27/05/2023
The Saturday âguest slotâ is a 5-minute read. An opinion piece from a diverse range within the wider world of natural hunting. Hounds, lurchers, terriers, falcons, ferrets, ânatural huntingâ, rural politics, culture, ritual, tradition, minority rights, anthropology, science, wildlife management. All feature as elements of our entire way of life at its unashamedly raw core. This week Charlie Pye Smith, a freelance writer, specialising in issues related to the environment, conservation, agriculture and development writes about Hunting in the Age of Unreason.
I am quite happy to receive a lecture on how to take penalties, recite Shakespeare, cook an omelette and punch somebody in the mouth from Gary Lineker, Judi Dench, Delia Smith and Frank Bruno respectively. But there is no reason why we should listen to them when they campaign against trophy hunting, about which they know little or nothing. Unfortunately, our politicians are all too easily swayed by emotive virtue-signalling, the standard currency of many celebrities, and in March 2023 the House of Commons passed a bill to ban the importation of hunting trophies such as hides, heads and tusks.
I spent several weeks in southern Africa during the late 1990s talking to local communities and conservationists about the benefits of well-regulated trophy hunting. In the deeply impoverished part of Zimbabwe where I spent most my time, profits from hunting had enabled villagers to build classrooms and health clinics, hire teachers and nurses and established income-generating projects. Instead of seeing elephant, buffalo and lion as a threat to their survival and killing them, as they did in the days before they benefited from the fees generating by trophy hunting, they were now protecting them.
Amy Dickman, director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at Oxford University, and Adam Hart, Professor of Science Communication at the University of Gloucestershire, both of whom have long experience of working with wildlife and communities in Africa, analysed 118 statements made by MPs during the second reading of the Trophy Hunting (Importation Prohibition) Bill. They found that 85 were either false or misleading. These included all nine statements made by Sir Roger Gale and 29 out of the 37 statements made by the billâs proposer, Henry Smith.
Clearly, neither the celebrities nor the MPs in favour of an import ban took any notice of a letter to Science magazine signed by over 100 scientists and researchers entitled âConservationists should support trophy huntingâ. Or an open letter from over 50 community leaders in Africa urging celebrities in the UK to stop âundermining the human rights of impoverished people and jeopardising conservation in the regionâ. Or the pleas not to introduce a ban from several governments in Southern Africa.
You could argue that the bill wonât have much effect as far as this country is concerned, as British trophy hunters are relatively few in number. But the failure of politicians to rigorously scrutinise and examine the available evidence is something we should be deeply worried about. The passage of the Trophy Hunting Bill was a triumph of ignorance over science and good sense. The same could be said for the 2004 Hunting Act, which severely curtailed hunting in England and Wales, and the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill, which was passed by the devolved administration in Edinburgh in January 2023.
Tribe and Prejudice
In Rural Rites, published some 18 months after the 2004 Hunting Act became law, I predicted that instead of improving animal welfare it would almost certainly have the opposite effect. Astonishingly, neither the organisations which represent hunting nor the organisations which spent an estimated ÂŁ30 million on campaigning for a ban have commissioned studies to assess the impact of the legislation on wild animal welfare. That is why I teamed up with Jim Barrington, former director of the League Against Cruel Sports and now animal welfare advisor to the Countryside Alliance, to explore how the Act and its equivalent in Scotland have affected fox, brown hare and red deer.
You will be able to read about our findings when Rural Wrongs is published this summer. Suffice it say here that the legislation has made matters worse for the formerly hunted species.
To understand the problems with the Hunting Act you need to look at why MPs voted for it in the first place. For a significant number, especially on the Left, it was class, rather than a concern for animal welfare, that motivated their support for a ban. âI was proud to vote for the Hunting Act in 2004 to prevent the brutal killing of foxes to satisfy the bloodlust of a few brainless toffs,â wrote John (now Baron) Prescott, former Labour Deputy Prime Minister, ignoring the fact that over 400,000 people joined the Liberty and Livelihoods March in defence of hunting in London in 2002. Prescott and his fellow travellers saw themselves at the tribunes elected by the plebs to vanquish the toffs. That was what really mattered to them â not animal welfare.
Then there was the cash. Many MPs promised their constituency parties that they would vote for a ban in return for financial support provided by organisations like the League. Besides, the Political Animal Lobby gave the Labour Party ÂŁ1 million prior to the 1997 general election â an important inducement to deal with the subject once and for all. All of this means that a significant number of MPs were not swayed by the evidence of, for example, the Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England and Wales, but by cash and prejudice.
Little wonder the legislation was such a mess. As Daniel Greenberg, a senior parliamentary draughtsman and barrister involved in drafting the Hunting Act, has pointed out, the âclearest proof that this was never a measure aimed at improving animal welfare is that nothing in the construction of the legislation tends towards its effective enforceability as a matter of animal welfare.â
The problem with polls
Politicians were undoubtedly influenced by opinion polls. You might argue: well, MPs should reflect the views of the public, so thatâs a good thing. But there is a problem with this. The majority of those asked by pollsters whether they were in favour of a ban will have had little or no idea about the complexities of wildlife management, or the possible consequences of a ban. And why should they have? There are dozens of important subjects about which I have no knowledge at all.
Talking of which, I can think of my attitude towards hare coursing when I was growing up in Yorkshire. Every year, at the time of the Waterloo Cup, TV news would show a clip of a couple of greyhounds killing a hare. It looked pretty gruesome, and if Iâd been asked by a polling company whether it should be banned I would at least have thoughts about saying yes. But then I didnât understand â as I do now â how coursing under National Coursing Club rules provided a huge boost to the conservation of the brown hare. Relatively few died for the good of a great many more.
The 2004 Hunting Act came into force on 18 February 2005. Over the next three days, 3000 hares were shot on two estates in East Anglia. It would have taken legal coursing almost 20 years to kill as many hares if it had been allowed to continue. The hares on these two estates werenât shot to provide game for the table, although they did that too, but to deter gangs of illegal poachers from invading the land. If ever there was an example of the unintended consequences of bad law â the subtitle of Rural Wrongs â this was it.
If there is a message in the book for MPs, it is this: do your research properly, suppress your prejudices, look at every side of the argument, ignore opinion polls and treat with suspicion any individual or organisation who is frothing at the mouth with anger and resentment. A pious hope? Judging from what happened recently in Westminster and Edinburgh, with the Trophy Hunting (Importation Prohibition) Bill and the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill, Iâm afraid it might be.