Year: 2019

Here’s the second distorted news item from this week’s Shooting Times (we blogged about the first one here and we’ll be blogging about the third, and most perhaps most disingenuous one next).

The editor’s stated emphasis on “communicating the truth and demanding high standards” seems to have fallen upon deaf ears again.

Here’s the article:

This time the unidentified author has come late to the party on Chris Packham’s CBE and his impending visit to the Palace but has regurgitated the crap published by The Telegraph on 22 January where it was suggested that Chris was going to “interrogate” the royals about grouse shooting. We debunked the Telegraph’s fake news at the time (here) but Shooting Times has published a similarly contorted piece, not quite as contrived as the Telegraph’s article but still with an inappropriately distorted headline.

Chris has not ‘taken aim’ at the royals – on the contrary, if you read his interview with the Radio Times he praises the bravery of the two princes for speaking out about mental health and says he intends to use his CBE “to open more doors and have more conversations“, emulating their courage by speaking out about issues that are important to him.

How’s that ‘taking aim’ at the royals?

Shoddy, Shooting Times, very shoddy. And not dissimilar to the alleged ‘dirty tricks’ and smear campaigns levelled against Chris by others from within the game shooting sector.

Further to last night’s blog about the GWCT’s claim that the preliminary results of the Werritty grouse moor review will be presented at a GWCT conference in March (see here), we’ve received confirmation from the Werritty Review secretary, Karen Rentoul, that GWCT does not have any prior insight to the recommendations of the group.

GWCT has since amended the information on its website.

Here’s what it said this morning:

And here’s what it says now:

GWCT also tweeted this explanation:

Shooting Times is always good for a laugh but the latest edition (30 Jan 2019) is particularly entertaining.

It starts with Patrick Galbraith’s editorial where he discusses the “few rogues” (ahem) causing problems for the shooting industry and emphasises the importance of ‘communicating the truth and demanding high standards’.

Sadly, three of the six news articles that follow Patrick’s editorial can only be described as distorting the truth and meeting low standards.

We’re going to blog about each of those three news items separately, starting with this one:

The author of this news item is not identified but whoever wrote it seems to be a little bit confused.

The author argues that the petition isn’t “independent”. Eh? The petitoner (Les) isn’t claiming to be independent, but is calling for an independent study on grouse shooting economics. It’s not difficult to understand, is it?

The author then claims that Les “writes for Raptor Persecution Scotland”. Hmm. Two things here – the blog hasn’t been called ‘Raptor Persecution Scotland’ for, ooh, about five years (?) now, do keep up Shooting Times, and although several authors write this blog, Les isn’t one of them, unless you count his recent guest blog (written about his petition). The Shooting Times article implies Les writes regularly for the blog, which is a distortion of the truth. The clue is in the word ‘guest’ blog.

The author then discusses an estimate of the value of grouse shooting, using a figure from BASC. Er, BASC cannot possibly be defined as being independent, which kind of reinforces the importance of Les’s call for an independent study!

The article ends with a quote from Andrew Gilruth, who can always be relied upon for a bit of snidey spin, but he does appear to be supportive of Les’s petition. Funny, we didn’t see GWCT pushing its members to sign the petition in the six months since it was launched.

All in all, a confused distorted mess from Shooting Times.

By the way, Les’s petition ends tomorrow. He has already secured the 10,000 signatures required to trigger a response from DEFRA (which will be interesting) but if you want to support it, here’s your last chance. Please click HERE

In May 2017 Scottish Environment Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham initiated a review of grouse moor management following continued evidence of widespread illegal raptor persecution associated with this type of land use (here).

Six months later the members of the review group were announced by the Scottish Government (here) and the review process became known to many of us as the Werritty Review, named after the group’s Chair, Professor Alan Werritty.

Throughout 2018 the Werritty Review group met with a series of individuals and organisations and provided regular reports on progress (here). These reports were welcome although the content was only summarised and no real detail has emerged.

That’s fair enough – we’ll find out the detail in due course, once all the formalities have ended. We’ve been told that the Werritty Review Group’s report will be submitted to Roseanna Cunningham this spring, although in the group’s terms of reference published on the Scottish Government website (here) it states the final report will be submitted “before the end of June 2019“. Hmm, let’s hope we don’t have to wait that long.

But hang on a minute, according to the GWCT, if you’re willing to pay £30 to attend its ‘Game Scotland 2019’ conference in March you’ll get to hear all about the Werritty Review group’s preliminary results before anyone else, assuming that the ‘Grouse Moor Review Panel’ described below is the same as the Werritty Review. What other ‘Grouse Moor Review Panel’ is there?

This can’t be right, surely?

Who will be presenting those “preliminary results” to conference attendees? Will it be a member of the Werritty Review Panel? Perhaps Professor Werritty himself?

Will these preliminary results be revealed before the final report has been submitted to the Scottish Government?

How can the results of a Scottish Government-funded review, paid for with public funds and of huge national interest, be given to the GWCT before being released to the public?

We’ll be asking the Scottish Government if this is true and if so, for an explanation…..stay tuned.

UPDATE 1 Feb 2019: Secretary for Werritty Review confirms prelim results will not be presented at GWCT conference (here)

The Countryside Alliance, with others, has long been trying to silence Chris Packham by either calling for him to be sacked from the BBC or “reined in”, e.g. here and here, by claiming that Chris “abuses his position” as a BBC presenter to “promote an extreme agenda”.

It’s amusing then, to see the BBC calling out this campaign in an article in today’s Mirror:

The article is reproduced here in case it disappears:

Shooting enthusiasts have been accused of staging a “dirty tricks” campaign to get Chris Packham sacked from the BBC.

They accused the Winterwatch star of breaking BBC rules by plugging a dog tick treatment he has links to.

Wildlife-lover Packham, 57, is an outspoken critic of grouse shooting.

Abzed, a company which lobbies for grouse-shooting, claimed Packham was employed by a PR firm representing MSD Animal Health to help sales of its insecticide Bravecto.

It alleged he did not declare that interest while appearing on BBC shows in 2015 to speak about the “Big Tick Project”, a campaign which raises awareness of ticks on dogs.

Abzed put forward Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance.

Bonner, whose organisation is also pro fox-hunting, claimed: “Buying Mr Packham is the way companies buy BBC coverage. This is not public service broadcasting, it is the BBC for sale.”

But a TV source hit back, saying: “At no time did Chris ever mention the name of the drug, only to say there were treatments available.

“The fact events a number of years ago are being pored over to find some sort of smoking gun is just dirty tricks.”

The BBC also insisted: “This is a spurious claim given there’s no evidence of Chris promoting this product in his role as a BBC presenter.”

Packham has claimed killing of wildlife on driven grouse moors “is a relentless, year-round slaughter”.

Opponents of shooting say it is directly contributing to a rapid fall in the number of hen harriers, which prey on grouse.

Countryside groups and the Government say grouse shooting is a legitimate activity which boosts the rural economy.

London-based Abzed is run by Ian Gregory, who last night insisted he did not call for Packham to be sacked.

But he said: “The drug company’s PR firm… boasted about how successful his involvement was in getting a huge amount of coverage across the BBC for its sales campaign.

“It then bragged about how successful that campaign was at boosting sales. So Chris Packham was chosen by the drug company because the BBC has made him famous and he used that fame to promote the drug’s sales campaign on the BBC. These are facts not dirty tricks.”

ENDS

Here’s that BBC quote again:

“The fact events a number of years ago are being pored over to find some sort of smoking gun is just dirty tricks“.

Well done to that BBC source! It follows an earlier statement from the BBC in 2016 following complaints received from BASC, Countryside Alliance, Moorland Association and the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation about Chris publishing a non-BBC video about driven grouse shooting and, quite reasonably, using his personal twitter account to promote it. The BBC responded to the complaints as follows:

“Chris Packham is a naturalist in his own right and is not solely employed by the BBC. If Chris Packham wishes to express his personal views outside of his employment on BBC natural history programmes, he is entitled to do so”.

Interestingly, BASC, Countryside Alliance, Moorland Association and the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation have been in the news recently after disrupting a national meeting designed to tackle illegal raptor persecution, by refusing to attend because, again quite reasonably, new organisations had been invited to participate. We await to see whether they’ll manage to climb back in to their prams before the next meeting in April.

The PR firm Abzed, mentioned in the Mirror’s article above, funded by the grouse-shooting lobby and headed by the ecologically illiterate Ian Gregory, has also been in the news recently with what appears to be yet another smear campaign against the RSPB’s efforts to protect hen harriers, helped again by Andrew Gilruth of the GWCT who appears to be regurgitating some nonsense that dribbled from his mouth in 2017.

Chris has also been in the news recently, after being appointed CBE for services to nature conservation.

It looks like honesty and integrity are winning out over alleged dirty tricks and smear campaigns.

Another week and another photograph of a pile of dumped pheasants, this time in Lincolnshire and less than two weeks after video footage of a JCB dumping hundreds of shot pheasants in to hole in Leicestershire caused national outrage after being published by The Times.

The latest photograph was taken by dog walker Alan Fox who found two piles of pheasants dumped by the A16, between Brigsley and Waithe, Lincolnshire:

Mr Fox told Lincolnshire Live that he’d found the birds at around 12.30pm on Monday 29 January and said he believed there were between 50-100 pheasants, all piled on top of each other.

He said: “The dog smelled something and I saw some pheasants on the floor, then another group about 10 metres further down. I would think that someone has had a shoot somewhere and these birds are surplus to what they can sell or eat“.

Regular blog readers will know that shooting and then dumping gamebirds is being reported quite often – e.g. see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and undoubtedly it’s driven by an over supply of birds and little demand by consumers for purchasing game bird meat.

This is hardly a surprise when you consider that an estimated 50 million non-native gamebirds (pheasants & red-legged partridge) are released in to our countryside EVERY YEAR, to provide live targets for people with guns. This is barely regulated – they can release as many of these alien species as they like and kill as many of them as they like, as long as they’re killed within the shooting season. The Code of Good Shooting Practice says “shoot managers must ensure they have appropriate arrangements in place for the sale or consumption of the anticipated bag in advance of all shoot days“ but this, evidently, is not happening.

And of course sitting alongside these unregulated releases is legal and illegal predator control – the mass slaughter of native wildlife, including raptors, done to protect the gamekeepers’ ‘livestock’. And for what? Just so the shot game can be chucked under a hedge by a roadside?

Shooting industry representatives are doing their best to proclaim effective self-regulation and as recently as November 2018 BASC claimed that “the values and standards of the UK shooting community…is driven by strong ethics and respect for quarry“.

Yep, it really looks that way.