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MONTH: SEPTEMBER 2006

League Against Cruel Sports wins first Hunting Act foxhunting conviction

DEVON, U.K.--The League Against Cruel Sports on August 3, 2006 won the first conviction for fox hunting under the Hunting Act of 2004, which banned fox hunting throughout England and Wales. Barnstaple Magistrates' Court District Judge Paul Palmer fined Exmoor Foxhounds huntsman Tony Wright, 52, £500 plus prosecution costs of £250 after an intensely publicized week-long hearing. Wright allegedly hunted a fox with dogs on April 29, 2004.

"The League brought the case at a total cost of more than £100,000 after Avon and Somerset Police declined to take the case," reported BBC News.

"The findings of the court have demonstrated a benchmark for what constitutes a breach of the Hunting Act," said a police spokesperson.

The only previous conviction under the Hunting Act was of a Mersey-side rabbit hunter.

The Wright conviction came a week after Conservative Animal Welfare Group chair and veterinary surgeon Roger Baker asked Minister for Nature Conservation & Fisheries Ben Bradshaw, of the ruling Labour Party, to expand the State Veterinary Service to replace the Royal SPCA as the lead agency investigating and prosecuting animal welfare cases.

Baker proposed "a newly created and fully-trained inspectorate to be operated under the auspices of each local authority. It is surely incongruous in this day and age," Baker wrote to Bradshaw, "that the responsibility for the enforcement of animal welfare law has been placed upon an animal welfare and rights charity funded by public subscription and not accountable to the electorate."

Humane law enforcement was, however, the original function of the Royal SPCA, formed as the London SPCA in 1824, two years after passage of the first British humane law and five years before Sir William Peel formed the first London police force. The London SPCA received a Royal charter to do humane law enforcement throughout the British Empire from Queen Victoria in 1840.

The London SPCA won 150 convictions in 1824. The Royal SPCA, still operating under an amended version of the 1822 law that was last generally updated in 1911, won 1,732 convictions in 2004, investigating about 70,000 cases. About 20,000 of those cases, Royal SPCA director general Jackie Ballard told news media, involved animals who were left without water, an offense usually handled with a warning.

The Conservative Animal Welfare Group proposal to take the Royal SPCA off the cruelty law enforcement beat was denounced from some directions as an attempt to weaken enforcement of the Hunting Act. However, Conservative Animal Welfare Act founder Roger Gale is among the most outspoken opponents of fox hunting in Parliament, and was among just five Conservative members who voted for the Hunting Act.

The Labour Party commitment on behalf of animals and habitat came under scrutiny in July 2006 after Natural England chair Sir Michael Doughty warned Environment Secretary David Miliband that budget cuts jeopardize the new agency's ability to fulfill its mandate as the successor to English Nature. Natural England, incorporating the English Nature duties, is to officially debut in October 2006.

"These cuts will put back the recovery prospects for a whole range of species for years," Royal Society for the Protection of Birds director of conservation Mark Avery told Independent environment editor Michael McCarthy.

Natural England will inherit from English Nature a management portfolio including 213 national nature reserves and more than 4,000 sites of "special scientific interest," most of them privately owned, and has responsibility for helping threatened and endangered species to recover.