The Scottish governments promise to strengthen the hunting ban has fallen through, a setback in the promise they
had made a few years ago.
It was in 2017, three years ago, that the Scottish government promised to strengthen the hunting act in Scotland. However, it seems to be that the promise made in 2017 was nothing more than a headliner grabber, or a show to make it appear that the Scottish government was strengthening the act to protect animals like foxes.
Last year in January, the Scottish government again promised to strengthen the hunting act. However, they dropped their pledged in September 2019 of that year.
The loopholes in Scotland's hunting act has made the law a disaster and easy to exploit. It doesn't really ban hunting with dogs in Scotland, which is why charities like One Kind have been calling for a real ban; to protect our wild animals against people hunting them with dogs.
Although hunting with dogs (to some extent) has been illegal in Scotland since 2002, the law has been continually broken, with no arrests made for those breaking the law, as of 2016. In 2020, people are still getting away with hunting animals like foxes, like it's business as usual.
Despite people breaking the law, through potentially exploiting loopholes, the Scottish government has failed to act in protecting our wild animals through not acting on strengthing the hunting act to close the loopholes. Public opinion in Scotland heavily favors a real ban on hunting, footage of a fox being hunted earlier this year resulted in calls from the public for stricter laws on hunting, while in December 2019 a poll found that almost 90% of people favored a hunting ban.
The Scottish government has now had three years to act on its promise to protect animals like foxes from being hunted. We don't need hollow promises that are made just to grab headlines, or make it look like the government is doing something to act on this issue, when it's not. We need real action to protect wild animals. The time to protect wild animals is now.
They cannot wait.
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