stating that low area status’ of bTB were down to farmers buying infected cattle and importing them into the area, declaring: “The culling of badgers will not happen in Wales!”
However, for those in England facing the supplementary zones in action, sabbing those will be a long and hard task due to the longevity of the licence in place and the lack of details on licences for the numbers of badgers required to be culled.
Fun ride fundraisers for Hunts turn out to be a favourite of Hunting for Truth.
Hunting for Truth has been recently focused on sab groups disrupting fun ride fundraisers for Hunts across the country, declaring sabs to be:
nasty, prejudice [sic] people who use any excuse to spoil other people’s days and voice their disgusting opinions of people who do not fit their cult ideology.
Many hunts have been severely financially affected by Covid-19 and the poor publicity around leaked webinars, GDPR breaches, the dispatching of hounds, prime time news coverage of the Kimblewick Hunt deliberately encouraging their hounds onto a fox, and every other own goal scored, has not helped endear them to the 85% of people in the UK opposed to hunting.
This has led to many hunts experiencing low subscriptions and no cap payments. Whilst some hunts have received £10,000 Covid grants from their local council, they are keen to make the most of their summer events to polish their reputations and raise much-needed funds.
With these events, hunts demonstrate to their local community that they are family friendly and fun. On 5th June, sab groups from Manchester, Sheffield, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, the Peak District attended the Barlow Hunt’s “Challenge Smeekly” fun ride, holding a demo to ensure that attendees were aware that the event was affiliated with the Barlow Hunt and used as a “front to raise funds for the Barlow's illegal activity”. In short, whilst it wasn’t a fox hunt, funds raised from the event would be used to fund the Barlow Hunt in their fox hunting.
Whilst the demo had plenty of local support, there were disgruntled and unhappy attendees, and fodder for Hunting for Truth to publish. However, it’s clear that many attending equestrians do not support hunting and were not aware of the links between the event and the funds it raised.
Jorvik Hunt Sabs stated armed police were in attendance at this event and assisted a rider with 18 inch bolt cutters to remove some locks that they had
encountered on their travels - if we had those boltcutters on us they'd have classed it as an offensive weapon but had no issues with arming the scum.
The documents regarding the Barlow Hunt are available on the Hunting Leaks website.
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North Wales Hunt Saboteurs