Last Friday evening, Channel 4 News had another good piece exposing the dark side of the UK’s gamebird shooting industry.
It included some pretty gruesome undercover footage from gamebird rearing farms in England, including Westfield Farms near Pickering, North Yorkshire, who’ve featured on this blog several times over the years.
The piece also covered grouse shooting, again in North Yorkshire, and included information about the shot Marsh Harrier found critically injured on a grouse moor in the Westerdale area of the North York Moors National Park in August this year. She was about two months old. She didn’t survive her catastrophic injuries.
There’s an interview with Fiona Howie, one of the UK’s leading veterinary pathologists, discussing the damage caused to this Marsh Harrier and the wider issue of shot raptors, and Howard Jones from the RSPB’s Investigations Team, who repeats the society’s call for gamebird shoot licensing. There’s also an interview with Matthew Goodall from the GWCT who says he doesn’t think there’s a need for licensing as the industry can police itself. He said that with a straight face.
The timing of the piece was clearly intended to coincide with Defra’s Call for Evidence on gamebird rearing and shooting, designed to inform future policy which may include licensing. That consultation has now closed and we await Defra’s response.
The Channel 4 News piece is about 8 minutes long but be warned, it contains some distressing footage.
A brilliant report by Alex Thompson. Well done Alex.