The National Trust has cancelled trail hunting for the South Shropshire Hunt at the Long Mynd. It has bowed to pressure from the League Against Cruel Sports, raising fears that one of the key heritage organisations in England & Wales is back in the pocket of animal rights extremists.
LACS successfully infiltrated the National Trust in the 1990s, leading to its adoption of a report by Patrick Bateson that deer feel stress when hunted. The National Trust went on to ban staghunting with hounds on its land in the South-West of England, with disastrous consequences for its red deer herd.
The trust put the announcement that the remaining dates of the season were cancelled on its website. It comes after protestors sent the National Trust photographs were taken by protestors of a fox escaping from South Shropshire Hunt hounds in December.