A kennelman of the Wynnstay Hunt on the Clwyd Shropshire border, has been jailed for attacking a badger sett with terriers. Prince Charles regualarly rides with the hunt, otherwise known as Sir Watkins Williams-Wynn's Foxhounds. The Princess Royal has also taken her children out hunting with the pack.

The kennelman, Simon Bullock, who lives at the hunt kennels near Wrexham and is also Chairman of the Fell and Moorland Working Terrier Club for North Wales, had been caught at the badger sett last December, with several terriers and digging equipment, accompanied by another man, Robert Lee Hicks.

They were both convicted at Redditch magistrates court in October, for interfering with the badger sett and sending a terrier down it. Both men claimed that they had been hunting foxes and rabbits and that the incursion into the badger sett was "accidental." However magistrate Mr Harvey Morgan sentenced both men to three months in prison for each of two charges, with the sentences to run consecutively. They were also ordered to pay £100 costs. The magistrate ordered equipment, including nets, a spade, pegs and an electronic animal locater, to be destroyed, but an application for the destruction of one of Bullock's dogs, called Badger, was refused.

Published in Wildlife Guardian, Issue 30, Winter 1994/95

Note: In July 1994, Prince Charles told Country Life, 'Badger damage is a price that must be paid when balancing nature.'