Earlier this year, Les Wallace lodged a petition with the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee calling for a comprehensive and independent study into the full economic impacts of driven grouse shooting (see here).
This petition was due to be heard by the Petitions Committee last week but they ran out of time so they deferred their consideration until the next meeting, which took place today.
Basically they agreed that a full independent study was needed but were unsure whether this topic would be covered as part of the Scottish Government’s earlier commitment in May to undertake a review of grouse moor management practices.
There was also confusion as to whether the Scottish Government had actually commissioned this research yet, and the panel agreed to contact the Scottish Government to ask for an update on progress and to ask for a timescale (e.g. start / finish date) of that proposed work.
Good. That’ll be very useful. Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said last week that “good progress is being made” and that she’ll be announcing further details “shortly“. We look forward to hearing more about it.
The Petitions Committee also agreed to write to SNH to ask for their view.
It was noted by the Committee that there had been a number of recent petitions relating to the management of grouse moors and its impact on the environment (e.g. Logan Steele’s petition on behalf of the SRSG calling for the introduction of a game shoot licensing scheme, Harry Huyton’s petition on behalf of OneKind calling for greater protection of mountain hares (we’ll blog more about this soon), and this current petition from Les about the economic impact of driven grouse shooting). Yes, there has been a flurry of petitions – that’s because there is a lot of public concern about what this industry has been allowed to get away with for so very long!
And isn’t it great to see it all being laid bare for political and public scrutiny!
Today’s Petitions Committee meeting can be watched on Scottish Parliament TV here (the discussion about Les’s petition starts at 09.31.21 and ends at 09.36).
Raptor Persecution UK 
At least Scottish Parliament discuss it, the English debate might be better described as a farce?
123,077 sought to ban driven grouse shooting with only 25,322 seeking to protect the sport yet they secured a disproportionate time allocation & did not have to evidence claims made about their traditional pursuit – that’s English democracy?
I was quite pleased with the hearing and my MSP was supportive so thanks Angus. Helping to poke things in the right direction hopefully and so glad it was commented upon that a lot of petitions related to DGS are cropping up, I’ve always believed that ‘offensives’ coming from various directions simultaneously (or nearly so) compliment each other and it works better than a drop by drop approach. My main concern is that elements that should be incorporated in the study might still manage to be left out – in advance apologies for bringing them up yet again. In the background info I mentioned the possible (in fact almost certain) negative effect that muirburn has on water quality and therefore recreational angling – a big deal in Scotland with salmon and trout. An extensive part of many of the big name rivers must run through grouse moors and therefore redds likely to be silted up, water acidified, aquatic life (food) reduced and spate conditions exacerbated. So there’s a potentially big economic/environmental issue there and an even bigger political one in that the bodies that are charged with the responsibility for looking after fish and anglers have specifically NOT made an issue of this although they’ve cried havoc over fish farms, industrial fishing, mergansers, goosanders, cormorants, mini hydro schemes, seals and ludicrously the beaver being brought back. But when the problem is a fellow field sport ….silence. That’s really shocking, but it will make things worse in the end, this is actually a very big deal indeed.
The other one is the potential for natural flood alleviation techniques to be brought in on a big enough scale in the uplands to significantly reduce flooding in farmland, businesses and homes downstream. We’re talking of things like the planting of trees, inserting large woody material into watercourses to make leaky dams and in many places the return of the beaver. The number of pilot projects that are validating this approach are growing, even the FC now has plans for a trial beaver reintroduction into the Forest of Dean to stop a flood prone village getting hit by it again. This is a separate and far less contestable point than does muir burn cause flooding (probably) and the options already mentioned along with peat bog restoration mean substantial potential in reducing or even avoiding future floods. The petition said we really should be looking at rolling out a national plan the info from each scheme is just corroborating that from previous ones. This is where it gets uncomfortable for grouse moors because it is unlikely any politician will turn round to the public and say appropriate tree planting to reduce flooding won’t happen because it might compromise shooting the grice. A very positive thing could happen here if DGS isn’t allowed to block it.
Sorry for bringing these points up yet again, but they are really worth banging on about to anyone that might listen because how can grouse shooters argue against them? If anyone can mention them to their MSPs it wouldn’t hurt and I’d be most grateful. Another thing might be the importance of a bit of rewilding to provide natural fire breaks that reduce the ludicrously high fire risk incurred in much of our uplands by the vast, monotonous stretches of flammable grouse moor. How much public money gets swallowed up fighting fires because of DGS? Thanks RPUK for promoting the petition from the beginning much appreciated. Not one single rep from the pro DGS lobby signed the petition in spite of their assertions that it’s great for rural communities. In fact they never mentioned it publicly at all to my knowledge. That means they don’t believe what they’ve been saying any more than we do and they’ve been shitting on rural communities as much as they have on birds of prey. Bastards.
Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan have teamed up with a NZ cider company Old Mout to raise funds to save the kiwi. That’s it nothing at all to do with grouse shooting, badger culls or fox hunting. Guess what happened – the trolls came out in force to tell Old Mout what a knob/liar Chris P is and that they would now never consider buying their cider. Yes the ‘real conservationists’ came out of the woodwork to spoil and sour a valid and worthwhile project to exercise their spite, vindictiveness and bile. Not that any of us need reminding of why we need to win, but if you want to click on to Old Mout’s FB page to congratulate them on their initiative and good taste in working with Chris and Michaela not a bad way to spend a couple of minutes. Cheers!!!
Done.
Fascinating stuff, Les, and very well expressed.
Good work Les and RPUK-great to see things moving and down to all of us to keep up the pressure.
Aye, great stuff Les. Thanks for your efforts.
Slowly maybe we are at last moving forward, time will tell, just make sure Fergus Ewing is kept in check.