‘POSTMAN Pat’ will make a special delivery to Exmoor National Park Authority (ENPA) next month to highlight an animal rights campaign which wants to force local hunts to disband.

The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) will deliver more than 10,000 postcards to the National Park Centre, in Dunster, on May 1, calling for an end to ‘trail hunting’ on the authority’s land.

The league’s ‘Postman Pat’ will make the delivery, complete with his red van, black and white cat, and mail sacks stuffed with postcards.

The postcards, signed by the public, say ‘trail hunting’ is a myth invented by hunts so they can continue with foxhunting.

ENPA is one of only three national park authorities in England and Wales which still allow ‘trail hunts’ on their land.

Ten other authorities have policies which prevent fox hunts from using their land.

League senior communications officer Mike Nicholas said ‘trail hunting’ had recently been described by Chief Supt Matt Longman, the most senior police officer in England with responsibility for fox hunting crime, as a ‘smokescreen for illegal fox hunting’.

The postcard campaign wants ENPA to ban ‘trail hunting’ on land it controls and has been backed by the Time for Change Coalition Against Hunting, which represents 34 animal welfare and environmental organisations.

Mr Nicholas said: “Despite a fox hunting ban coming into force in 2005, the LACS compiles reports showing hundreds of eyewitness sightings of suspected illegal fox hunting every year, some of which took place on our national parks.”

An ENPA spokesperson said fox hunting was not allowed on the seven per cent of Exmoor which it owned, but trail hunting licences were issued because it was a lawful activity.

The spokesperson said: “To the best of our ability, we base our decisions on what is lawful and do not discriminate or consider it our role to otherwise ban an activity.

“Our statutory role, in this instance, is limited to the land that is owned by the authority and our powers therefore do not extend to other land.

“Most land that the authority owns does not include the hunting rights, and where the authority does own the hunting rights they are not exercised.

“We are not a hunting regulator and have no specific role to provide expertise in this area.

“It is important, therefore, that if anybody witnesses any activity that they believe to be illegal, they report it to the police.

“We have not witnessed evidence of illegal activity on authority land but will continue to monitor all licenced activities on our land to ensure that they fall within the law.”