Afer the hunting ban

However, across England and Wales, there have been reports of hunts continuing hunting activities. Some claim they are hunting an artificial scent (going 'drag hunting', as we have long urged them to), but many of these may still continue to hunt wild animals illegally. They may do so either blatantly or secretly, blaming 'accidents' or still chasing and killing our wildlife, disguising their activities as either 'legal' trail hunting or 'exempt hunting'.

This section of the League's website explains how you can help the League Against Cruel Sports make sure that the hunting ban is obeyed across our countryside.

What is Hunt Crimewatch?

The Hunt Crimewatch programme has two main elements:

• first, we aim to recruit and re-train hunt monitors to increase the probability of achieving successful prosecutions of hunting offences.
• second, we want to gather 'hunt intelligence' from members of the public, analyse it and use the resulting information to help the relevant authorities to enforce the Hunting Act 2004.

When the ban was implemented, we needed to change the main objective of hunt monitoring from 'witnessing the wrongs of hunting' to 'gathering solid evidence for a successful prosecution'. This is why we created the Hunt Crimewatch programme, to train monitors and get more eyes and ears focused on the hunts.

Our suspicions were proved correct. We now know that, since the enactment of the Hunting Act, there have been many credible allegations of illegal hunting (at the end of the 2005-2006 foxhunting season we had already accumulated credible allegations of law-breaking against over 60% of the English and Welsh foxhounds packs) and the hunts have got away with most of them - because there is often not enough evidence for a successful prosecution. We also know that the intimidation and violence that was always part of the hunting world had increased since the enactment of the Hunting Act.

Hunt monitoring has changed since the law came into effect, and takes many forms. As well as the traditional 'field' monitoring, we need people to 'observe' what hunts do and obtain as much 'intelligence' as possible of their activities and plans. Hunt Crimewatch volunteers (both 'hunt monitors', who follow the hunts when they are out hunting, and 'hunt observers', who send us intelligence) are our eyes and ears in the countryside. Without them, too many hunts would be allowed to do what they want, including breaking the law with impunity.