Inside Protect the Wild: why a 'Proper Ban on Hunting'?

Because with every fibre in our bodies it's what we want

Just before the New Year, Protect the Wild posted a tweet saying that our Proper Ban on Hunting petition had reached a milestone 50,000 signatures. We're very grateful to everyone who has taken the time to sign, but now we want to double that figure.

And we want to do it soon because it seems increasingly likely that the government won't wait until the end of 2024 before calling a General Election. When there are so many issues being fought over it's critical we prove to politicians that finally ending hunting matters to swathes of the electorate.

That's why we are asking anyone reading this article to spend a few minutes to add their voice.

But you - quite rightly - will want to know: why should I sign your petition in particular?

Why? Because our petition is asking for something different.

And we think that 'different' means better.

When you sign Protect the Wild's 'Proper Ban on Hunting' petition an email is sent to Defra (the government department that is supposed to look after the environment), the government's current Secretary of State for the Environment (and we say 'current' because this critically-important department has changed hands five times since February 2022), the Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, and the Lib Dems spokesperson for the Environment.

The email is not asking for a change in the existing law, it is demanding a new one.

The first paragraphs state the following:

"It has been two decades since the Hunting Act 2004 was passed in England and Wales, which banned the hunting of wild mammals with dogs. However, in that time, it has become clear that the Act has failed to put an end to hunting in the UK.

Hunts continue to operate across the country, frequently breaking the law by chasing and killing wild mammals under the guise of "trail hunting" or using loopholes and exemptions to evade prosecution. It is time for change. It is time for the Hunting of Mammals Act: a proper ban on hunting.

The Hunting of Mammals Act would replace the Hunting Act 2004.

And if passed, this new law would provide a comprehensive ban on all forms of hunting with hounds, with no exemptions or loopholes that can be exploited by hunts. It would provide clarity and simplicity, making it easier for the police and the courts to prosecute those who break the law."

Why not strengthen the Hunting Act?

Polling consistently shows that a huge majority of people want the current Hunting Act 2004 strengthened. A number of other anti-hunting charities and organisations are building campaigns around that message at the moment.

We're not doing that. Not because we’re trying to be different or stand apart from the crowd, but because we asked ourselves a simple question: what does that polling actually mean?

It's never wise to make generalisations, but the team here at Protect the Wild has been working in this arena for a long time. We can be absolutely certain that when we speak with supporters or other activists, when we print news articles about hunting or produce animations about hunting, when our social media streams explode with anger about yet another crime being committed by what the Countryside Alliance fondly refer to as 'decent rural folk', what everyone really wants is the whole bloody thing to stop. Right now. Forever.

Many of the people we speak with recognise the good intent of the Hunting Act, but they are also all too aware of its flaws. What started as a straightforward piece of legislation banning the hunting of wild mammals with hounds has been weakened into something far more uncertain and malleable.

Knowing that, should we all really spend months trying to reshape a near-broken Act (so riddled with loopholes and exemptions that the police admit it's unenforceable) into something closer to the Act we actually want - or instead take all the experience and frustration of 20 years of the Hunting Act and use it to create something far, far better?

We think the latter, and that's why we wrote the Hunting of Mammals Bill.

You can read the details here, but reinforced by the legal skills of Advocates for Animals (the first UK law firm dedicated to animal protection) we are absolutely confident that our Bill is a direct, clear route to what we all really want: a proper ban on hunting.

Can we really get the Hunting of Mammals Bill turned into an Act?

All Acts start life as a Bill before being passed into law by parliament. Passing a law is time-consuming and typically a long process. Which means that politicians need to be convinced that the voters want that new law enacted.

Now, we could simply ask everyone who follows us to write to their MPs asking for a change in the law, but if we do that there is no way of finding out how many emails have been sent (or even if they are all asking for the same outcome). It is far more effective to be able to tell MPs just how many tens or hundreds of thousands of people back a specific ask - a proper ban on hunting.

Which brings us back to the petition.

Yes, we all know that except in rare cases petitions on their own don’t create change. They can be very powerful expressions of public mood though. Think of them as a mass assertion, an amplified group demand. A high signature count is a measure that organisations like Protect the Wild can use to take to (in this case) politicians. They can be extremely valuable tools.

To achieve high signature numbers isn't straightforward though. There are hundreds of petitions out there after all. What we all need is good, clear information before we commit to signing anything (hence posts like this one), and because we're all very busy we need to be reminded too.

That's why Protect the Wild spends so much effort thinking of different ways to explain why the Hunting of Mammals Bill is so important, and on making sure those explanations are concise and presented in ways that people (and MPs) will respond to.

And we're getting through. Our recent 'Forgotten Foxounds' animation which revealed how hunts shoot the hounds they no longer want has been seen nearly TWO million times! Over the Christmas period our anti-hunt messages on social media were viewed over SIX million times. Remarkably our longer-form news articles and opinion pieces here on Substack were viewed over 900 thousand times in December alone!

And that’s meant a surge in signatures. In fact since that tweet a day or two ago, we've added over a thousand more.

How far can we go?

We have momentum, there's no doubt about that. But we know that's not enough. We need to keep the impetus up, and we need to make sure politicians are listening. That's the next stage of the plan. In the New Year we will begin our run-up to the General Election, and a key element will be working to get what Protect the Wild wants - and what we think many of you want as well: a proper ban on hunting.

How far can we go? If we genuinely didn't think we could go all the way, we wouldn't have even started.

It will be up to us here at Protect the Wild to persuade and convince the general public and whoever will be joining the new parliament. We will be working hard to keep the issue of illegal hunting at the forefront (though hunts themselves seem to be doing a good job of that all by themselves at the moment!) - but you can help us too.

There is no doubt at all that hunting is on its knees. A Proper Ban will finish it off for good. So the next time you, your family, or your colleagues are discussing whether to try yet again to strengthen the Hunting Act, stop and ask yourselves what it is that you really want.

If you're like us, and you want a proper ban, a complete, no wriggle-room end to the chasing and killing of wild animals by organised crime gangs on horseback, then - please - remember our petition and the bold, clear message we can take to politicians: we want a proper ban on hunting.

We asked in the title of this post, Why a Proper Ban on Hunting? The answer is because with every fibre in our bodies that is what we want and this is how we think we will get it.

• To read the Hunting of Mammals Bill click here.

• To sign our petition calling for a proper ban on hunting click here.