Sheffield Hunt Saboteurs said that police arrested a member of their group on 12 August. The arrest occurred as hunt saboteurs disrupted a shoot on Wemmergill Estate, County Durham, on the first day of the grouse-killing season.
In a Facebook post, Sheffield Hunt Saboteurs said that sabs had spent several hours that day preventing a shoot from going ahead. Police were present from early in the day but hadn’t taken action until “a riot van appeared and attempted to chase [sabs] over the moors”. The shooters then began to leave, sabs having successfully prevented them from killing grouse, while sabs returned to their vehicles. However, the sab group said that a “larger police presence” at the vehicles began issuing dispersal orders, and this was when:
“One of our drivers even found himself in handcuffs on the floor, arrested, for insisting on picking up the foot sabs before leaving the area.”
Our driver was arrested yesterday as he went to pick up sabs who’d just seen off a grouse shoot on the Wemmergill Estate in County Durham – an estate frequently featured on the @RaptorPersUK blog for killing brids of prey. Why are police protecting these blood sports enthusiasts? pic.twitter.com/3DYnBV9k24
— Sheffield Hunt Saboteurs (@SheffHuntSabs) August 13, 2024
Fortunately, the arrest was short-lived. The group said further officers arrived and were “confused about why the sab had been arrested”, leading to the police de-arresting the sab in question.
The group also speculated that some units deployed to Wemmergill Estate were tasked with clamping down on any potential action by Reclaim the Power, whose camp the police had raided and shut down days earlier, due to the Drax appearing in their vehicles.
The Hunt Saboteurs Association also said police had earlier tried to claim that sabs were trespassing on open access land. Nonetheless, Sheffield Hunt Saboteurs and many others also there celebrated the day as a successful shutdown of a cruel industry.
Protect the Wild contacted Durham Constabulary but it hadn’t responded at the time of publishing.
Bad start to the season
As Raptor Persecution UK highlighted, the Wemmergill Estate has a history of connections to wildlife crime. It connected the estate to the deaths of a Short-eared Owl in 2021 and two Short-eared Owls in 2015 to the estate as well as the disappearance of a Hen Harrier in 2018. Before that, in 2008, courts found the estate guilty of building unsanctioned tracks on its moors and handed it more than £500,000 in fines.
There are signs that the grouse industry is facing a tough start this year. The Telegraph reported on 12 August that bad weather and cancelled shoots had resulted in sky-high prices for a dead grouse. As a result, some restaurants weren’t offering the bird on their menus. On Scotland’s moors this is the first year that the grouse-killing industry is operating under new licensing regulations as well. While Protect the Wild remains sceptical that licencing will change very much without much better enforcement (laws have existed for decades that protect birds of prey and habitats) shooting estates will be aware they are under increased scrutiny on top of deteriorating conditions for rearing grouse for the gun.
