Tim Bonner: Tackling hare poaching

In times past it was the plough that always followed the combine but now, unfortunately, it is more likely to be a battered four-wheel drive full of lurchers. Hare poaching is endemic across the east of England and in seemingly any other area with a significant hare population. As the harvest has progressed over the past few weeks, reports of hare poaching have returned as predictably as the rising of the sun, and they will continue all winter, or at least until the fields are too wet to drive across.

The Hunting Act 2004 has had little, if any, impact on the poaching of hares with sight hounds other than to prohibit legitimate coursing which promoted the conservation and preservation of the hare population. Poaching and associated trespass and criminality has become a significant rural crime issue in many areas. Such criminality has a range of secondary impacts including fear of crime, the cost to farming operations of securing land from trespass in vehicles, and in extreme cases the culling of hare populations to discourage poachers.

Rural police forces have made hare poaching a priority, but they are hampered both by the disregard many of those involved have for the law, and the limitations of the Game Acts which were passed in the nineteenth century. The Game Acts are the correct way to prosecute 'trespassing in pursuit of game', as the additional evidence required to prove 'hunting' makes prosecutions under the Hunting Act more difficult. The Game Acts, however, do not have consistent and workable powers of seizure for dogs and vehicles which are included in more modern legislation like the Hunting Act and Animal Welfare Act, nor do the Game Acts allow the police to recover costs for kennelling dogs during prosecutions.

At the beginning of March we wrote to the Secretaries of State for Defra and the Home Office as part of a coalition - along with the NFU and the RSPCA - asking for urgent action including amending the Game Acts and removing the £1,000 limit on penalties that can be imposed. Obviously there have been other issues on the Government's plate since then, but for the sake of rural communities and the hare population it is crucial that by the time the combines start rolling next year the police and prosecutors have a stronger hand to play against the hare poachers who are the blight of so much of the countryside.

Our 'Course of Action on Hare Poaching' document can be found here.