Year: 2021

More and more, we’re seeing local residents and moorland communities finding courage and speaking out against the grouse shooting culture and its associated criminality that dominates and damages their daily lives.

We’ve heard from local communities in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (see here and here), from a community in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (see here), from a local community in the North York Moors National Park (here), and from the community at Leadhills in South Lanarkshire (here).

Here’s another example, this time from a punk band (The Lounge Society) created by teenagers who’ve grown up in West Yorkshire’s Pennine towns.

[Photo by Piran Aston]

The Lounge Society have a single out called Burn the Heather and according to an interview they’ve done with the NME ‘it takes aim at local landowners’ pre-grouse shooting ritual of burning the moor-top heather, with deerstalkers, wellies and tweed jackets in the accompanying video’.

NME asked guitarist Herbie May, ‘How did Burn the Heather come to be and what was the story behind that?’

Here’s his response:

“There’s a continuing trend where a lot of wealthy local landowners will burn a lot of land for the sake of a bloodsport essentially to shoot grouse and other birds. That contributes to flooding and it’s generally very unpleasant and it can give rural areas a bit of a bad name and we wanted to express how ugly that is. It was just a local teenagers perspective on that lyrically. The groove is quite important to the track itself and to a lot of our music. We really set out to make people dance and make you move while getting across what we wanted to say about local issues and if that has any connection to issues which affect small towns everywhere“.

NME: I guess it smartly loops it into the wider political dialogue right now in many ways? 

Herbie May: “It is something that has gone on in the Tory party, over lockdown there were certain rules which seemed to specifically protect fox hunting. For a time you were allowed to go fox hunting but you weren’t able to play football in the park with your mates, so it does apply in other areas albeit in slightly different physical manifestations. The idea that there’s a class of people that have that much desire to kill living animals to the extent of making such brazen acts like that, it is shocking“.

To read the full NME interview please click here

UPDATE 21st February 2021: There’s more commentary about this video and the shooting industry’s irrational, hysterical meltdown about it here

The National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) is recruiting for a senior police officer to Chair the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (RPPDG).

This is a poisoned chalice if ever there was one.

There are Priority Delivery Groups for the various National Wildlife Crime Priorities (e.g. raptor persecution, badger persecution, bat persecution, CITES, Freshwater pearl mussels, cyber-enabled wildlife crime and poaching) and the purpose of these delivery groups is ‘to progress the priority in relation to prevention, intelligence and enforcement’ (see here).

Some of these delivery groups are being quite effective – and that’s probably because all the members of the group share the same objective. For example, the badger persecution delivery group probably doesn’t have badger baiters sitting around the table ‘contributing’ to discussions about enforcement plans. And I’ll bet the CITES group doesn’t have international ivory traffickers in its membership, nor hare coursers in the poaching group.

But the raptor persecution group? Well, along with the likes of the RSPB and the Northern England Raptor Forum, the membership of this group also includes organisations like the Moorland Association, Countryside Alliance, BASC and the National Gamekeepers, some of whose members have been/are still under police investigation for alleged raptor persecution crimes. There are clear conflicts of interest and they don’t all share the same objective, no matter how hard some of the groups might pretend.

The RPPDG is, in my opinion, a partnership sham, designed to look as though efforts are being made to effectively tackle illegal raptor persecution in England and Wales. It’s been in existence since 2011 and the ‘delivery’ results speak for themselves – so far it has achieved absolutely sod all in terms of contributing towards the conservation of raptors in the UK and instead has frustrated the efforts of those organisations who are genuinely trying to stamp out persecution (e.g. see here).

Whoever takes on this role needs to be up for change. And that’s presumably why the NWCU is seeking a high-ranking officer for the position (Chief Inspector or Superintendent level). These groups need to be held to account and when they don’t deliver, or when they deliberately obstruct progress, they should be booted out.

Good luck to whoever gets the post.

At the end of January, DEFRA published a long-awaited statement on its proposal to ban burning on moorland (see here), although the proposal was heavily criticised as not going far enough and analysis by Guy Shrubsole demonstrated that many grouse moors would be exempt from the ban (see here).

[Photo by Tim Melling]

Today, the heads of 18 environmental groups have signed a letter to DEFRA Secretary of State George Eustice, urging him to extend the ban to make it more meaningful:

There is good coverage of this in today’s iNews (here) where a DEFRA spokesperson said the Government will set out further actions on England’s peatlands later this year.

Last October Sainsbury’s started to sell gamebirds from a supplier in North Yorkshire, but has repeatedly refused to address customers’ concerns about the provenance of those pheasants and partridges, i.e. on which estates were they shot and what are those estates’ environmental credentials?

Sainsbury’s also claims, apparently without testing, that the gamebird meat it’s selling does not contain toxic lead ammunition (see previous blogs here, here and here).

[Photos by Dr Rob Sheldon]

Since then others have continued to press Sainsbury’s for information about whether these products contain poisonous lead ammunition but Sainsbury’s has continued to dodge the questions, instead directing customers to its supplier in North Yorkshire, who so far has ignored all requests for information (e.g. see Rob Sheldon’s blog here).

Wild Justice has lost patience with Sainsbury’s and is paying to have the products independently tested at a specialist laboratory. The results may show that this gamebird meat does not contain toxic lead ammunition, in which case great! At least everyone will know with certainty and transparency, instead of having to reply upon the crossing of fingers and hoping for the best.

For more details, please visit the Wild Justice blog here

According to Tim (Kim) Baynes, Director of landowners’ lobby group Scottish Land & Estates, there is “very little evidence” of ongoing raptor persecution in Scotland.

It’s a bare-faced denial that Baynes and his grouse shooting pals have been making for years e.g. see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Deny everything, carry on and hope that nobody checks the actual facts, eh?

This most recent denial came in a podcast for Living Planet, a programme on the German International English Language Service, of all places! The seven minute programme also features Ian Thomson (RSPB Scotland) and Logan Steele (Scottish Raptor Study Group) talking about satellite-tagged golden eagles that suddenly ‘vanish’ from Scottish grouse moors and how last year the tag of one of those missing eagles was found with cut straps, wrapped in lead sheeting (to block the tag’s signal) and dumped in a river (see here); a clear indication of the lengths the eagle-killers will go to cover up their crimes.

As well as denying the extent of ongoing raptor persecution, Baynes was asked about grouse moor licensing, due to be introduced by the Scottish Government because, er, last year Ministers accepted the indisputable evidence of ongoing raptor persecution on some driven grouse moors.

Here’s what he said:

“There needs to be a balanced approach to it, so if you have too many birds of prey there has to be some mechanism for managing them, to keep them in balance with the prey species. And that’s what we’re asking Government to address“.

Now, some might argue that this is not anything we need worry about because the probability of having “too many” (whatever that means) birds of prey on some driven grouse moors seems quite unlikely given the long-term absence of breeding species like hen harrier, golden eagle and peregrine on many of these moors, as a direct result of on-going persecution.

However, having seen how DEFRA and Natural England define a ‘high density’ population (two hen harrier nests within 10km of one another!) for the purposes of the insane hen harrier brood meddling trial, and knowing that Scottish Land & Estates has expressed an interest in having a hen harrier brood meddling scheme in Scotland (more on that shortly), we should all be alert to the very high probability that grouse shooting reps will be lobbying the Scottish Government hard when consultations open for views on what the grouse moor licensing scheme should look like.

To listen to the short podcast click here