To: Friends of The Hurtwood

Stop 'Trail Hunting' on the Hurtwood

The Hurtwood is over 2,000 acres of privately owned Common land in the Surrey Hills.

This is their mission statement : "Friends of the Hurtwood, registered charity No. 200053, has the responsibility to raise the funding required to manage public access and protect the Hurtwood environment"

Protecting the land is all very well but surely this includes the wildlife that dwell therein!!!

What we want them to do is clear and simple : -

No longer give permission for 'trail hunting' to take place on The Hurtwood in light of the guilty verdict of Mark Hankinson, the director of the Masters of the Foxhounds Association, subsequent to a thorough police investigation into webinars hosted by the Hunting Office.

Why is this important?

PLEASE ALSO READ A SERIES OF UPDATES HEREUNDER WHICH HAVE OCCURRED SINCE THE LAUNCH OF THIS PETITION.

It has recently been reported nationwide that the Hunting Office held a series of 3 webinar Zoom meetings back in August last year with over 100 Hunt Masters in attendance. From this meeting evidence was leaked that there was indeed conspiracy by hunters to commit perjury and actively flout the 2005 ban on hunting with hounds. Throughout the three hours of talks, hunts were clearly and repeatedly incited to engage in mass criminality and shown how to present a smokescreen to anyone watching.

Further to the publicised leak there is now a police and CPS investigation going ahead to ascertain all the facts from these meetings.

Given the recent media coverage focusing on the admission of senior representatives of The Hunting Office and Hunt Masters, that they use trail hunting as a 'smokescreen'. We expect that local police forces across the country will be policing hunting activities more diligently and no longer turning a blind eye to illegal activities. The police, along with the other large organisations are now keen to distance themselves from hunt groups. In addition, Hunt Saboteurs Association, have seen an increase in their membership, fuelled by public awareness that these leaked webinars have brought.

The National Trust, The Forestry Commission and now United Utilities have announced that they will be suspending all ‘trail’ hunt licences for the rest of the entire season.

Also the law states that under the Hunting Act of 2004 Section 3 (i) A person commits an offence if he knowingly permits land which belongs to him to be entered or used in the course of the commission of an offence under section 1 – Section 1 being hunting wild mammals with dogs.

Whilst the investigations are going on I call to the trustees of the Hurtwood Control that they see fit to suspend all trail hunt licences which have been issued for this current season and/or perhaps the next until the outcome of the investigation is finalised.

In view of the above we really hope now that the Trustees of The Hurtwood Control finally make the right decision and revoke any licences with haste.

How it will be delivered

email and deliver in person

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Links

Campaign Facebook Page

Updates

2022-01-19 15:44:26 +0000

FINAL UPDATE
In late November the National Trust stopped issuing licences for trail hunts on its land stating it had lost trust and confidence in the Masters of Foxhounds Association further to the guilty verdict of senior huntsman Mark Hankinson. Also, one week prior to this the Welsh Government nature agency Natural Resources Wales did the same.

We now eagerly wait for other major landowners to follow suit. This petition needs to be presented to the Trustees of the FOTH imminently. They have stated before that “they do not issue licences to the hunt so therefore there are no licenses to be revoked”. However, licences aside, they DO give permission to the Hunt to ‘trail hunt’ on the landowners land. This is clearly stated on their Home Page of their website www.foth.co.uk/contact

We will be delivering this petition in person very soon so please let’s give this one final push and get more signatures on here to support us in our campaign. Thank you.

2021-10-31 12:21:02 +0000

---------- NEWS ON NATIONAL TRUST AGM ---------
Yesterday members of the National Trust voted overwhelmingly in favour of banning all Trail Hunting on their land by 2 votes to 1. 76,816 members voted for the motion, while 38,184 voted against. With this result we expect other corporate landowners including Forestry England, United Utilities, the various National Parks and the Ministry of Defence to also permanently ban trail hunting. The National Trust decision alone will deny the hunts access to 620,000 acres of land and when these other landowners follow suit they will be banned from millions of acres. We expect some hunts will be forced to shut down completely as a result.

In light of this historic vote please make a difference and sign and share this petition to put pressure on the FOTH to now do the right thing and listen to the public who have had enough of the Hunt their lies and their continued criminality!

2021-10-17 14:33:50 +0100

------GUILTY ----------
Mark Hankinson, the director of the Masters of the Foxhounds Association, was found guilty last week of encouraging or assisting others to commit an offence over his comments in two webinars in front of an audience of more than 100 MFHA members. Footage from these webinars, broadcast in August 2020 was obtained by hunt sabs who immediately passed it on to media and the police.
Hankinson was fined £1,000 + £2,500 towards court costs.

"This is the most significant case since the Hunting Act came in in 2005. This means the edifice of respectability that the hunting community has carefully constructed around trail hunting has been completely smashed to pieces"

In light of this verdict is it now vital that we request all landowners to ban so called 'trail hunting' on their land once and for all. The season of hunting and killing wild animals with a pack of hounds is once again upon us. Please please sign this petition to make a difference. Thank you.

2021-02-20 18:09:19 +0000

1,000 signatures reached

2020-12-09 11:03:27 +0000

500 signatures reached

2020-12-05 20:49:40 +0000

100 signatures reached

2020-12-04 17:35:02 +0000

50 signatures reached

2020-12-04 00:57:13 +0000

25 signatures reached

2020-12-02 22:55:39 +0000

10 signatures reached