Conservation campaign group Wild Justice has taken out a full page ad in the latest edition of Private Eye, the UK’s number one best-selling news and current affairs magazine, to draw readers’ attention to the absurd release of over 50 million non-native pheasants into the countryside every year.
This startling fact is not widely known beyond conservation/environmental circles, I guess because it’s not something the gamebird shooting industry has ever really wanted to highlight to the general public.
The annual release of this many non-native pheasants into the UK countryside, plus another 10 million non-native red-legged partridges, just to be used as live targets for people with shotguns, doesn’t quite fit the shooting industry’s narrative of wanting to be seen as the so-called ‘custodians of the countryside’.
Thanks to Wild Justice’s advert, a lot more people are now going to be aware, and probably, appalled.
UPDATE 4 April 2025: Private Eye pulls Wild Justice adverts, causing ‘Streisand Effect’ (here)
UPDATE 27 April 2025: Private Eye ‘explains’ (sort of) its reasons for pulling Wild Justice adverts (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
Well done, a great idea. Would be good to find some more takers!
Every newspaper should carry it along with Horse and Hound, The Field, Country Life and so on. There should also be much voice where are the Lilly Allen’s who care so much about unwanted invasions but little for the beautiful country born into. They should be doing everything possible to publicise and preserve it.
lol
i remember when this blog pretended to only care about illegal raptor persecution…..your mask slipped…..you are animal rights activists….. nothing more nothing less
Hi [FAKE NAME], not got the bottle to write under your real name?
As I’m sure you already know, illegal raptor persecution in the UK is consistently and disproportionately linked to gamebird shooting/land managed for gamebird shooting compared to any other activity, so of course this blog is interested in the wider issues, and always has been.
Hahaha, I guess your ego has now been satisfied by this reductionist simplification then.
Well done you. Funny how the spheres of illegal raptor persecution and other concerns for the environment, ecology etc have a degree of overlap… if they just made all raptor persecution legal we could have otherwise all gone home!
“i remember when this blog pretended to only care about illegal raptor persecution…..your mask slipped…..you are animal rights activists….. nothing more nothing less”
You are very confused. ‘Animals’ only have the ‘rights’ we have given them, and one of the ‘rights’ we may wish to give to our endemic species is not to be contaminated by the unnatural importation of alien species.
Fortunately, those of us fighting for that ‘right’ are in the majority. It is only a matter of time before we convert that into law.
Not laughing now, are you?
…and are animals having rights and the people fighting for them a problem to you ??
Besides, as RPUK says it’s all linked.
p.s I wouldn’t have bothered with the ‘lol’ …only you.
I have a problem with the first panel of this advertisement: “ pheasants do not occur naturally in the UK”. Those in the know seem to agree that both pheasants (and rabbits) were introduced by either the Romans or the Normans. So are they ‘naturalised’? I would argue they are. If so the statement above is incorrect. I did once ask this question of a naturalist at a Royal Society lecture and got a somewhat obfuscatory answer. Hey ho.
Let me be clear, I have no truck with the release of shedloads of game birds for driven shooting despite being a hunter in other areas. I understand the need to be evocative but the Advertising Standards Authority might take a different view if the didn’t have more pressing items on their desks.
Oh go on, Nick, please put in a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, lol. We can point them to Sched 9 of the W&CA which now includes (after a successful Wild Justice challenge) pheasant and red-legged partridge as non-native animals established in the wild.
I was only asking for confirmation as to by whom and when pheasant and rabbit were first introduced into Britain. Anybody care to answer? Why are rabbits not on the WCA? The ASA was very tongue in cheek.
please note, again, that I don’t approve of wholesale releases for shooting.
I don’t understand why it matters who introduced them. The point, as I’m sure you already know, is that they’re non-native and the release of them (on protected sites) has to be licensed due to the conservation threat they pose to native biodiversity.
I guess if some people were releasing 50+ million rabbits every year, just to be shot, then that species would also be on Sched 9.
You do seem to be deliberately missing/obfuscating the point of the WJ cartoon/argument.
Nick you are only in part right and as RP has pointed out Pheasants are classed as non native. Yes the Romans brought them here BUT there is no evidence that they released them other than accidentally into the wild. They were almost certainly kept in cages like many other species reared for the table. the same is true of the Normans. Throughout the Middle ages right to the C18th and C19th there are menus preserved for large banquets yet in those menus despite a surfeit of both species and numbers of birds consumed ( crane, heron, Bittern, Geese, Swans etc. ) Pheasants are either very rare or not included at all. By implication they were either very rare or largely absent in both the wild and captivity in the UK at the time. All evidence suggests that Pheasants arrived with the sport of shooting birds and were not widely distributed until the breech loading gun. Yes naturalised but even that is arguable with circa50Mreleased annually meaning in ecological terms they are more alien invasive.
Thank you for your detailed and clear answer. It is appreciated.
Congratulations to Edith Pritchett for a brilliant cartoon. As someone with two male pheasants on our garden bird list at present I can confirm that they most likely outweigh all our other avian visitors put together (except perhaps the wood pigeons).
Agree she’s brilliant! Very funny takes on the pains of modern life : )
My proposal is a £5 per bird charge on al pheasants in release pens – after all, reared pheasants are the ultimate luxury and a good way to tax the super rich. It would be via close ringing, with the huge number of birds imported from the continent charged at the border. A big chunk of fair tax money + a big move to ‘natural’ pheasant shoots which have to think about developing habitat where pheasants can live and breed without support.
I’d up that to £25 it needs to be punitive and not a reasonable charge shoots will pass on to their clients.
Hi there,Excellent story. I have long been talking about Wild Justice to the peop
There are a couple of interesting letters published in PE in response to the advert!
Indeed! There’ll be more news about Private Eye shortly…