On 15 July, pro-hunting organisation Hunting Kind announced that Wales’ Eryri Hunt is disbanding.
The Eryri hunted on foot in Eryri (Snowdonia), northwest Wales. In response to the news, Cheshire Borderland Monitors celebrated, saying:
“ANOTHER ONE GONE!Cheshire Borderland Monitors are particularly pleased about the Eryri hunt disbanding, because in the past we have spent some very hard days trying to stop them hunting on the mountains.
This was also when we first linked up our friends North Wales Hunt Saboteurs and the rest is historySome of the hardest days ever in our 20 years existence and on National Trust Land as well!So it’s celebration time here“
The monitors told Protect the Wild that the hunt was so difficult to keep watch on because it hunted on fell terrain. It was a foot pack that moved fast, without many supporters, and could be elusive.
Unsurprisingly, the news of the hunt disbanding comes just a couple of months after Eryri hunt master Richard Williams retired. Williams – who sits on the board of the British Hound Sports Association – became master back in 1987.
Illegal hunting on National Trust land
Over the years, Cheshire Borderland Monitors caught the Eryri Hunt trespassing and hunting on National Trust land numerous times, long before the land owner finally banned hunting. The Trust owns roughly 9% of land in Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park. Back in 2019, the monitors wrote:
“Our team has, since 2004 when the hunting ban was enforced, monitored, gained film evidence and lobbied the trust to stop issuing licenses to the Eryri.The National Trust still allows this organised crime on their land and Snowdonia is blighted by the trusts decision.”
More hunts bound to fold in the coming months
Just days ago, Protect the Wild published an article about another hunt folding. The Monmouthshire and Valley Beagles, which used to hunt hares, disbanded. In that article, we listed a number of reasons why we’re likely to see even more hunts collapsing; the biggest reason being that we now have a government in power who has pledged to ban hunting by closing the trail hunting loophole. And at the end of 2023, Protect the Wild celebrated that a number of hunts had either folded or amalgamated in the UK over the year.
Despite Labour’s promise that it will ban hunting, now is not the time to be complacent. We will keep reminding the Labour Party of its pledge, and we will be arguing that strengthening the Hunting Act is not enough. We need a whole new watertight law so that no loopholes can be abused in the future.
Read about our proposed Hunting of Mammals Bill here.
(Feature image by Cheshire Borderland Monitors. Find out more about the group here. )
