The National Trust has banned trail hunting on its land in England and Wales amid controversy over a huntsman.

In its annual meeting in October, the trust voted in favour of no longer issuing licenses for trail hunts on its lands.

Earlier in November, Natural Resources Wales imposed its own ban on trail hunting throughout its properties. The government sponsored body owns approximately 7% of Wales’ countryside and forests.

The activity, in which a scent is laid for hounds and the hunt to follow, has been suspended on trust land since November 2020 following a police investigation into webinars by huntspeople discussing the practice.

In mid Wales, the trust owns land including Powis Castle – which does not include the surrounding estate – Pen-y-Fan in the Brecon Beacons, and Abergwesyn Crossing. The trust declined to disclose specific locations for which trail hunting licences had previously been granted.

The move comes after a senior huntsman was convicted of telling people to use the sport as a “smokescreen” for illegal fox hunting, and a vote by National Trust members to halt it on the charity’s land.

The activity, in which a scent is laid for hounds and the hunt to follow, has been suspended on trust land since November 2020 following a police investigation into webinars by huntspeople discussing the practice.

Mark Hankinson, director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association (MFHA), was in October found guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ Court of intentionally encouraging huntsmen to use legal trail hunting as “a sham and a fiction” for the unlawful chasing and killing of animals during the webinars.

The huntsman’s illicit advice was exposed after saboteurs leaked footage to police and the media of the online discussions.

Hunting wild mammals with dogs was banned in Wales and England by the Hunting Act of 2004, but trail hunting involves people on foot or horseback following a scent along a pre-determined route with hounds, and is legal.

In a statement, the trust said: “Our Board of Trustees considered a wide range of factors, including but not limited to, the recent guilty verdict in the court case of the Masters of the Foxhounds Association.”

At the time of the October meeting, no trail hunt licenses had been issued for National trust lands within Wales, following a suspension of the practice in November 2020 when the video of Hankinson first emerged.

The trust stated that around 9% of total trust ownership was licensed for trail hunting in the 2018/19 season, and 3% in the 2019/20 season.