But we know the biggest win for animals has been the conviction of Mark Hankinson, former director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association, for encouraging or assisting others to break the Hunting Act 2004. But it wasn’t just him on trial that day, it was the whole of hunting – and it was found guilty. No longer do landowners have confidence that hunters lay the trails they say they do. They stopped licensing hunts in droves, with most notably the National Trust and Wales’s largest landowner Natural Resources Wales banning them for good. No longer do the police welcome their voice on wildlife crime panels."
