For Fox Sake, Repeal the Hunting Act

Here's a nice bit of BBC video worth watching if you can get it to play (right click, and after the link opens up, click on the link next to the photo on the far right).

It's James Barrington, former Executive Director of the so-called "League Against Cruel Sports" in the U.K. saying that the Hunting Act is a sham and needs to be repealed and replaced with a common-sense law that regulates hunting a bit, but which otherwise keeps it entirely legal.

Barrington is just one of four former high-placed LACS officials (including another former Executive Director and Chairman of LACS), who say LACS is on the entirely wrong path.

In the past Barrington has written that he came to the League Against Cruel Sports concerned about animal welfare, but almost entirely ignorant about the true trade offs in the world of wildlife management and protection:

"At the end of a long, slow learning-curve, I was convinced that a ban on hunting would have a serious and negative effect on animal welfare. Moreover, I concluded that properly-regulated hunting can justify its place in Britain’s countryside as a relatively effective, humane and ecologically positive form of wildlife management."

Barrington is not alone.

Another former chief officer of the League Against Cruel Sports, Graham Sirl, says that he too has a complete 180 degree turn from where he started on the fox hunting issue, and now opposes the agenda of those trying to end hunting:

"I think hunting offers a balance in the countryside — if I could see it being done effectively as a management tool, I'd be happy."

Former LACS Public Relations director Miles Cooper has also had a change of opinion on fox hunting. As he noted in an interview last year

"I think 'cult' is a very accurate description [of LACS] ... The anti-hunt movement was never very big, it was based on a small core group of animal rights people — many of whom never understood what they were doing, or why they were there. I became concerned that we were shoehorning evidence to suit our own political agenda and I think we were misleading people ... There were a lot of people, particularly in the memberships of these organisations [LACS and IFAW], who rely solely on PR departments to tell them what hunting is without actually going out, seeing it and talking to people. Inevitably, there is a massive gap in terms of real understanding — of course you can mount the most fantastic, well-organised, glossy campaign on the basis of ignorance and I think that's basically what we did. We were not entirely honest with people and weren't giving them the whole picture."

People actually trained in animal welfare issues consistently say the same thing -- that hunting is not antithetical to doing the right thing for animals, and that by standing up for habitat protection hunters actually benefit wildlife. Animal welfare expert also note that hunting is generally more humane than "natural" ways of wildlife management, such as vehicle impact, starvation, disease and the agonizing infirmaties that accompany old age.

As over 500 member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons noted in a statement of support for hunting in the U.K. put it:

"Hunting by hounds is the most natural and humane way of controlling the population of all four quarry species - fox, deer, hare and mink - in the countryside."