Year: 2019

The following is a guest blog contributed by Les Wallace, whose Westminster petition (‘An independent study to find if driven grouse shooting is of economic benefit’) is due to close on 2 February 2019.

So far his petition has attracted 4,166 signatures. DEFRA will have to respond if the petition reaches 10,000 signatures.

NOTE: Les’s petition relates to driven grouse shooting economics in England and Wales. The Scottish Government is already assessing the economic value of driven grouse shooting in Scotland, the results of which will be fed in to the Werritty Review, due to report this spring.

There’s now less than a month until Gov.UK Petition 226109 ‘An Independent Study to Find if Driven Grouse Shooting is of Economic Benefit’ closes on the 2nd of February. If the petition can reach the 10,000 signature mark by that time the Westminster Government will be required to make an official response which is potentially a very interesting development indeed. When the previous petitions to ban driven grouse shooting from Mark Avery and Gavin Gamble reached the same point the government response typically included references to the supposed contribution driven grouse shooting makes to the economies and jobs available to fragile rural communities. However, with this petition they will need to provide proof of that in the response if they wish to deny the need for a comprehensive study – frankly they won’t be able to. What were the original claims based on – wishful thinking, the word of vested interests? There’s scope here for some significant political embarrassment given the amount of public money that’s been given and sycophantic support from MPs as seen at the parliamentary ‘debate’ on the 31st October 2016 after Mark Avery’s petition to ban DGS hit 123,000 signatures.

The core issue is not how many jobs DGS provides, but how many it drives away – what other activities and associated business opportunities are incompatible with both the extensive area and intensive ‘management’ for DGS? The answer is virtually all of them, a hell of a bloody lot. Every form of forestry including wood lots to provide those without access to mains gas cheaper fuel, natural flood alleviation projects involving riparian woodland and the return of the beaver, then there’s fully fledged eco tourism, wildlife photography courses, conservation working holidays, pony trekking etc, etc. It’s only because the grouse moors have been there so long, often for generations, most of us find it difficult to visualize what could and should be there instead that rural communities haven’t risen up and demanded change themselves. Looking at it from another perspective there should be no technical reason why driven grouse shooting couldn’t be developed in Norway with their subspecies of the willow grouse – but it’s never going to happen. Doing so would massively impoverish and restrict the rural communities there – loss of valuable woodlot forestry, restricted and less pleasant walking and camping, plus the loss of the type of hunting Norwegians do already, for eating rather than trophies http://archnetwork.org/grouse-surveys-in-norway-and-scotland-2017/. There is a reason that Norway and the other countries that could have DGS don’t and never will.

Of course if the proponents of DGS are confident their claims it’s a lifeline for fragile communities are strong an independent and comprehensive government led economic study they should be welcomed with enthusiasm, their own efforts to justify their economic value haven’t been highly respected. Not unexpectedly they haven’t highlighted the petition and that’s something I have to confess I’ve exploited ruthlessly and gleefully (e.g. here). Even since the petition began there’s been a significant change in the tone of anti grouse moor campaigning – now their worth for rural communities is being publicly and repeatedly questioned. A few days after the petition opened Labour MP Sue Hayman called for a full study of grouse moors including the so called economics, since then more Labour MPs including Alex Sobel have made their objections known and the campaign to end grouse shooting on Yorkshire Waters properties is using the displacement of better job creating activities a core element of its attack. This includes promoting a type of clay pigeon shooting that replicates a flight of grouse! It looks as if it has potential, and can be done 12 months a year rather than 4. And of course up in Scotland Revive: the Coalition for Grouse Moor Reform has been launched with a bang publishing material to both sledgehammer the ludicrously inflated economic claims for grouse shooting and a start on the road to what can replace it. Underlining all of this of course is the the fact that the latest grouse shooting season was a ‘poor’ one with many estates not shooting at all – hotels and other businesses have lost money because they’ve found themselves tied to grouse chick productivity. The shooting estates still make their claims, but they ring increasingly hollow now and risk drawing attention to their opponents’ counter claims.

That the Westminster Government has unlike the Scottish one not already commissioned comprehensive studies on grouse shooting including its true economics does at least help the petition in that full attention can be focused upon the Achilles Heel issue that DGS kills rural communities as well as wildlife. You can get away with illegally killing raptors and slaughtering mountain hares as long as enough people believe families will be out on the street without it, but if the truth comes home they’ve had it. This is a golden opportunity to make a point, but the time to get to the 10,000 mark is shrinking.

Can I please ask each and every one of you to sign, share and promote the petition if you haven’t done so and if you can think of any organisations that should push the petition please pester them to do so (although I’ll have probably been there before). The RSPB officially endorsed it on their Skydancer Community Blog, but without giving it more profile that won’t help raise many signatures, although the endorsement was highly appreciated and I’m very grateful for it. Several people and groups have been very supportive and deserve thanks – Mark Avery (of course), Alan Cranston, James Common, Terry Pickford, Let’s Get Mad for Wildlife, the greatest living Welshman Iolo Williams (Diolch Iolo!), and many others who’ve been great. A special mention has to be made of the now late and very sadly missed Al Woodcock who founded the ‘We Support Chris Packham’ facebook page, he was not a frequent contributor on RPUK, but did a massive amount of work against the bad uns.

A slightly late Happy New Year to all and a pre emptive thank you, lets give the grouse moors a sticky start to 2019 – https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/226109

ENDS

In November 2018 we blogged about a local community in the North York Moors National Park that had called a public meeting to discuss concerns about grouse moor management in the area (see here).

This wasn’t just a flash in the pan, one-off event. Some members of this community in Goathland are clearly agitated about the damaging environmental impact of grouse moor management and are determined to do something about it.

Here’s Goathland, in the heart of this National Park and practically surrounded by driven grouse moors:

On Wednesday evening a second public meeting was held and the following notes were written and posted on Twitter by Richard Gray (@glaisdale1001) on Thursday:

Obviously these notes should be viewed as the personal opinion of one attendee and not as a formal record of what took place but nevertheless they make for an interesting read.

It’s really encouraging to see a local community willing to get together and speak out like this and it looks like this is just the beginning for Goathland.

Undoubtedly there are communities in other parts of northern England where the landscape is dominated by driven grouse moors that will share the Goathland community’s environmental concerns and “general feeling of no confidence in Natural England“. Hopefully those communities will now be inspired by Goathland and start to question and challenge the status quo in their own areas.

Well done, Goathland!

UPDATE 11 January 2019: Additional notes from the 2nd Goathland meeting on grouse moor management (here)

The Scottish Raptor Monitoring Scheme (SRMS) is a fine example of credible, effective & genuine partnership-working for the benefit of raptor conservation. That’s probably because its membership doesn’t include any representatives from the game-shooting industry.

Established in 2002, the award-winning SRMS now includes nine partner organisations (Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Scottish Natural Heritage, British Trust for Ornithology, Scottish Raptor Study Group, RSPB, Forestry Commission Scotland, Rare Breeding Birds Panel and the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club) who all collaborate to collect and analyse data on Scottish raptor populations. These data provide the Scottish Government with the information it needs to meet its international reporting responsibilities and they are also used to help inform local authority planning applications and a wide array of conservation applications.

A new scientific research paper on the SRMS’s experiences and approach to nationwide raptor monitoring has just been published in the journal Bird Study. The paper is available in full here: the scottish raptor monitoring scheme recent developments in good practice monitoring

Here’s the abstract:

The work of the SRMS has been coordinated in recent years by Dr Amy Challis but Amy is going on maternity leave from early March so the position of Scottish Raptor Monitoring Coordinator is now available for an initial period of one year.

Make no mistake, this is a challenging role, not helped at all by SNH’s disgraceful decision last year to licence the mass killing of ravens in Strathbraan ‘just to see what happens’. Aside from the very obvious scientific flaws with that licence, as described by SNH’s own Scientific Advisory Committee (here), SNH’s behaviour exacerbated a deep mistrust amongst many members of the Scottish Raptor Study Group, some of whom are now wondering whether to submit their hard-won raptor monitoring data to the SRMS because they can’t be sure that SNH won’t utilise the data for other dodgy ‘experiments’.

It’s quite telling that the job application form for the post of Scottish Raptor Monitoring Coordinator includes the following information about what will happen at the interview stage:

‘Candidates will be asked to imagine that they are giving a short presentation to a group of raptor workers and their aim is to convince them of the value of collaborating in a modernised and inclusive monitoring scheme, with particular focus on the benefits and risks of sharing data with a range of stakeholders (maximum 10 minutes; laptop and projector available for a presentation if desired)’.

Having said that, the SRMS is currently updating its data use and sharing policy which will hopefully provide a greater level of confidence to raptor fieldworkers that their data will only be used for genuine conservation purposes and only with their express permission on a case-by-case basis.

The deadline for applying for this job is 5pm on 10th January 2018 (this Thursday). A job description and details of the skills required and how to apply can be downloaded here:

jobvacancy_scottishraptormonitoringcoordinator

The bodies of approx 100 pheasants have been dumped next to the North Wales Coastal Path nr Mostyn, a popular walking and cycling spot.

It is believed they were dumped on the embankment, known locally as the ‘cob’, following a traditional Boxing Day shoot.

Resident Janice Scott said: “I came across the pile of pheasants on a walk, but in truth I smelt them before I saw them. I believe that they have been dumped following a traditional Boxing Day shoot, but there’s simply no excuse to just dump them like that. It really isn’t a nice thing to come across, in fact it’s horrendous.’’

Cllr Bob Hazlehurst said: “The cob has become a dumping ground, with people tipping all sorts down there, but nothing quite as strange as this. I’ve simply no idea where they’ve come from or who’s chosen to dump them there. I just hope they are removed as soon as possible.

We are trying to take steps to prevent the persistent fly tipping in the cob area. CCTV has been touted, but how effective that would be with the size of that area is questionable.’’

Steve Jones, chief officer Streetscene and Transportation said: “Flintshire County Council have been made aware of a number of dead pheasants deposited on the Coastal path near Mostyn and have arranged for Streetscene to collect and remove the birds.”

This practice of dumping shot game birds is becoming a common practice in the UK. We’ve previously blogged about it over the last couple of years (e.g. see 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. The game shooting industry is well aware of the PR disaster this practice brings to its door but it seems unable to do anything about it.

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 thrown down an embankment and left to rot?

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“.

Images like this from Wales prove BASC’s claim to be just more hollow words.