READERS should be aware that any Bill to ban hunting with dogs will hit a far wider target than simply traditional hunts.

While animal rights campaigns claim only to want to ban mounted hunting with hounds, people are increasingly aware that producing law that achieves only this is nigh on impossible.

The motivation for hunting with dogs falls into two clear categories, that of recreation and that of necessity. In most cases both overlap causing legislators an even bigger problem. In other words, people are involved in hunting with dogs not only because they enjoy it, but also because it provides pest control/population management for farmers.

It has been widely acknowledged in a number of pieces of independent research, that the use of dogs for pest control is of considerable value to upland gamekeepers and shepherds. This may not involve packs of hounds, but simply the use of one or two dogs: lurchers, terriers, sometimes beagles or basset hounds, to seek and locate pests, often for others to shoot.

In the recent Burns Inquiry into hunting, even the much criticised Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) evidence concluded that up to 75,000 foxes per year were killed as a result of the use of dogs, yet only 16,000 of those were attributed to mounted hunts.

All of this poses a very serious question, not only to potential legislators, but also for thousands of owners of dogs that instinctively go hunting. The onus will be on the owners to prove that they were not intending to hunt a wild animal, as opposed to the police to prove that they were. Therefore, as things stand at the moment the proposed legislation will mean that somebody taking two dogs for a walk can be subject to 'stop and search' procedures, and required to prove that it was not their intention to pursue a wild animal. This could put intolerable pressure on a depleted rural police force that relies very heavily on the goodwill of just the sort of people likely to be subject to this harassment.

Furthermore, farmers and landholders will be disinclined to continue to allow legitimate access for owners and their dogs on their land, on the off chance that they may be dragged into situations where they will need to explain to the police why the individuals were there.

It is this kind of properly regulated access that provides the eyes and ears of the rural community, not only for the police, but also for farmers and landholders. It is these eyes and ears that identify a myriad of problems from a sheep tangled in the brambles, to a gang of commercial poachers, to the whereabouts of straying cattle, to the presence of thieves, burglars or arsonists.

It is time that people were made fully aware that proposals to ban 'hunting with dogs' like any other issue based on prejudice rather than common sense, will hit a far wider target at a far larger cost than that which its creators may have originally intended.

Be warned.

Barrie Wade (NWTF)

Deborah Blount (ALC)

(addresses supplied)