29th July 2008

Police act over hare coursing

POLICE are continuing efforts to combat hare coursing in Cambridgeshire with the Rural Community Action Team (RCAT) tackling the problem head-on.

On Wednesday, 27-year-old Dean Lee Marney from Sidcup, Kent, pleaded guilty at Fenland Magistrates' Court in Wisbech to trespassing in pursuit of game. The next day, Marney was ordered to pay fines of £285 at Peterborough Magistrates Court.

The court heard that on Tuesday, February 26, Marney entered private farmland near Sixteen Foot Bank, March, with a dog and was spotted poaching by an RCAT officer who arrested him.

PC Alan Peart, from RCAT, said: "I hope that this strengthens the message that hare coursing in Cambridgeshire will not be tolerated.

"I would like to thank everyone who helped with this particular case and for their continued efforts to protect our county from this anti-social behaviour."

25th July 2008

Wildlife brutally slaughtered

DEAD foxes, rabbits and deer have been found in fields around Brampton prompting fears that poachers are brutally killing animals.

Parish councillor Ian Pennington believes Brampton’s wildlife is being “decimated” after he found two fox cubs slaughtered on a public path.

He said he had also received reports from concerned animal lovers about dead rabbits, foxes and deer found in woodland and fields nearby

25th July 2008

Otis Ferry denies monitor attack

Huntsman Otis Ferry has been granted bail to await a trial after denying charges of robbery and assault. At Gloucester Crown Court on Friday the 25-year-old denied robbing Susan Grima of a video camera on 21 November 2007 at Lower Sewell, near Cheltenham.

The allegations arise from an incident when two women were monitoring the activities of the Heythrop Hunt in the North Cotswolds last November.

Otis Ferry, son of singer Bryan Ferry, is due to stand trial on 15 September.

24th July 2008

Man found guilty of hare coursing

A CARLUKE man found guilty of hare coursing has been warned he could go to jail. David Scott (40), and another man, Robert Clements (44), from Blantyre, used three lurchers to hunt a juvenile hare on farmland near Stirling.

The city’s Sheriff Court on Monday heard that police officers turned up at the fields in Cowie in response to a phone call from a local farmer. When they approached the men, the officers saw Clements try to dispose of a dead hare by throwing it down an embankment

22nd July 2008

Men guilty of hare coursing are warned they face prison

TWO men found guilty of hare coursing yesterday have been warned they face a jail sentence. Robert Clements, 44, and David Scott, 40, used three lurchers to hunt a juvenile hare on farmland near Stirling.

The city's sheriff court heard that police officers turned up at the fields in Cowie in response to a phone call from a local farmer. When they approached the men, the officers saw Clements try to dispose of a dead hare by throwing it down an embankment

21st July 2008

Film delays fox death prosecution

A huntsman who was due to be prosecuted for allegedly killing a fox has had the case against him adjourned while his legal team views filmed evidence.

Julian Barnfield, 44, is a professional huntsman with the Heythrop Hunt that covers Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. He was due to answer three charges of hunting a wild mammal with dogs.

Cheltenham magistrates agreed to put the plea hearing back to 4 August after his solicitors asked the prosecution to serve them with hunt monitor footage

19th July 2008

High court sets new hearing for hunting ban case

The ban on hunting with dogs took another twist last night after a High Court judge said the case of the first man to be prosecuted for hunting foxes should be returned to court.

But the saga of the case of Tony Wright, the Exmoor Foxhounds huntsman, is no nearer being finished – and until then almost all the other major prosecutions of West hunts cannot proceed.

In a highly technical hearing at the High Court in London, the Crown Prosecution Service appealed against a decision by a judge in Exeter last year. The Exeter judge had acquitted Mr Wright on appeal, overturning an earlier guilty verdict by magistrates.

The CPS won a partial victory yesterday – if the High Court had thrown out their case it would have effectively spelled the end for that and other prosecutions, and thrown into doubt any effective use of the hunt ban in the future

17th July 2008

Tetcott Hunt backs decision to sack former hunt master

SUPPORTERS of the Tetcott Hunt have backed the committee's decision not to renew the contract of the hunt's former master, Andrew Bozdan. Mr Bozdan was sacked just two days before his wife Rosemary died, leaving him homeless and jobless.

The move was described as “cruel and callous” by one hunt member and a number of signatures were added to a petition objecting to the hunt committee's decision

14th July 2008

Landowners and hunt join forces in legal battle to ban saboteurs

A group of 84 landowners is backing a hunt’s attempt to ban saboteurs from almost every piece of open land and countryside in West Sussex.

Their aim is to win a common law injunction against trespassing and harassment by activists from the West Sussex Wildlife Protection Group and its two main organisers, Simon and Jaine Wilde, under the Protection and Harassment Act 1997.

If an injunction is awarded at the High Court this week, the activists will be banned from 10,000 acres of land, nearly the whole of the county, except for large public estates, footpaths and public highways

8th July 2008

Pair used dogs to kill hunt and deer

TWO hunters from South Tyneside have appeared in a Scottish court after they used dogs to chase and kill a deer. Paul Reed, 26, of Halstead Place, and a 16-year-old, also from South Shields, were spared jail when they appeared at Jedburgh Sheriff Court.

A third accused - 19-year-old Dane Ord, of Widdrington Avenue, Horsley Hill - failed to turn up, and a warrant was granted for his arrest. All three admitted, while acting with a juvenile, wilfully killing a roe deer using dogs and deliberately hunting a roe deer with three dogs