The latest investigations, breaking stories and special reports from BTM. We expose the criminality and intimidation of so-called hunt saboteurs across the UK, giving a voice to the rural communities they target.
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At the League Against Cruel Sports rally outside Parliament on 9 May, a foxhound lay quietly at the campaigners' feet. Handled by Charlotte Smith of the Hull Wildlife Protectors, it became the unofficial mascot of the day, photographed alongside the broadcaster Chris Packham and his stepdaughter, the presenter Megan
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On 18 June, voters in Makerfield will go to the polls in a by-election that could return Andy Burnham to Parliament and trigger a Labour leadership contest. The same day, the Defra consultation on banning trail hunting closes. It is worth asking why twelve MPs have spent the run-up to
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Hunt saboteurs are no strangers to confronting those who support legal trail hunting. Over the years, their tactics have become depressingly familiar: harassment, stalking, verbal abuse and physical intimidation – all disguised as activism. Even against that grim backdrop, however, the recent conduct of one sab has managed to lower the
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Billed as a watershed moment, a rally that would shift the anti-trail hunting debate and energise the movement, the Leage Against Cruel Sports' (LACS) rally outside Parliament on Saturday 9 May was something of a damp squib, defined by minimal attendees and somewhat baffling speeches. It was just the
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On 2 May, members of Nottingham Hunt Sabs, West Yorkshire Hunt Sabs and South Northants Hunt Sabs were active in the countryside near Kings Newton, where the Dove Valley hunt was meeting that day. According to a source familiar with the day's movements, the saboteurs were masked, their
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There is a particular breed of animal rights lover who wakes each morning convinced that the hills and hedgerows of Britain cannot turn on their axis without their personal supervision. Derek Farr is one of them. Not out in the field, but from the comfort of a Facebook comment box,
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The Consultation On 26 March, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs launched a formal public consultation on banning trail hunting in England and Wales - a practice introduced after the Hunting Act 2004 as a lawful alternative to fox hunting, using an animal-scented rag. The government has given
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Now that the trail hunting season is drawing to a close, hunt saboteurs have wasted no time in finding new ways to terrorise local communities. If they can't disrupt a legal hunt, they'll disrupt something else. It really is them against the countryside. Members of the
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For someone who campaigns against legal trail hunting, Deborah Hall has developed quite a taste for the chase. Deborah Hall is no ordinary sab. As BTM has previously reported, the Cornwall-based coordinator of Action Against Foxhunting is known to push well beyond the boundaries of reasonable protest. From her failed
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The Rotherham MP's emotive social media post reveals a government more interested in settling old class scores than listening to rural Britain Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, took to Facebook recently to declare herself "disgusted" that people still hunt foxes "under the smoke
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Chris Packham just so happens to stumble across the perfect sob story while out for a stroll in the Dorset countryside. During the now-infamous "Operation Smokescreen" livestream on 7 February, BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham spent five hours following the Blackmore & Sparkford Vale Hunt around Bishop'
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A Kent-based hunt saboteur has been caught using a fake identity on popular dating app Hinge in what appears to be a deliberate attempt to infiltrate the hunting and countryside community. Carly Ahlen, a regular with West Kent Hunt Saboteurs and founder of GABO Wildlife, created a profile under the