The admirable and irrepressible Mark Avery has launched a new e-petition (his third on this subject) calling on the Westminster Government to ban driven grouse shooting.
The petition needs to reach 10,000 signatures to trigger a written response from the Govt, and 100,000 signatures to trigger a parliamentary debate (but only if the Govt’s petition committee deems it appropriate!).
The first e-petition reached 22,399 signatures in 11 months. The second e-petition reached 33,655 in six months (the Govt shortened the time e-petitions could run from 12 to 6 months).
What will it be this time? Well that very much depends on you!
If you want to put an end to the mass slaughter of wildlife on driven grouse moors (and we’re not just talking about the ‘sport’ shooting of red grouse, we’re talking about all the other species that are killed, some legally and others illegally, because they’re inconvenient to the grouse moor manager – species like mountain hares, foxes, stoats, weasels, crows, and of course, the shooting, trapping and poisoning of birds of prey like the hen harrier, golden eagle, red kite, peregrine, buzzard etc), then please sign the petition and share it widely with your friends, family, colleagues, social media contacts etc.
PLEASE SIGN HERE
Please note, as it’s a Govt e-petition it’s only open to UK citizens.
Let’s put an end to obscene bloodbaths like this:
Raptor Persecution UK 
Done, and mailed to all I know.
Done ….4,012 votes and counting
Done!
Passed onto our group too.
Hi RPS, Could you please let me know if this petition is only to ban driven grouse shooting in England or is it also to ban driven grouse shooting in Scotland and the rest of the UK
I can’t seem to find any information on this point either on this blog or on Mark Avery’s blog or in the wording of the petition.
I was under the impression that such matters of shooting and conservation were devolved to the Scottish Government. If this is the case then how will banning driven grouse shooting in England bring about an end to the obscene killing of mountain hares in Scotland?
I wish Mark Avery every success with his petition but in all matters such as these transparency is of the utmost importance.
Ronnie, I’m sure that if Westminster banned driven grouse shooting in England Holyrood would probably follow their lead and ban it in Scotland.
And if driven grouse shooting is banned then the culling of mountain hares would most likely stop too.
Signed, lets consign this atrocious activity to the history books.
Cruel and revolting.
That picture of the massacred hares is horrific. How is it that our fellow beings are standing there grinning over them? So sad.
Signed and shared. Why would you stand in front of all those poor bodies for a photo?!
Presumably because it is what they are employed to do and they are proud of their good work. That’s the problem, that this slaughter is legal.
But we have to remember they are exercising ‘voluntary restraint’ – think how many more they would be killing if they were not so ‘restrained’…
It’s sick!
Often what people fail to realise is that much of the management carried out in order to maintain grouse populations also increases populations of other species. Licenses for killing ‘vermin’ are legal for a reason, if some predators were left unmanaged, there would be no ecosystem left and habitats would be gone. One could argue that is natures course however in this day and age, rural habitats are in decline due to human expansion and humans removing rural areas, remove the capacity for an unmanaged ecosystem without allowing more species to become extinct. People saying shooting hares is inhumane…what about leaving them to starve? Or having to remove them from areas populated by humans because the expanding population means they don’t have enough to eat?