Hare coursing is a campaign of intimidation, CLA survey finds

Illegal hare coursing has become a sustained campaign of intimidation against rural businesses, a CLA survey has found, with 89% of members responding saying they had been personally targeted. Victims of hare coursing averaged 26 incidents over five years, and some reported more than 100.

What did the CLA survey find?

More than half of those responding, 54%, had received threats of violence from coursers, and 70% had had dead animals left on their land as intimidation. Members reported 11 threats of arson, six cases of vehicle ramming, five incidents of physical violence and four catapult shootings.

The cost falls on the victims: four in five members had spent their own money on security measures, and 3% had spent more than £10,000. The findings were gathered by the association’s national access adviser, Claire Wright, and have fed into a BBC Radio 4 podcast series.

Why do so few incidents reach the police?

Only just over half of those targeted, 52%, reported incidents to the police, a figure the association reads as a lack of confidence that reporting leads anywhere. The CLA said: “For too many rural businesses, illegal hare coursing is more than trespass or wildlife crime; it is a sustained campaign of intimidation carried out by organised criminals.”

Is coursing spreading?

The survey lands a week after the association warned that coursing gangs are pushing west into Wales as police forces in the eastern counties squeeze them out, using the same routes and the same intimidation of anyone who challenges them. Rural crime teams credit the Hunting Act-era police powers introduced in 2022 with raising the cost of coursing in its heartlands, but displacement, not disappearance, is the pattern the CLA describes.

What happens next?

The CLA is using the survey to press for consistent rural crime resourcing across forces, so displacement does not simply hand the problem to whichever county is least equipped. Landowners and keepers who experience coursing are urged to report every incident to the police on 101, or 999 where a crime is in progress, and to log evidence for their local rural crime team. The survey findings are on the CLA website.