THE NATIONAL Trust has been slammed over a new trail hunting licence issued for Hanbury Hall.
The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) has written to the trust’s management, calling on it to block hunters wanting to use its land.
The hunting of wild animals was banned 14 years ago and was replaced by ‘trail hunting’.
The practice sees people on foot or horseback, along with hounds or beagles, to follow a scent along a designated path.
It is aimed at replicating a traditional hunt but without a fox or other animal being chased, injured or killed.
In the League’s letter to the National Trust, it asks the trust put in measures to ensure no animals are killed in the hunt, including random spot checks, rather than giving 24 hours notice.
It added the National Trust’s Ashbridge and Polesden Lacey estates cancelled hunting in response to public opinion and called for Hanbury to do the same.
Chris Luffingham, the League’s director of campaigns, said: “The Hanbury Hall estate is a local treasure which showcases British nature at its best.
“Allowing a hunt to trample across the land, taking part in an activity which many people believe involves the killing of animals, completely goes against that philosophy.”
He added more than 85 per cent of the public opposed all forms of hunting wild animals with hounds, including a large number of National Trust members and visitors to properties like Hanbury Hall.
“It is high time the conservation body provided protection to wildlife by stopping licensing hunting on its land.”
A National Trust spokesperson said the LACS took this approach to every new licence issued and it could not comment on individual cases.
On its website the trust said it had a national Trail Hunt management team to provide additional guidance and support to local teams and to carry out formal monitoring of hunts.
It added its measures, along with others introduced ahead of the 2017-18 trail hunting season reaffirmed the importance to participants to adhere to the licence conditions.
It reiterated the hunting of wild animals, banned in England and Wales in 2004, applied to National Trust land, adding the majority of hunts acted responsibly and complied with the ‘trail hunting’ laws.
