Month: August 2025

An article criticising moorland mismanagement, including grouse moor management, has been published by Yorkshire Bylines.

It’s been authored by David Robson, a retired biology teacher and a member of Wharfedale Naturalists, who says the title was influenced by ‘two essential reads’ – Inglorious by Mark Avery and The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole.

To read the article in full, visit the Yorkshire Bylines website here.

There’ll be an anti- grouse shooting protest walk taking place in the Peak District National Park this coming Sunday (10 August 2025), timed to coincide with the start of the grouse-shooting season on the Inglorious 12th.

Organised by the new campaign group Reclaim Our Moors (see here for earlier blog on them), the one-hour walk, followed by speeches, will take place on Moscar Estate, meeting at 10.30am, and is open to anyone who wants to join in.

Here are the details from Reclaim Our Moors:

If you want to contact the group directly, contact details can be found here.

Shooting estates in England are failing to declare millions of Pheasants that are being bred, reared and released in to the countryside.

That’s the finding of new research published yesterday by environmental campaigner and best-selling author Guy Shrubsole (see here for his excellent blog).

According to official statistics that Guy obtained via FoI from the Animal Plant & Health Agency (APHA), only 25.9 million Pheasants are accounted for on the latest ‘Poultry Register’. We know (from the shooting industry itself) that approximately 50 million Pheasants are released annually, which means approximately 20 million Pheasants are currently unaccounted for.

Guy didn’t ask for the equivalent data on Red-legged Partridges or Mallards.

It’s a legal requirement for anyone who keeps 50 or more birds, including Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges, to register with APHA.

Registration is mandatory because it helps APHA to manage the spread of diseases such as Avian Influenza. For example, during disease outbreaks APHA can quickly contact registered keepers to provide information and guidance on biosecurity updates. By knowing where birds are kept, APHA can also implement targeted surveillance and control measures to prevent the spread of diseases, especially Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).

Failure to register with APHA is an offence, but it’s been going on for years. In a Natural England and BASC-commissioned report published in 2020, registration compliance (for Pheasant keepers) was estimated to be less than 25%.

This low level of compliance on registering Pheasants will come as no surprise to anyone who pays attention to the behaviour of the UK gamebird shooting industry. It’s not an industry celebrated for adherence to the law on many issues, including the illegal killing of birds of prey, the illegal setting and use of traps, the illegal possession, storage and use of pesticides and poisons, the illegal burning of deep peat moorland, the illegal use of toxic lead ammunition to kill waterfowl etc etc.

Given the current high risk of Avian Flu in England (another case was reported yesterday nr Yeovil, Somerset (ref AIV 2025/54), and BASC’s idiotic legal challenge against the Government’s restrictions on gamebird releases on or close to Special Protection Areas, restrictions that were imposed specifically to help prevent the spread of HPAI to these important conservation sites (see here for yesterday’s blog on this), this level of non-compliance, with millions of unregistered ‘Ghost Pheasants’ roaming the countryside, could lead to a catastrophic HPAI epidemic as we head into the shooting season.