The Virginia General Assembly brought opponents and proponents of fox penning together last February in an attempt to review the practice and work out a mutually acceptable set of rules. David Whitehurst of the Department of Game and Fisheries says that no compromise acceptable to each constituency was reached.
The issue is expected to be revived in the 2013 assembly session, and game officials plan to meet at 9:00 a.m. Thursday, October 18 at the state game office, 4000 West Broad Street, Richmond.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Laura Donahue, Virginia director of HSUS, accuses the game department of dragging their feet on the issue and plans to ask for a moratorium on new fox pens.
In the same article, Madeline Abbitt, a lobbyist representing the Virginia Foxhound Training Preserve Association is quoted as saying, “What a fox enjoys is a good chase. That has been recorded from back in history.”
In my opinion, a better argument might be to try to prove that survival of foxes in the fox pen exceeds the survival rate of foxes in the wild.
Click for Rex Springston’s complete article.
Posted October 17, 2012
