Mon 20 Sep 2021-“The Guardian”

The director of the body representing foxhound packs encouraged members to use trail hunting, where horseback riders with dogs follow trails laid with scent in advance, as a “smokescreen” for illegal foxhunting, a court has heard.

Mark Hankinson, the director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association and an employee of the Hunting Office, appeared at Westminster magistrates court on Monday charged with encouraging or assisting others to commit an offence because of his comments.

Mark Hankinson outside court. He denies an accusation of “giving advice to a webinar audience on how to conceal their illegal hunting activity”

The 60-year-old, of Frampton Farm, Sherborne, Dorset, was charged after footage from a training webinar for MFHA members, broadcast in August 2020, was obtained by hunt saboteurs, who passed it to the media and the police.

Hankinson appeared at Westminster magistrates court wearing a navy pinstripe suit and polka-dot tie, for the first day of his trial.

“His intentions shine through very clearly,” Gregory Gordon, prosecuting, told the court.

“The prosecution say that the defendant gave advice on how to make it more difficult to be able to prove that an illegal hunt was happening. He gave advice on how to use trail hunting, in his own words, as a ‘smokescreen’ behind which illegal hunting could continue.

“The prosecution only have to prove that his actions were capable of encouraging an offence, not whether anybody was encouraged or acted on that encouragement”.

Continue reading “Foxhounds Association of UK: sometimes the shot goes backwards” →

Received anonymously by Animal Liberation Pressoffice

Fifteen hunting towers and seven posts attacked in Jaizkibel, Jarindo, Kastañarri, Gorbeia, Arrikurutz and mount Kintoa. The Basque Animal Liberation Front denounces the “deplorable state” and the slaughter of animals by hunters.

“We will not be passively looking elsewhere as long as the sensitive creatures of other species are exploited, oppressed, or killed,” the members of the Basque People ‘s Animal Liberation Front stated in a communique about the attacks on the hunting towers and posts on the night of 31 August and 1 September.

“Hunting licenses go up, but hunting towers go down”.

“As long as violence, domination, and murder of human and other animals continues to be normal, we see “legitimate and necessary” to attack companies, institutions, or structures that promote and reproduce such oppression.”

The Animal Liberation Front is a clandestine organization operating in various countries worldwide, with no known leader or public face, and carrying out direct action for animal rights.
The last few days are not the only actions the Front has taken in the Basque Country.

For example, in December 2018, several hunting stations were also damaged and in May and June of the same year, cement was dumped on the runway at Iruñera to create obsstruction and a fire was set in the bull fighting stadium.

https://animalliberationpressoffice.org/NAALPO/2021/09/06/basque-alf-destroys-22-hunting-stands-2/

And Imean…Hunters are psychopaths and as we know psychopaths have tremendous criminal energy and endurance.
Instead of locking them up in a psychiatric institution (which would also cause costs for the family), I find it much more economical to destroy their criminal craft.

Many thanks to the activists ♥ Great Job!

My best regards to all, Venus

Lebanon – end point of bird migration: Around 500,000 hunters are officially registered in Lebanon, they are allowed to shoot 12 species of birds.

But the hunting law in the “cedar state” is mostly only on paper.
In reality, many hunters target anything that comes within range of the rifle.

Now, during the peak of the bird migration, we receive photos every day, which the perpetrators themselves post on social media.

Almost all of them show strictly protected species in Lebanon – from bee-eaters and blue-nails to ortolans and orioles to barn owls and short-toed eagles.

Fortunately, there are many nature lovers in Lebanon who do not just watch the hunters go by.
They search social media for such posts, report the perpetrators’ profiles to us and the authorities, and thus ensure prosecution.

Together with its Lebanese partner associations SPNL and MESHC, the Committee against Bird Murder will again be on site with an international bird protection team from next week.

The economic crisis in the country and the political unrest make the operation a risk – wish us luck!
The pictures are all up-to-date – they show protected migratory birds illegally shot.

The animals with which the heart is laid are ortolans, which are highly endangered almost everywhere in Europe!

https://www.facebook.com/Komitee.CABS/

And I mean…The birds are eaten – as a “second use”, so to speak.
But the motivation is the pleasure of hunting! whoever hunts, kills for sheer pleasure.
And that applies to hunters all over the world.

What state of mind can we expect in someone who cowardly shoots an animal while it is eating or breeding, although he does not need its flesh and skin to live and then call it as a “hobby”, “nature conservation”, “protection of species”, “epidemic protection” “or” tradition “?

“Hunting is just a cowardly paraphrase for particularly cowardly murder of chanchenless fellow creatures.
Hunting is a side form of human mental illness”
(Theodor Heuss, former Federal President)

We agree, it couldn’t be better said!

My best regards to all, Venus

On September 12th, a huge school of 1,428 Atlantic white-sided dolphins was hunted and driven to their deaths for hours.

The driven hunt, the so-called grind, took place on the Faroe Islands, which belong to Denmark.
The animals were driven over a distance of approx. 45 km with speedboats and jet skis into the shallow waters near Skálabotnur, where every single animal was cruelly killed.

According to locals who shared videos and photos with Sea Shepherd, this hunt violated several Faroese laws regulating grind:

First of all, the grind supervisor responsible for this area was not informed and therefore never authorized the hunt.
Instead, the decision was made by another grind chief who was not authorized to do so.

Second, many of the participants did not have permission to participate. This permit is required in the Faroe Islands because it includes special training to ensure the rapid killing of pilot whales and dolphins.
The footage also shows that many of the dolphins were still alive and moving when they were dragged ashore with the rest of their dead school.

Thirdly, photos show that many of the dolphins were run over by motorboats and torn apart by the screws, resulting in a slow and painful death.
According to local residents, the grid was illegal and was reported to the Faroese police for these violations.

The Danish newspaper “Ekstra Bladet” published interviews with locals, whose full names were changed to protect their families, stating that many Faroe Islands are angry about the incident.

“I suspect that most of the dolphins will end up in the garbage or in some digging hole,” said a local.
“We should have quotas per district and not kill dolphins,” said another.

A local asked the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to investigate the incident:

“If she expresses herself critically in public, it will also be easier for the locals who want to end this barbaric tradition.”

Others fear that the international press will show the pictures of the slaughtered dolphins and that this will endanger their exports (e.g. the Faroe Islands export salmon to Germany, Great Britain, the USA and Russia).

Further information and images on our website:
https://sea-shepherd.de/…/1-428-delfine-bei-treibjagd…/

And I mean…Sea Shepherd considers this to be “the largest single hunt for dolphins or pilot whales in Faroe history” (followed by the hunt for 1,200 pilot whales in 1940) and “it is believed to be the largest single whale hunt ever documented worldwide”!

We call it mass murder.
Driven in any place that is a very wealthy European island group that has no need for meat to survive, based on secret licenses and documents, practically an illegal process, carried out by anonymous sadists and corrupt officials, who settled the crime among themselves.

An illegal massacre with no basis, no legal evidence.
Here borders were crossed and a new dimension of brutality and barbarism reached.

What the residents of the Faroe Islands can never be ashamed of

My best regards to all, Venus

Mendip Hunt Sabs-Report

Mendip Farmers Hunt, Ston Easton, 11th Sep 2021
Thanks to local tip offs we were able to catch the Mendip Farmers Hunt out illegally hunting foxes and terrorising wildlife.

We hot-footed it off to Ston Easton (a linear village and civil parish in the English county of Somerset) to start our day.

Our supporter funded drone again proved to be worth it’s weight in gold, we were able to safely watch and record the vile blood thirsty hunt.

The hunt move off after the vicious attack on sabs.

With the drone, we watched them unboxing near a field of solar panels then separating themselves out around a maize field, lying in wait to flush fox cubs back into the maize to the jaws of the waiting, ill fed hounds.

These are the people who pass you in the street, stand next to you in a queue in Toolstation….horrible thought isn’t it?

Our two foot sabs caught up with Huntsman Hickmott on horseback with hounds et al on Thickthorne Lane. They turned into a field adjacent to Burnt House Farm where almost instantly the hounds picked up the scent of a fox and went into cry.

Our two foot sabs quickly made their way up the field on the public footpath following the terrible, overlapping, dreadful, screaming cacophony of the hounds now in fully cry.

Our two remaining sabs quickly made their way up the farm track, desperately spraying citronella both sides of the hedgerow and rating the hounds. The hounds began to hesitate and back off of the line but the hunts’ blood thirst was too strong.

Some of the gang of thug terriermen laughing post-attack as Hickmott departs with his hounds in the background.

Huntsman, Matthew Hickmott encouraged the hounds with voice calls, brrrs and fast horn blows and the remaining hounds poured through the hedgerow, across the dusty farm track and ran into the yard. The sound of encouragement from the field riders and hunt supporters was sickening to the core.

As these two sabs rounded the corner of the barn the dreadful sight of a fox being ripped apart alive by a pack of writhing hounds faced them. The hounds were packed in a chaotic pile all over the structure where the fox had taken cover. The screaming mass of hounds trampled over each other, climbing through, over and into the structure in the yard. On their right Tim Pullen and the approaching farmer. Ahead near the hounds Kevin Stevens.

Stevens, surprised at the swift appearance of our witnesses began to shout “GET OUT! THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY! GET OUT!” Then from behind a farm building on the left Matthew Hickmott walked forward on his horse his eyes on the still squirming, screaming hounds.

His satisfied expression changed instantly when he saw our sabs.

Continue reading “Mendip Farmers Hunt, Ston Easton: brutal attack on sabs” →

Before the law one could achieve a victory and enforce a ban on the questionable “culinary delights” after previous animal cruelty unparalleled, but unfortunately this un-tradition is still practiced illegally.

We are talking about a custom from France in which protected songbirds – Ortolane or garden bunting – are mistreated and eaten.

The garden bunting is a songbird that overwinters in Africa and flies thousands of kilometers to breed with us. The slightly larger than sparrow-sized bird with the yellow throat, also called Ortolan, was never common in Germany – and is becoming increasingly rare.
One reason for this is its flight route.

On their strenuous journey around the Mediterranean Sea, the animals have to make a stopover in southern France to recover.
That will doom for thousands of them.
Because the French love Ortolans. Not because they are beautiful to look at or because they sing adorable.
But because they taste good.
The animals end up as a precious specialty in the palate of wealthy gourmets.

The well-heeled French upper class has these animals caught and fattened for 3 weeks in the dark so that the little birdies put on fat and mutate into so-called “fat bangers”.

They are then drowned in Armagnac so that the birds can take in plenty of it.
Then the birds are fried in fat in a special saucepan and put into their mouths whole by gourmets with skin and bones and chewed.

Continue reading “France: in spite of the ban ortolane are still drowned and eated!” →