Camcorders to the Cotswolds!

Protecting the Wild Equipment Fund #16: Cotswold Monitors

As we wrote recently - in a post that more than 35000 people have now read - we reached a major milestone earlier this month: 500 paid subscribers here on Substack.

We’re thrilled to say that post alone prompted another 10 supporters to take out paid subs - and since then another twenty-five of you have done the same too!

We are truly grateful, because as we always explain we take absolutely nothing from those paid subscriptions: every single penny we raise goes straight into our Protecting the Wild Equipment Fund - putting ‘eyes in the field’ and empowering people to protect British wildlife by providing groups with much-needed kit like radios, bodycams, trailcams - and of course camcorders.

And it doesn’t matter whether that group is large or small or where they are - if they’re out there protecting wildlife we want to help!

Which is why when the small but incredibly committed Cotswold Monitors, a group we know personally very well, approached us to ask if we could replace two ageing camcorders ‘to keep them safe’ we swung into action immediately.

These monitors don’t have their own website and don’t fundraise, but they spend a huge amount of self-funded time out in Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds (often alongside other groups like the Gloucester-based Three Counties Hunt Sabs) monitoring David Cameron’s former favourite fox killers the Heythrop Hunt.

Like so many other groups in these dying days of hunting with hounds they are facing increasing harassment from the hunt and its supporters - but this weekend (like every weekend) they will be out in the field - some of which as the images below show is very hilly indeed! It might sound a little over-dramatic, but we genuinely mean it when we say ‘Cotswold Monitors, we salute you’…

“Thanks to Protect the Wild we are now able to keep an even better eye on our local hunts (including the sheep-worrying Heythrop) with two new cameras.

Thank you. It's really going to make a difference after eight years of using poor equipment!”

Cotswold Monitors.

Just imagine the impact we are having between us. Thanks to your generosity there are now camcorders recording hunts in the Cotswolds and across Yorkshire; monitors are better protected by bodycams on Salisbury Plain and in Somerset; there are trailcams set up in Derbyshire and West Yorkshire; and groups can keep in better contact with each other with radios you helped fund in Shropshire, Cheshire, and East Yorkshire.

And we’re only getting started!

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We’ve said it before and we will undoubtedly say it again: protecting wildlife is difficult, takes huge personal sacrifice, and can be dangerous. That’s why we set up our Equipment Fund in the first place - so we could all come together and show just how much we value groups like the Cotswold Monitors and the fourteen other groups we’ve been privileged to support in the last six months.

We are only able to give much-needed equipment like these camcorders and radios and bodycams to monitors and organisations because of paid subscriptions on our Substack. While all our online content is free, any money we do receive from paid subscriptions is ringfenced and used to put ‘eyes in the field’. It’s a simple idea – but the best ideas usually are! If you’d like to know more we have explained it all in our post “What do we mean by “Empowering people to protect British wildlife“?

With your support we will be giving out many more pieces of equipment to groups over the coming months and years. And we will always keep you up to date with how your support is directly helping wildlife!

If you’re an individual or organisation working in the field and would like our support, please apply to our fund. Our T&Cs are here and use the online application form on the same page. We’d love to hear from you.