I was invited to Foxycology with my friend and TV presenter Wendy Turner Webster. The event was really great and very interesting. The evening for The League of Cruel sports, headed up by the lovely charismatic TV personality & animal lover Bill Oddie gave the year’s run down on issues with Fox Hunting, trapping and relocation of foxes over the last 12 months in the UK.
I already work with a rescued fox called Angel who is identical to all the farmed foxes killed every year, so foxes are very much part of my life. A good friend of mine helps to rescue and rehabilitate wild red foxes also and I have had the privilege to work up close with these animals recently.
On Boxing Day 2014, The League of Cruel Sports released this very moving and utterly brilliant advert which was screened across cinemas in the West of the UK. It shows a mother leaving her baby in a cot in her house and running for her life across fields only to be finally murdered by a pack of hunting dogs. The really stomach wrenching part is when the camera pans back to the baby left alone in his cot, to obviously die alone of starvation. This shows the correlation between a mother dying and leaving her baby and also how a mother fox can be murdered only to leave her babies to die of starvation alone in their den.
The League of Cruel Sports have some very important campaigns on the horizon, which include:
Fox Hunting with Hounds
Dog Fighting
Game Shooting
Badger Culling
Snaring
Bull Fighting
Greyhound Racing
I am very much against hunting with hounds and have seen a hunt go through my home village many times. I am also shocked to learn that snaring is still very much a part of UK farmer life resulting in the slow suffocation and strangulation of many animals across the UK every year. I am also aware of the issues behind the trapping and relocation of urban foxes to rural areas, having seen too much of this while living in London. The fox will die, as it is placed into a habitat where is simply does not know how to find food….the same if you were to put a rural fox into an urban area.
To support The League of Cruel Sports please visit their website: http://www.league.org.uk/
Watch my Angels for the Innocent Campaign against the culling of foxes to produce fox fur clothing below: