Month: October 2020

The name of Police Supt Nick Lyall should be familiar to readers of this blog. Nick, whose day job was Head of Operations at Bedfordshire Police, was also the latest incumbent tasked with chairing the poisoned chalice of the RPPDG (Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group) in England and Wales.

The RPPDG had been nothing more than a pantomime of so-called partnership, having achieved precisely nothing towards tackling illegal raptor persecution despite years and years of meetings (since 2009!), mainly because the group membership was dominated by representatives of the game-shooting industry who took every opportunity to frustrate any attempt to change the status quo. This wasn’t helped by a succession of weak Chairs who either didn’t have the interest or drive to bring about change. This ‘Priority Delivery Group’ was neither a priority nor a delivery group – it was simply a sham group the game-shooting industry, and Government, could point to to pretend they were addressing raptor crime.

Nick brought a change of pace and enthusiasm to the role and he was widely supported by the conservation community for his efforts and most importantly, for his willingness to be open and transparent with both sides (e.g. see here).

Nick achieved a massive amount in just over 12 months, much of it behind the scenes including some highly significant meetings with, let’s call them, ‘well known sporting agents’. There is no doubt whatsoever that the game shooting industry as a whole was feeling the heat, partly thanks to Nick’s efforts, and this was recognised last year when he received the WWF Wildlife Crime Operation of the Year Award for his vision of turning Operation Owl from a regional to a national awareness-raising campaign.

Earlier this year Nick was suspended by Bedfordshire Police pending an investigation in to claims he had lied about an alleged affair with a police colleague. At a tribunal last week he was found guilty of misconduct and another hearing is now scheduled to determine his future with the police.

This is a major blow for those of us interested in tackling the ongoing slaughter of birds of prey on the UK’s game-shooting estates, although judging by the disgraceful social media gloating being done by certain BASC staff members, not everyone shares our disappointment.

It’s highly unlikely Nick will have any further involvement in the RPPDG so another Chair will have to be appointed and the whole cycle starts again.

Watch this space.

And Nick, if you’re reading this, thank you for your hard work and commitment to tackling these appalling crimes.

The unregulated annual release of millions of non-native gamebirds in to the UK countryside (~47 million pheasants + ~10 million red-legged partridge) continues to draw attention, much to the dismay of some in the commercial shooting industry who probably wish the scrutiny would all disappear so they could get on with doing what the hell they like, as they have done for decades.

There’s been a flurry of media coverage recently, and there’ll probably be a lot more in the coming weeks as Wild Justice’s legal challenge goes for judicial review at the High Court in early November.

That legal challenge featured in The Guardian the other day:

There’s an especially interesting couple of lines in that Guardian article, as follows:

‘Christopher Graffius, BASC’s communications director, said the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust had guidelines on how many birds could be safely released and estates that broke the rules had been sanctioned‘.

Yes, there are voluntary guidelines, but as such they are largely unenforceable and a guideline is very different to a ‘rule’. It would have been useful if Christopher had elaborated on how many estates had ‘broken the rules’, which ‘rules’ did they ‘break’, how many estates were subsequently sanctioned, what was the sanction and who imposed it? These details are important if BASC’s claim of the industry’s effective self-regulation is to be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, in Scotland there was a story last week about red-legged partridge being driven by the crateload through the Cairngorms National Park. This blog written by Nick Kempe of ParkswatchScotland is as thought-provoking as ever:

As Nick pointed out in his blog, he didn’t know the final destination for those non-native red-legged partridge but there are no rules about releasing them inside the Cairngorms National Park, or in any other so-called National Park in the UK for that matter. It really is quite astonishing when you consider the hoops that, quite rightly to a point, have to be jumped to reintroduce a native species anywhere in the UK.

It would be interesting to know where those red-legged partridge were heading. Presumably not to be released to replenish a shoot because that would be a breach of one of the ‘five golden rules’ of the Code of Good Shooting Practice, and we all know how law-abiding the shooting industry is, right?

Then yesterday there was another interesting article in The Guardian where it was claimed that pheasants ‘could wipe out Adders in Britain within 12 years’. You can read that article here.

October 1st marked the opening of the pheasant-shooting season in the UK and seeing as though gamebird shooting is exempt from the Covid restrictions that the majority of us are having to live with, there’ll be pheasants being shot from the skies as this is typed.

Keep an eye out for piles of dumped shot gamebirds along hedgerows, roads, laybys, local woodland, fields etc. It happens every year and is a widespread problem; the photographs exposing the reality of unregulated gamebird shooting in the UK. E.g. see previous reports of shot dumped birds in Cheshire, Scottish borders (here), Norfolk (here), Perthshire (here), Berkshire (here), North York Moors National Park (here) and some more in North Yorkshire (here) and even more in North Yorkshire (here), Co. Derry (here), West Yorkshire (here), and again in West Yorkshire (here), N Wales (here), mid-Wales (here), Leicestershire (here) and Lincolnshire (here).

RSPB press release (1 October 2020)

Mayors, councils, local communities, and RSPB unite in support of the call to urgently ban peatland burning on grouse moors.

The RSPB is today calling on Government to implement an immediate end to the burning of precious peatlands on moors managed for grouse shooting. The call, which comes on the first day of this year’s burning season, is being supported by city mayors, councils, and local communities. A ban is also supported by a wide range of environmental NGOs.

[Routine burning on a Yorkshire grouse moor. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

Beccy Speight, RSPB Chief Executive Officer, said: “In a climate and ecological emergency, the continued burning of precious peatlands is simply not acceptable and undermines the UK Government’s legal obligations to restore nature. The Government has long promised to end the burning of peat, it has widespread public support, and the Secretary of State, George Eustice, now needs to make good on this pledge.”

Healthy wet blanket peat bogs are home to peat-forming sphagnum mosses, cotton-grasses, and carnivorous plants, which support a diverse range of breeding birds, including breeding dunlin and golden plover. They are also a crucial carbon store. UK peatlands (in the uplands and lowlands) store an estimated 3,200 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon.

However, the RSPB says that one of the most significant pressures on these places is that they are routinely and deliberately burned, largely to support a single industry – grouse shooting.

Pat Thompson, RSPB Senior Policy Officer said: “The burning is done to ensure grouse have reemergent young shoots of heather to eat season after season. This not only directly releases carbon into the atmosphere but degrades the remaining peat – making it poorer for wildlife, less able to slow the flow of water thus increasing flood risk and reducing water quality. All these effects are felt both immediately by communities downstream and by wider society in terms of increased carbon emissions and the cost of treating water.

England’s upland peatlands are also increasingly vulnerable to changes in climate, particularly pro-longed periods of drought which dry out the surface vegetation making them vulnerable to accidental fires in spring and summer.”

Peatland in the English uplands can be legally burnt between 1 October – 15 April. Burning in the uplands is increasing with research finding a seven-fold increase in burning on peatland in
England from the 1940s to the present time with burning increasing at a rate of 11% per annum between 2001 to 2011 in Great Britain.

Dr Thompson added: “To give an idea of the scale of this issue, grouse moors in the northern uplands extend to something in the region of 2226 square kilometers. Many of these grouse moors lie within Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas, a statutory designation that describes their huge importance for wildlife on a European level. The designation restricts a range of activities in these places, and so special consent must be obtained from Natural England in order to carry out burning.

Information from Natural England suggests there are over 400 consents to burn blanket bog on grouse moors in north England’s European protected areas, covering around 950 square kilometers of the deep peat soils this precious habitat depends on. This simply must stop.”

Peat burning is also not welcome in many local communities, and the call for a ban has recently been echoed by Mayors, local councils and residents in the North of England:

Jamie Driscoll, Mayor of the North of Tyne Combined Authority, said: “Burning upland peat habitats is a destructive process. It results in greenhouse gas emissions, brings flood risks, and is damaging to wildlife. I fully support the RSPB’s campaign calling on the government to implement an immediate end to this practice.”

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester, said: “Upland fires in 2018 and more recently in the dry spring this year have created significant issues in upland areas of Greater Manchester – both from an environmental and public safety perspective. We are acutely aware of the environmental impact that upland fires, whatever their cause, can have on the environment.

Recent work by Natural England, which will inform Defra’s forthcoming national peat strategy, highlighted that the 2019 Winter Hill fire alone released c. 90,000 tonnes of Carbon equivalent (tCO2e)”

Councillor Scott Patient, Lead – Climate Change and Resilience, Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council said: “In Calderdale, we know that moorland fires have a broad range of ecological and public health impacts including degrading peatlands, releasing harmful gasses into the atmosphere and surrounding valleys, putting added pressure on our fire services (themselves stretched throughout the pandemic) and decreasing biodiversity whilst possibly contributing to flooding in communities downstream. We hope to see legislation introduced promptly to end the use of burning in the management of grouse moors. Beyond this, we will continue to work in strong strategic partnerships with small and larger landowners to further develop a complete and sustainable catchment plan to help best protect our residents and natural environment”

Cllr Rob Walker, Colne Valley Ward Councillor, Kirklees Cabinet Portfolio: Environment and Culture, said: “Whilst Kirklees Council do not own any moorland used for grouse shooting I am concerned about the damage done to biodiversity and the regeneration of healthy peat bogs by the practice of burning heather to promote the commercial rearing of grouse. I believe in working with land managers to promote more sustainable techniques that will enrich our countryside.”

Dongria Kondh Co-ordinator, Treesponsibility, and Hebden Bridge resident said: “The peatlands here on the moors above Hebden Bridge form part of the biggest carbon sinks in Britain, they are precious to our community, to wider society and for nature. They cannot be restored to full health while the burning continues. Reports that Environment Minister George Eustice is attempting to backtrack on his predecessor’s commitment to ban managed burning on peat bogs are deeply worrying. In January, this year the UK parliament’s Climate Change Committee called for an immediate cessation of rotational burning, and ignoring their report would seriously undermine the government’s credibility as hosts of the COP26 Climate conference next year. A ban needs to be implemented now.”

ENDS

There’s also some interesting commentary from Mark Avery on this topic this morning (see here)

The temporary ban on muirburn in Scotland, implemented during the Coronavirus lockdown after Andy Wightman MSP drew the Scottish Parliament’s attention to the ongoing burning of grouse moors despite there being a respiratory virus pandemic (here) has now finished and grouse moor managers are now free to set the moors alight again.