Yesterday the Scottish Government passed a law to effectively ban fox hunting.

The new law means that hunting foxes with packs of dogs is illegal as is so called ‘trail hunting’.

Two exceptions have been included which will allow:

• the use of two dogs to flush wild mammals in certain circumstances, or use more than two dogs under licence in exceptional circumstances.
• the use of one dog underground, to try to flush foxes out.

These exceptions have been included to reduce the chance of a successful legal challenge to the whole act.

It is important to note however that the existence of a licensing system for otherwise banned actions inevitably means that such activities will sometimes be allowed. The record of Nature Scot’s (NS) licensing section has caused concern in the past and will need to be closely scrutinised in the future. It is illegal to kill a badger in England but thousands have been ‘culled’ under licenses issued by Natural England, NS’s equivalent. Beaver are a ‘protected species’ in Scotland but NS has issued licenses to kill them and notoriously staff suggested that they might be good to eat!

No doubt there will be strong pressure to issue licenses to allow packs of dogs to continue ‘flushing foxes to guns’ and the arguments for this and legal challenges to licence refusal are already being rehearsed by hunt supporters.

This act is cause for celebration for those who oppose cruelty to wild mammals certainly, but we will be keeping a close eye on the working on the licensing system and the enforcement of the law.