Celebrities Back Calls For UK Government To Ban Trail Hunting

A number of celebrities and animal advocates have signed an open letter by Protect the Wild to the British government requesting an immediate ban on trail hunting.

The open letter’s high-profile signatories include actors Dame Judi Dench, Sir Mark Rylance, and Ricky Gervais, zoologist and TV presenter Megan McCubbin, Ecotricity founder Dale Vince, Protect the Wild founder Rob Pownall, and several others.

They call on the governing Labour Party to make good on its pre-election promise to ban trail hunting. Trail hunting refers to hunts where dogs supposedly follow artificial scents of foxes, rather than the animals themselves. However, campaigners have long argued that it’s used as a smokescreen for real hunting, and hundreds of wild animals are hunted illegally in the UK every year under the pretence of trail hunting.

“While banning trail hunting isn’t a magic bullet to stop hunts exploiting loopholes in the law, it does make this gaslighting much more difficult,” noted Protect the Wild’s Glen Black, in a statement sent to Plant Based News. “It will make it clear to even the layperson that yes, if it looks like traditional hunting, that’s because it IS traditional hunting.”

Protect the Wild’s open letter is addressed to Steve Reed, the current Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. It comes just as UK fox hunting ramps up from “cubbing” – the training of young hounds by killing fox cubs from August to September – to the main part of the season, which runs from around October through to April.

The case for a proper fox hunting ban

Photo shows men in red coats hunting with dogs in the UK — Adobe Stock Despite 2004’s ban, illegal hunting continues in the UK

In September, a separate report by Protect the Wild titled A Case for a Proper Ban on Hunting found that almost 600 wild animals were chased or killed in the 2023 to 2024 hunting season. Black, the report’s author, noted at the time of publication that approximately 45 percent of all hunt meets involved some sort of antisocial or criminal action.

Protect the Wild argues that the 2004 hunting ban has failed to stamp out illegal hunting with dogs. In 2023, almost 20 years after the ban, the nonprofit commissioned the Hunting of Mammals Bill from Advocates for Animals as an effective update to the legislation.

Overall, the proposed bill would tighten the many loopholes that have allowed hunting with dogs to continue despite its illegality and overwhelming public opposition. Last year, Scotland effectively ended Scottish fox hunting with its own Hunting With Dogs Bill.