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.