Fox hunting

[watervole]

Since the introduction of tight restrictions on hunting in Scotland, the number of foxes killed anually has increased from 500 to 900. It isn't about 'sport' any more - it's about pest control.
This statistic sums up perfectly why I've always had reservations about a ban on hunting. I dislike cruelty to animals; I dislike dead animals even more.
When people enjoy hunting or profit from it, they have an incentive to maintain a larger population of foxes. (This principle has been applied in Africa for decades - allowing big game hunting gives farmers an incentive not to shoot lions.)

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I'm the other way around: I dislike people being cruel to animals more than I dislike us killing them.

I never understood the paired "animal population" rationales for hunting. One was that hunting culled populations of vermin that would otherwise overrun the environment, and the other was that hunting preserved populations of wildlife that would otherwise be driven to extinction. Either made some sense on their own, but both together was bizarre.

(it's possible to do both, I suppose, but I never saw any evidence of the careful population surveying necessary to manage it)

Rather than the population going down because no-one has a reason to keep them alive anymore, I would suggest that the increase in fox deaths is a function of increase in fox births now that they're not being hunted, and not the beginning of a holocaust of Scottish foxes.

If I'm wrong, and it's necessary to keep them from going extinct, I suggest putting them on the list of endangered species that may not be killed. That's the solution we came up with to the rarity of badgers, rather than bringing back the sport of badger baiting, which I cannot imagine would have helped the population any. These sports had their origin in pest extermination, not wildlife preservation.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

I saw an article about this, probably either on the BBC website or Saturday's Guardian, can't remember which - but it started with a similar phrase about "pest control". It went on to say that they still hunt, as the ban was on killing with dogs rather than the hunt itself. But the dogs have been re-trained to trap the fox not kill it, the hunt carry guns and kill the fox that way. So this is 900 foxes being hunted and killed, just not killed the old-fashioned way. And fewer of them are getting away at the last minute. So while it is less cruel at the end, it's only for a few minutes - they are still being hunted, and more of them are dying.

[sugoll.livejournal.com]

I ranted about this previously. Either foxes are a pest that need to be controlled (in which case, do so humanely, and outlaw breeding them and releasing them), or they're not, in which case there's no excuse for killing them for pleasure.

Whether rampaging across the countryside is a traditional pasttime that ought to be preserved is a different matter, about which I care not a jot either way; it's the killing for fun to which I object.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

When people enjoy hunting or profit from it, they have an incentive to maintain a larger population of foxes. (This principle has been applied in Africa for decades - allowing big game hunting gives farmers an incentive not to shoot lions.)

The difference with the African situation is that lions and other desirable game animals need protecting. By turning them into an economic resource that needs sustaining, controlled hunting can become a conservation measure.

Foxes do not need protecting. The biggest killers of foxes in the UK are road traffic and mange. Shooting, gassing and poisoning won't endanger foxes any more than hunting does. It might eradicate them on a very local basis, but only temporarily unless the extermination programme is sustained over time, but even that is doubtful. The UK fox population has plenty of urban population nuclei from which to recolonise rural areas.

What matters, I think, is not the number of foxes killed, but the amount of cruelty involved. Shooting is, overall, a more humane method than hunting. True, the fox is less likely to escape, and death by shotgun is not necessarily as quick and clean as some people like to think it is. But it is less cruel. The degree of cruelty involved in gassing and poisoning is something I know nothing about, so I won't comment on it.

What is really needed, I feel, is a concerted challenge to the deep-rooted attitude that regards the fox as nothing other than vermin. It is undeniably true that foxes do have an economic impact on some farming practices, but not all. Arable farmers stand to benefit from having foxes on their land, since rats and rabbits - real pests if ever there were any - are a staple item of the fox's diet. Cattle farmers likewise are unlikely to suffer from predation by foxes. And yet arable and cattle farmers are, from what I can gather, just as likely to be anti-fox as sheep farmers and chicken farmers. It's prejudice, pure and simple.

(Hope this doesn't come through twice: LJ seemed to swallow my first attempt at sending this)

[steverogerson.livejournal.com]

I think there is also an attitude of not so much disliking the hunting but disliking the people who hunt. Fox hunting in Britain, despite what some may say, is very clearly a sport for the upper classes in Britain, and it is justifiably disliked because of that. There is also the obscene practice of blooding new people to the hunt, by defintion often youngsters.

This whole cruel activity should have been banned a long time ago, and I'm just disappointed that we still have to wait three months, effectively saying to the hunting community you can have a 90 day cull before your killing spree comes to an end. Disgraceful. It should have been stopped from the moment the bill was passed. And the bill should have been passed years ago.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

I think there is also an attitude of not so much disliking the hunting but disliking the people who hunt. Fox hunting in Britain, despite what some may say, is very clearly a sport for the upper classes in Britain, and it is justifiably disliked because of that.

I certainly dislike people who hunt, but only because they hunt. Upper class hunters, lower class hunters, I don't discriminate.

I have always believed that the hunting issue is an animal welfare issue. It is not a class issue. To make it a class issue is to lend ammunition to the pro-hunting lobby's claims of victimisation and their portrayal of animal welfare being used as a smokescreen for envy and resentment.

This whole cruel activity should have been banned a long time ago

Agreed. The ban is long overdue.