Today we’re going to take you on a behind the scenes tour around the League Against Cruel Sports to show you how, together we are creating a kinder world for animals.
You will get to hear about some of our unsung heroes and you’ll get a taste for what we do and our victories for wildlife.
The League’s intelligence team includes former police officers and civilian analysts. It helped uncover and smash an international dog fighting ring this summer in a court case using evidence obtained by the League and supplied to the police.
Those dogs were seized and taken away from a world of pain and suffering and have now been found new loving family homes.
The team runs the Animal Crimewatch service which allows members of the public to report wildlife crime and helps us tackle the cruelty inflicted on animals by the heartless people involved in blood sports.
It works closely with the communications team which uses the figures they gather on the scale of fox hunting to inform journalists of the cruelty still being inflicted on animals in the countryside.
This Boxing Day – traditionally a tawdry PR exercise for the world of blood sports as fox hunts meet around the country – over 400 articles in both national and regional media contained these figures, ensuring the hunts’ brutal behaviour was kept firmly in the spotlight.
The public affairs team is small but punches above its weight. It ran a parliamentary reception last month attended by MPs from all the main political parties. It also visited party conferences this autumn to spread our message.
It's operating at the heart of government to ensure animal welfare is a priority, sitting on round-table meetings with key ministers and government officials to discuss how we can create more compassionate legislation for wildlife.
Tragically, fox hunting is still rife despite it being nearly 20 years since the ban on hunting with dogs. We need stronger fox hunting laws.
We also need a ban on the brutal traps known as snares which are used by shooting industry gamekeepers to kill wildlife. We’ve campaigned successfully for a ban on snares in Scotland and Wales and we need to extend this to England.
At the last general election, thanks to our lobbying, the Labour manifesto contained a commitment to both strengthen fox hunting laws and to ban snares in England.
And since the new UK Government formed in July, the League has helped raise the issue of fox hunting 24 times and snares ten times in parliament. The government has been making all the right noises. It recently committed to banning trail hunting, a discredited excuse used as a smokescreen by hunts to conceal the barbaric chasing and killing of foxes. These are battles we can and will win.
Our campaigns team operates both online and also out on the streets in all weathers, garnering support from the public to back our key concerns.
This Christmas it ran a campaign calling on pubs and breweries to stop hosting fox hunts on their land which sparked a wave of support among the public.
The team also promoted a petition calling for the government to strengthen fox hunting laws as we approach the 20th anniversary of the ban.
It’s now obtained nearly 100,000 signatures thanks to your support and will be handed in at Downing Street in February.
Let’s make 2025 a year to remember for our wildlife and the animals we cherish.
