Recording the South Durham Hunt

Equipment Fund #19: North East Hunt Monitors

As an organisation we do prefer to look forward rather than look back, but it has been a good month for the Equipment Fund - and 'Equipment Fund 2.0'!

How so? Because we recently saw paid subscriptions on our Substack soar over the 600 mark! That's great news because every single penny we raise from paid subs goes straight into our Protecting the Wild Equipment Fund - empowering people to protect British wildlife by providing groups with much-needed kit like radios, bodycams, trail cams and HD camcorders.

On top of that, we also launched the Protecting the Wild Support Network - a bigger, better, enhanced version of the Equipment Fund!

Not much will change from the point of view of our supporters, the Support Network will still provide equipment to groups via the Equipment Fund just as before, but we are now also offering groups in the Support Network priority access to that equipment, more promotion through our social media platforms (over the 2023 Christmas period our messages on social media were viewed over SIX million times alone), and our personal help and support whenever we can give it.

And we're delighted to say the North East Hunt Monitors have now joined other activist groups in the Support Network - and they are very welcome.

A group of volunteers that mainly cover the Durham area, the North East Hunt Monitors (to quote their website) "utilise non-violent direct action techniques to both document and evidence the crimes hunt groups commit and protect the lives of all wildlife...whilst never causing harm or injury to any member of the hunt or their supporters. Sadly the same cannot be said for our volunteers who face abuse, threats and have been subject to physical violence resulting in actual bodily harm."

"Massive thanks to those wonderful people at Protect the Wild, we are so grateful for the two high end camcorders that PTW donated to the North East Hunt Monitors recently.

As a small hunt monitor group, we rely on our monitors to self-fund their own kit, and we also receive a small number of donations from the public but sadly, the cost of living crisis has affected all small monitor groups.

Therefore, it is of great importance that Protect the Wild are supporting groups like ours as the better quality kit that we have, the greater chance we have of capturing illegal activity and ultimately save lives.

The camcorders came in very handy at the weekend while we were out monitoring The South Durham Hunt. They were used to gain evidence of illegal fox hunting and also used to capture footage of criminal damage by hunt members, as they broke down a fence to gain access to council land (see images below). This footage has now been passed to local residents who are plagued by hunt trespass, and they will present the footage to council members at their next Parish meeting."

How fantastic to hear that equipment we only sent out a few weeks ago is already helping to damn yet another trespassing hunt!

On a serious note though as we have said many times protecting wildlife is difficult, takes huge personal sacrifice, and can be dangerous. Without wishing to trivialise the violence that pro-wildlife activists face in any way, hopefully we can do our bit to keep them at least a bit safer with the recording equipment we're providing...

• You can find out more about North East Hunt Monitors on their website, Facebook page, and on Instagram.

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We are only able to give much-needed equipment like these camcorders 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 you are directly helping wildlife!

Our paid subscriptions are currently on £1750/month. Can you help us reach our next goal?

• If you’re an individual or organisation working in the field and would like our support, please have a look at the Support Network page on our website. We’d love to hear from you.