BEHIND THE MASKS

Derek Farr There is a particular breed of animal rights lover who wakes each morning convinced that the hills and hedgerows of Britain cannot turn on their axis without their personal supervision. Derek Farr is one of them. Not out in the field, but from the comfort of a Facebook comment box, where he has appointed himself a one-man adjudicator on how trail hunts should conduct their perfectly legal activities. When he is not online telling hunts what to do with their hounds,

The Consultation   On 26 March, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs launched a formal public consultation on banning trail hunting  in England and Wales - a practice introduced after the Hunting Act 2004 as a lawful alternative to fox hunting, using an animal-scented rag.   The government has given the public, landowners, hunts, and rural groups twelve weeks to respond. The issues under consideration include how trail hunting should be legally defined, the

Now that the trail hunting season is drawing to a close, hunt saboteurs have wasted no time in finding new ways to terrorise local communities. If they can't disrupt a legal hunt, they'll disrupt something else. It really is them against the countryside.   Members of the Brighton Hunt Saboteurs and Shropshire Monitors have been descending on villages in gangs to remove flags – dressed head to toe in black and faces hidden behind balaclavas. Uninvited, unwanted and entirely un

For someone who campaigns against legal trail hunting, Deborah Hall has developed quite a taste for the chase.   Deborah Hall is no ordinary sab. As BTM has previously reported , the Cornwall-based coordinator of Action Against Foxhunting is known to push well beyond the boundaries of reasonable protest. From her failed petition to ban trail hunting on council land to her bizarre crusade against a street sign in Madron, Hall has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to escala