The Countryside Alliance and the British Hound Sports Association are working together to take Action for Hunting and we need you to take action too. Find out what you can do to help protect the future of packs of hounds by signing up to Action for Hunting today. The future of hunting is in our hands.

In the last few years, the Alliance has protected hunting by ensuring that legislation such as the Kept Animals Bill, the Agriculture Bill and other regulations were not used to restrict our ability to follow hounds. We have also mobilised our members to defeat proposals to ban trail hunting on council-owned land across the country from Cornwall to Yorkshire, and beaten off many attempts to ban the Boxing Day meets in town centres across the UK.

The BHSA is delighted to be working together on this joint initiative with the Countryside Alliance, highlighting the importance of collaboration ahead of what is anticipated to be a critical general election for hunting next year. Our community can play an important role in helping to form the opinions of decision-makers.

How trail hunting is conducted and perceived will be reflected in future legislation, so we  must take action now to persuade politicians there is no case to strengthen the law.

The threat to our sport is now the greatest since the Hunting Act nearly 20 years ago... Many hunts have a heritage of 150 years or more. It is our duty to protect that heritage. We must think of the next generation and make sue they can go out with a pack of hounds, too.

Every day of the year, the Alliance's legislative team watches for hostile legislation and takes action, often behind the scenes, to ensure that the threats are averted. If it has not been for this vital work, we would already have had votes to strengthen the Hunting Act.

The urgent challenge facing hunting now is the perception that not all hunting activity is legitimate and that not all hunts are operating to the highest standards. Unless we address that perception, further legislation restricting trail hunting and other use of hounds will become inevitable... It is clear there needs to be a change in the way hunting is run to give all stakeholders confidence that we are operating legitimately.