Tracy Worcester argues that to put the environment first, and to support field sports as well, are complementary points of view
THE Green Party selected me as a candidate for the European parliament for the South-west in April. I strongly support that party as it is the only one targeting the root causes of social and economic breakdown, rather than merely treating the symptoms. Greens see how an increasingly global economy fuels job insecurity, the widening gap between rich and poor, pollution, crime and drug addiction. They alone demand fundamental changes in economic policy to shift development from global dependence to local interdependence. The Green cause is about protecting ourselves from unaccountable power - in the boardrooms, in Brussels and in Washington.
After my selection, however, a few party members objected to my participation in last May's Countryside March in London. They did not accept my opposition to the Foster Bill to ban foxhunting with hounds. The party manifesto is against foxhunting, and I am not. Although the issue is peripheral to more fundamental concerns, to prevent friction I resigned as a Green Party candidate.
I neither hunt myself nor believe the concerns of many Green members for the welfare of the fox to be trivial. However, I fear that an immediate ban on hunting would result in unprecedented destruction. Some conservationists agree. The former chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, Jim Barrington, who now runs the Wildlife Network, believes foxes would suffer under a ban. David Bellamy says that, from the air, anyone can tell where foxhunting is permitted by the number of copses and hedgerows: the prairies are those areas without hunting. Copses are kept as breeding areas. Landowners preserve hedges, verges and stone walls for hunting, on which many livelihoods rely.
Furthermore, farmers need to protect their livestock from the fox. If hunting were outlawed they would resort to easy culling techniques: gassing, snaring, shooting and poisoning. These, inevitably, would kill other animals. Hunting leaves foxes in peace for half the year. A total ban would give them no respite. The fox is far safer as an integral part of a rural culture than as a scavenger on the margins of industrially farmed land or towns. So if hunting were banned, public sympathy for the fox would not guarantee humane culling.
The anti-hunt campaigners have the wrong villains. The countryside is being torn apart by a debt-based economic system that forces businesses to grow to repay capital and interest. To compete in the global economy, corporations centralise production and distribution, and comb the globe for cheaper labour, natural resources and lower environmental standards.
This global economic structure leads to social and economic insecurity. Tragically, many people switch the blame for their hardships to racial, cultural and class differences. Their frustration stems from their weakness in the face of an economic system that enables a few powerful corporations to control almost every aspect of our lives.
Cheap imports undermine local production. Supermarket food has travelled, on average, more than 2,000 miles. On the way, it loses its nutritional value, jobs are siphoned-off and profits are invested in the global money markets. The agri-chemical companies persuade politicians to subsidise maximisation of production and area payments that favour large farms over small and encourage the use of herbicides and nitrates over organic methods. The result is that an average of 6,250 farmers and labourers leave the land every year.
If the hunting ban came in under the Greens, many obvious problems would be solved. Organic farming, together with additional conservation measures, would protect and stimulate diversity of plants and animals. A Green government could replace the contributions made today by the hunt towards conserving and planting wildlife habitats such as copses and hedgerows. Relocalisation of the economy would provide stable employment and revitalise community life, removing economic dependence on hunting.
Hunting is not a black and white issue, but it is emotive. Too many people consider that if you are not entirely on their side, then you are on the other. As previously stated, my opposition to Foster's Bill was based on the belief that it would make things worse for the fox and that it lacked measures to alleviate the effects on local economies and the environment. A ban is not a cost-free option.
Environmentalists must put aside marginal differences and unite to change this new world order, likewise the Green Party. We must all work to sustain the small shops, manufacturing and farms that provide jobs and sustenance in our country. Only by reclaiming control of trade and finances from insatiable corporate appetites can we restore a balance between international and local production. Most of those on the Countryside March are the Green Party's natural allies. I may not be standing for the Greens, but I shall be voting for them.
Tracy Worcester is associate director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture
