Britain’s countryside is about far more than ‘good versus bad’, or ‘us versus them’

Last month, an article appeared in The Telegraph under the headline ‘Head of Wildlife Trust faces call to resign over hunting past’. An alternative headline could have been: ‘Anti-hunting activists have whole worldview turned upside down’, because that is really the only story here. The hunting past of Mike Bax, head of the Kent Wildlife Trust, is simply proof of what every pragmatic conservationist already knows: that hunting, shooting and fishing go hand in hand with conservation.

Mr Bax has been a dedicated member of the Kent Wildlife Trust for 30 years. During that 30 years he has also hunted with a pack of beagles, which, if you don’t know, are small hounds that prior to the hunting ban would gamely hunt hares. Beagling is one of the most accessible forms of hunting there is; there is no need for an expensive horse because everyone follows on foot, and there are packs all over the country trail hunting within the law.