I am contacting you in regard to hunters using National Trust land illegally. It is my belief that this ban was implemented as a result of the 1997 Bateman Report. Then in 2021 your members voted in overwhelming numbers to ban trail hunting.

Since then, hunts have not respected this and have continued to hunt on National Trust land, as we have recently seen on the Channel 4 news footage. There is no denying that the hunting of any animal is abhorrently cruel but to hunt them on land where they are meant to be granted refuge makes a mockery of the law.

The National Trust’s standard response is no longer acceptable. It is just not enough to ask people to call the police if they see anything illegal on their land. It is your responsibility to act when a person/s commits armed trespass and to protect visitors to your land. There are many avenues you can explore to enforce the ban such as, the use of drones to allow rangers to patrol National Trust land safely and effectively. Further to this the hunts could make you aware of meets ahead of time so you know which land you may need to patrol. Lastly, a Community Protection Notice or injunction would not be unreasonable after all the collation of evidence which shows the hunt blatantly disregarding the ban year after year.
As a supporter of the National Trust I am deeply disappointed that this has not been addressed sooner. Your cause statement claims that you are Europe’s largest conservation charity, looking after nature and working to help it thrive. Disappointingly I do not believe that the National Trust is doing all it can to protect nature if it continues to sit back and allow hunts to abuse their land and hunt wildlife illegally. If you do not act then you become an accessory to their persecution of British wildlife.

I do hope to receive a positive response, one that details how the National Trust plans to tackle this rather than a scripted response which holds no weight.

Yours sincerely