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Hunt sabotage is the direct action that animal rights activists and animal liberation activists undertake to interfere with hunting activity.
Anti-hunting campaigners are divided into hunt saboteurs and anti-hunt monitors to monitor for cruelty and report violations of animal welfare laws.
Both hunt saboteurs and independent monitors share similar techniques as both hunt saboteurs and independent monitors document and support the prosecution of those caught illegally hunting. The methods of documentation used by both saboteurs and monitors are usually videoing and photographing the illegal activities conducted by the hunt.
Both hunt supporters, hunt staff and saboteurs can on occasion be violent and unlawful with successful prosecutions against hunts and saboteurs. However since the hunt webinars of 2020 were made public with hunters describing creating ‘smokescreens’, the police have been more proactive and having received 999 calls from the public and saboteurs have attended hunts that have been reported to be illegally chasing foxes, with hunts being suspended or even shut down as a result of saboteur work.
On 8 December 2023 Paul Allman of the "Stockport Monitors" received a 5-year Criminal Behaviour Order barring him from disrupting trail hunts for the next five years. [4] [5] Previously, Allman was convicted and fined in March 2019 for assaulting the master of the Cheshire Hunt. [6] Then in July 2022, Allman was convicted along with his four associates for intimidating and assaulting hunt spectators, including two adults and a girl, causing injury; they were given suspended sentences. [7] However, in August 2023, Allman was branded a "danger to the public" for his history of violent offending, and was sentenced to 20 weeks in jail for an incident where he, along with 9 other balaclava-masked "militia", struck two men causing serious injuries. [6]
Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, said "[Allman's] actions are however representative of hunt saboteurs across the country who demonstrate this type of appalling behaviour regularly." [6]
In the United Kingdom the interventionists are usually members of the Hunt Saboteurs Association, or independent hunt saboteurs or independent anti-hunt groups while the non-interventionists are often members of the League Against Cruel Sports or, more recently, Protect Our Wild Animals or the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Every year in Spain, organisations such as Equanimal or the platform Matar por matar, non [8] are involved in the sabotage of the Copa Nacional de Caza del Zorro (Spanish: "National Fox Hunt Cup") following the hunters making noise with megaphones to scare foxes and preventing them from being killed. [9] [10]
Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, or killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to exploit the animal's body for meat and useful animal products, for recreation/taxidermy, although it may also be done for non-exploitative reasons such as removing predators dangerous to humans or domestic animals, to eliminate pests and nuisance animals that damage crops/livestock/poultry or spread diseases, for trade/tourism, or for ecological conservation against overpopulation and invasive species.
Fox hunting is a traditional activity involving the tracking, chase and, if caught, the killing of a fox, normally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds. A group of unarmed followers, led by a "master of foxhounds", follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.
Rodney Adam Coronado is an American animal rights and environmental activist known for his militant direct actions in the late 1980s and 1990s. As part of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, he sank two whaling ships and destroyed Iceland's sole whale-processing facility in 1986. He led the Animal Liberation Front's Operation Bite Back campaign against the fur industry and its supporting institutions in the early 1990s, which was involved in multiple firebombings. Following an attack on a Michigan State University mink research center in early 1992, Coronado was jailed for nearly five years. He later admitted to being the sole perpetrator. The 1992 federal Animal Enterprise Protection Act was created in response to his actions. The operation continued with a focus on liberating animals rather than property destruction. Coronado also worked with Earth First.
Spotlighting or lamping is a method of hunting nocturnal animals using off-road vehicles and high-powered lights, spotlights, lamps or flashlights, that makes special use of the eyeshine revealed by many animal species. A further important aspect is that many animals often remain to continually stare at the light and do not appear to see the light as a threat as they normally would view a human. It is possible to carefully approach animals on foot to a short distance if the bright light is continuously maintained on the animal to greatly improve chances of successful killing. Spotlighting may also be used as a method of surveying nocturnal fauna. Repeated, frequent spotlighting may have a detrimental effect on animals and is discouraged.
The Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) is a United Kingdom organisation that uses hunt sabotage as a means of direct action to stop fox hunting. It was founded in 1963, with its first sabotage event occurring at the South Devon Foxhounds on 26 December 1963.
The Hunting Act 2004 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which bans the hunting of most wild mammals with dogs in England and Wales, subject to some strictly limited exemptions; the Act does not cover the use of dogs in the process of flushing out an unidentified wild mammal, nor does it affect drag hunting, where hounds are trained to follow an artificial scent.
The Pampas fox, also known as grey pampean fox, Pampas zorro, Azara's fox, or Azara's zorro, is a medium-sized zorro, or "false" fox, native to the South American Pampas. Azara in some of its alternative common names is a reference to Spanish naturalist Félix de Azara.
Arsenio Iglesias Pardo was a Spanish football player and manager.
La Voz de Galicia is a Spanish daily newspaper owned by the Corporación Voz de Galicia. La Voz is highest circulation newspaper in Galicia and the eighth-highest circulation general-interest daily newspaper in Spain. It is written primarily in Spanish with Galician used in the cultural and opinion sections.
Legislation on hunting with dogs is in place in many countries around the world. Legislation may regulate, or in some cases prohibit the use of dogs to hunt or flush wild animal species.
Opposition to hunting is espoused by people or groups who object to the practice of hunting, often seeking anti-hunting legislation and sometimes taking on acts of civil disobedience, such as hunt sabotage. Anti-hunting laws, such as the English Hunting Act 2004, are generally distinguishable from conservation legislation like the American Marine Mammal Protection Act by whether they seek to reduce or prevent hunting for perceived cruelty-related reasons or to regulate hunting for conservation, although the boundaries of distinction are sometimes blurred in specific laws, for example when endangered animals are hunted.
Charles Frederick Otis Ferry is a British model and pro-fox hunting enthusiast. He has served as joint master of the South Shropshire hunt.
The Sabueso Español or Spanish Hound is a scenthound breed with its origin in the far north of Iberian Peninsula. This breed has been used in this mountainous region since hundreds of years ago for all kind of game: wild boar, hare, brown bear, wolf, red deer, fox, roe deer and chamois. It is an exclusive working breed, employed in hunting with firearms.
Equanimal was a Spanish non-profit animal rights organization, formed as a merger, in 2006, of the organisations Alternativa para la Liberación Animal and Derechos para los Animales. In 2012, it merged with the International animal rights organization Animal Equality.
The Crawley and Horsham Hunt is a United Kingdom foxhound pack, with hunting country of around 23 miles by 20 miles within the ceremonial county of Sussex.
The Fuegian dog, or Yahgan dog, or Patagonian dog, is an extinct type of canid. In comparison to the domestic dog's ancient wolf ancestry, the Fuegian dog was traditionally thought to be bred and domesticated from the South American culpeo, also known as the culpeo fox. However, 2023 research suggested that the traditional accounts of the Fuegian dog was in fact two different animals. The culpeo itself is similar to true foxes, though it is closer, genetically, to wolves, coyotes and jackals ; thus it is placed in a separate genus within the South American foxes or zorros.
In the United Kingdom, hunt monitors endeavour to observe behaviours of organized hunts and undertake information gathering activities, known as hunt monitoring.
Fires in Galicia are caused by deforestation and brush clearing, the removal of indigenous fauna, and arsonists. The fires have been occurring since the mid-1990s. Fires in Galicia represent 50% of the area burned each year in Spain and 40% of all fires.
A montería is an ancient type of driven hunt endemic to Spain. It involves the tracking, chase and killing of big-game, typically red deer, wild boar, fallow deer and mouflon. A number of "rehalas" along with their respective "rehaleros" will stir up an area of forest with the aim of forcing the game to move around and into the shooting pegs, where hunters will be able to fire.
Leon Kachelhoffer is a Botswanan trophy hunter who caused an international outcry for killing a circa 45-year-old rare and well-known 'big tusker' elephant in Botswana in 2022 alongside a smaller second elephant.
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The hunters took aim (upon deer, not upon us) and were just about to release the bowstrings. BOOM! The blasts from our foghorns twice sent deer fleeing to safety.