Ten years after the ban, why are there still hunt saboteurs?

If you don’t hunt or listen to The Archers, you might be forgiven for assuming that hunt saboteurs had become obsolete. Hunting with hounds was banned ten years ago, and the law is respected: convictions for illegal hunting against registered hunts are rare. But as this year’s season draws to a close, masked saboteurs are still a regular sight. Some made headlines in January when a video emerged of a group, faces covered, beating a hunt master unconscious with iron bars.

What few people seemed to ask was: why? Why on earth do the protest groups still exist when the ban they demanded came in so long ago? And when you consider the effects of the ban on the animals that tend to be devoured by foxes, indeed on animals in general, why won’t they countenance the argument that hunting — and keeping the fox population down — was actually good for all animals?