Author: RaptorPersecutionUK

The Shooting Times has been forced to publish an apology to Chris Packham for its inaccurate reporting of Chris’s libel win against Fieldsports Channel Ltd and one of its journalists, Andrew (Ben) O’Rourke:

Chris won his libel case (here) on 6 November 2023 after Fieldsports Channel Ltd admitted it was responsible for false and defamatory publications about Chris and submitted an apology to the court for publishing such “baseless and damaging allegations of dishonesty” that “fell far below the standards expected of responsible, impartial journalists” (see here) and agreed to pay Chris £30,000 in damages and costs, £10,000 of which had already been paid in October.

This was a related but separate libel claim to the proceedings Chris won earlier this year against Dominic Wightman and Nigel Bean for defamatory material published by Country Squire Magazine between 2020-2021 (see here).

The Shooting Times stupidly published a news article in its 22 November 2023 edition, claiming that Chris ‘could face a legal bill of £150,000’ because he had ‘sued the wrong company’ in his libel action against Fieldsports Channel Ltd:

The apology has been published in this week’s edition of Shooting Times (6th December 2023).

If the fake news story sounds familiar, it’s because it’s based on the same fake news story published by the Daily Mail on 7th November 2023, for which it, too, had to apologise (see here).

The fake news story was also published in Sporting Gun and an apology is expected in that paper when it goes to press later this month.

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) is running a public consultation on the use of lead ammunition in England, Wales and Scotland.

This is the final phase of a long-running (and delayed) process to consider the risks posed by lead ammunition to human health and the environment. The HSE has come up with proposed restrictions on the use of lead ammunition – this public consultation is asking for our views on those proposals, prior to the DEFRA Secretary of State making a decision.

The proposals fall far short of what is needed, no doubt heavily influenced by the game-shooting lobby which has stood in the way of progress on this issue for years. It’s current and much-heralded claim of a voluntary transition away from lead shot is not well supported as lead-contaminated gamebird meat still dominates the market, three years into the five-year phase out period (see here). The shooting industry’s response to these results was a disgraceful attempt to slur the research as ‘pseudoscience’ (see here).

Of most concern for those of us wanting to protect raptors is the HSE’s opinion that there’s no need to ban lead rifle bullets. Instead, the HSE has argued that because the tonnage of lead emitted as shotgun pellets is larger than that emitted as rifle bullets, they can safely ignore benefits of a ban of lead rifle bullets in their benefit/cost calculations. This is clearly bonkers given the hunting habits of certain raptor species, especially golden and white-tailed eagles, which are massively vulnerable to lead poisoning, either directly or indirectly by sublethal effects, when they scavenge on rifle-shot deer gralloch that has been left on the hill.

The HSE’s consultation closes just before midnight tomorrow (Sunday 10 December 2023). It would be brilliant if you could take 15 minutes this weekend to complete it, to show the HSE (and DEFRA) that the banning of ALL lead ammunition (shot and bullets) is long overdue and is a matter of widespread concern, not just for the benefits to human health but also for our environment.

Conservation campaign group Wild Justice has provided a step-by-step guide to responding to the consultation – please click here for details.

Thank you.

Press release from Wildlife & Countryside LINK’s Wildlife Crime Group (5th December 2023):

Low convictions allowing wildlife crime to go unpunished, say nature groups

Some of the country’s leading nature voices are today releasing analysis showing that our cherished wildlife is being failed in the courts, with people who commit crimes (including persecution of birds of prey, badgers and bats) rarely being convicted. Such a lack of convictions removes a key deterrent for would-be criminals and makes it more likely for people to become repeat offenders. Wildlife crime can also be linked to other serious crimes like firearms offences and organised crime.

The Wildlife Crime Report for 2022, compiled by Wildlife and Countryside Link, with information from groups including RSPB, WWF UK, and the League Against Cruel Sports, has shown that convictions for crime against wildlife in 2022 decreased substantially. This is despite a record number of reports of wildlife crime over 2021. Other wildlife crimes include the disturbance of seals and dolphins, and the illegal trade of wildlife across international boundaries.

In 2022, Link estimates that there were around 4,457 reported wildlife crime incidents in England and Wales, compared to 4,885 in 2021 (a record level sustained from a surge in incidents in 2020 during the pandemic). Despite record levels of wildlife crime in 2021, there was a notable 42% fall in subsequent convictions for wildlife crime, from 900 in 2021 to 526 in 2022.

Dominic Dyer, Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Wildlife Crime Chair, said: “To put it simply, people who hurt wildlife are getting away with it, with a lack of convictions leaving them free to cause further suffering. Despite shockingly high levels of wildlife crime in recent years we’re not seeing higher levels of convictions to give nature the justice it deserves.

“With the Government’s deadline to halt the decline of nature by 2030 getting ever closer, it’s time for ministers to take the issue of wildlife crime seriously. This means the Home Office making it a notifiable offence to help police forces identify crime hotspots and plan accordingly.”

Despite a slight fall in the overall number of reports of wildlife crime, the report shows that reports of disturbances on marine mammals (including seals and dolphins) rose from 450 in 2021 to 508 in 2022. This is likely due to the rise in the number of people participating in outdoor activities on or near the coast including walking, paddle boarding, kayaking and jet skiing, as well as wildlife tours and wild swimming. Marine experts and water sports governing bodies are working to educate the public on how to enjoy our beaches and ocean without putting the welfare of marine wildlife at risk.

Sue Sayer MBE of Seal Research Trust, said: “More people enjoying our ocean is great news for health and wellbeing, but we must be more mindful of how this can impact marine wildlife including seals. If a seal gets scared by people getting too close it will use huge amounts of energy to scamper away and could also risk serious injury when getting back into the water. Fortunately, it’s very easy to enjoy our beaches and ocean without putting seals at risk of harm. Just follow the Defra Marine and Coastal Wildlife Code, Give Seals Space (100m+), and slowly move further away from seals if they start to look at you.”

Bat crime figures for 2022 increased by 23% compared to 2021. A survey issued by the National Wildlife Crime Unit to the 43 police forces across England and Wales (19 responded meaning these numbers are likely far less than the true extent of crime), coupled with reports to Bat Conservation Trust revealed 164 cases of bat crime. The most common form of bat crime is disturbance or destruction of roosts, often due to property development. The report points to a case in Monmouthshire of a developer being fined more than £7,000 after renovating an old school building where bats were known to be present.

Kit Stoner, chief executive of Bat Conservation Trust, said: “Bats are long lived, roost faithful, and slow to recover from population losses. Unfortunately, many species of bat in the UK are under threat from loss of roosting sites. With the most common form of bat crime being disturbance or destruction of roosts, it is vital that we maintain and enforce protections. Without this action, we will not meet targets to halt the decline of species.”

Due to a lack of official data, these figures on crime (most of the data relies on direct reports from members of the public to nature groups) are likely to be a significant under-estimate of wildlife offences. Wildlife and Countryside Link is therefore calling on the Home Office to make wildlife crime notifiable, to help target resources and action to deal with hotspots of criminality.

To properly tackle the issue of wildlife crime, nature experts are calling for the following actions (most of which were also recommended by a UN report in 2021):

• Making wildlife crimes notifiable to the Home Office, so such crimes are officially recorded in national statistics. This would better enable police forces to gauge the true extent of wildlife crime and to plan strategically to address it.
• Increasing resources & training for wildlife crime teams in police forces. Significant investment in expanding wildlife and rural crime teams across police forces in England & Wales, would enable further investigations, and lead to further successful prosecutions. Funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit should be increased in line with inflation, to allow the Unit to continue its excellent work.
• Reforming wildlife crime legislation. Wildlife crime legislation in the UK is antiquated and disparate. A 2015 Law Commission report concluded these laws are ‘‘overly complicated, frequently contradictory and unduly prescriptive’’. Much of this stems from the need to prove ‘intention and recklessness’, which has stunted the potential for prosecution in even clear cases of harm being done to protected and endangered species.

ENDS

The report can be read/downloaded here:

Further to the news that Scottish grouse moor owner Robbie Douglas-Miller has been appointed to DEFRA’s ministerial team (see here), it has now been confirmed that his role is Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Biosecurity, Animal Health and Welfare, and his responsibilities include biosecurity and borders, Northern Ireland and animal welfare:

It’s an interesting appointment, as journalists Helena Horton & Rowena Mason from the Guardian have unearthed some more of his background which includes backing the culling of seals and predatory birds which he believes threaten salmon stocks.

You can read the Guardian article here.

This is a guest blog written by conservation campaigner Bob Berzins who has who has featured previously on this blog here, here, here, here and here.

The city of Sheffield lies immediately to the east of the Peak District National Park at the south end of the Pennines. The city boundary extends into the uplands with four intensively managed grouse shooting moors to the west and north-west of highly populated areas. Every year these shooting moors are burnt to increase grouse numbers and despite recent legislation banning the burning of vegetation over deep peat (more than 40cm) there’s been no noticeable reduction in fires. Around half of each estate comprises shallower peat generally described as Dry Heath and this is where we see continued rotational burning pretty much on every fine day between October and the end of March. The management of these areas affects everyone in Sheffield because of the impact on air quality, water quality, flood risk and carbon losses.

What happened in October?

It was only a matter of time until two factors combined: the moors closest to Sheffield suburbs were burnt and the prevailing westerly winds blew all the smoke into those densely populated areas. On 9^th October 2023 all four grouse moors within Sheffield were burning heather and in particular Moscar Estate was burning near Wyming Brook just a mile from the suburbs at Lodge Moor: 

Smoke was blown into Sheffield and that pollution built up in urban areas:

Very soon social media was alive with complaints from Sheffield residents who not only found the smoke unpleasant but were having difficulty breathing and were forced to stay indoors with windows closed [here]. The smoke particularly affected those with existing respiratory conditions such as asthma. And there was a real sense of anger because everyone knew this burning was intentional for the benefit of a few grouse moor owners.

Why is this smoke harmful to health?

Sheffield has a network of “citizen science” air quality sensors which measure particulates including PM2.5 which are tiny particles less than 2.5 micro metres (µm) in size and are especially harmful because they pass from our lungs into the bloodstream and affect all our organs. Defra say “Exposure to high concentrations of PM (e.g, during short term pollution episodes) can also exacerbate heart and lung conditions, significantly affecting quality of life, and increase deaths and hospital admissions” [here]. To put this into context the World Health Organisation has set a safe PM2.5  limit of an average of 15 µg/m³ per day and this air quality sensor was showing spikes of around 120 µg/ m³ as shown here:

There is a more detailed and easy to read analysis including data from Defra and Sheffield Council air quality sensors, undertaken by Sheffield University [here].

So it’s clear Sheffield suffered a major air pollution incident on 9^th October and the only rational explanation for this was moorland burning.

But they’re allowed to burn aren’t they?

The burning near Wyming Brook occurred on moorland which is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and Specially Protected Area (SPA). It’s obviously shallow peat soil (<40cm deep) so the blanket bog burning ban does not apply. But as Natural England explained to me:

“The moorland estates located within Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSi’s) close to Sheffield do tend to have Agri-Environment Higher Level Stewardship agreements that contain burning plans. These are compliant with the Heather and Grass Burning Regulations, which are the effective detailed consent under the Wildlife and Countryside Act for the agreement period.”

This is a long winded way of describing how Moscar Estate has a management plan which MUST be followed.

An Environmental Information Request revealed what’s entailed in the detailed consent  – see below to read the Moscar Management Plan File:

According to this management plan, burning is allowed in this area on a 7-10 year rotation subject to a number of conditions including (4.1.5):

‘Burning will only be carried out when conditions allow for quick cool burns. A cool burn is one which removes the dwarf-shrub canopy yet leaves behind a proportion of ‘stick’ and does not cause damage to the moss layer or expose the peat surface.

Hotter, slower burns can kill the moss and lichen layer and plants like cowberry and bilberry and if severe it can burn into the peat surface causing erosion and affecting the integrity of the sensitive habitat. The moss or lichen or litter layer should not be damaged by burning, such that the moss layer will not recover within a year. When conditions do not to allow for this, fires will not be started‘.

But when I visited the burn site I counted around 40 individual burns many of which had apparently been “hot” and “intensive” leaving no heather stick or moss. Like this:

And like this (Sheffield suburbs just behind):

The burning occurred in SSSI unit 37 which has been assessed as ‘Unfavourable Recovering’; (3.2.1) lists the detailed management actions and objectives needed to achieve favourable condition.

The areas burnt in October are best described as species poor because they’re dominated by heather. There’s often a lack of ground layer which means organic soil can be exposed following burning and the management objective is to minimize the area of peat exposed through careful cool burning or cutting. But what actually happened appears to be the opposite – hot intensive burns left a large amount of peat exposed which could compound the unfavourable condition of the SSSI unit.

The burning appears to be a clear breach of the management plan conditions and therefore an apparent breach of Section 28 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act which deals with SSSIs.

In this case it’s crucial to emphasise that hot intensive burns inevitably create more smoke because all combustible material is burnt. Cool burns leave a lot of vegetation intact and therefore create less smoke.

I did report similar intensive, hot burning at Moscar Estate in 2016 which resulted in the estate receiving a warning, so the requirements for consented burning should have been very clear.

Natural England are primarily concerned with conservation not air pollution but as I’ve described above the two issues are inextricably linked in this case. The Local Authority – Sheffield Council – has powers under The Environment Act 1990 to tackle a Statutory Nuisance [here] which has a broad definition but includes smoke from “premises” that

• unreasonably and substantially interfere with the use or enjoyment of a home or other premises;
• injure health or be likely to injure health.

And given the public outcry, a number of people including Councillors are pressing Sheffield Council to serve a Smoke Abatement Notice via Section 80 of the Environment Act 1990. The latest Sheffield Council response is [here]:

“The Environmental Protection Service has written to the three landowners to establish what went wrong on this occasion and to seek assurances that measures are put in place to minimise the impact in future. We have advised them of the provisions of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the potential consequences if an authorised officer from this Service finds that a statutory nuisance exists during future burns. We are awaiting their responses. It seems that on this occasion the high pressure weather event played a part in forcing the smoke down into Sheffield.”

Blog readers will be familiar with this type of response from a statutory body to the actions of grouse moors – hopelessly inadequate. The citizens of Sheffield are crying out for their Local Authority to take immediate robust action for this major pollution event which has already occurred and already affected the lives and health of thousands of people.

Sheffield Council also contacted Natural England who said “Once we have established the circumstances leading to the incident this year we will consider if the service of a S80 notice is appropriate.” So it all comes down to Natural England’s assessment of the burning. I’ve done my best to give them full information by sending them videos of the burning and photos with GPS refs of the post-burn sites.

Landowner Public Accountability

My site visit revealed many of the burns had mown margins (that acted as a fire break) so it’s clear that all these patches of moorland could have been mown and the burning wasn’t necessary at all:

Moscar Estate owner, the Duke of Rutland, has now responded to a request for a ‘Smoke Summit’ meeting with South Yorkshire Regional Mayor Oliver Coppard [see here].

It is a matter of public record, via Defra’s Magic map [see screen grab below] that Moscar Estate receives around £200,000pa in High Level Stewardship funding which is taxpayers’ money. The public deserves an explanation:

The Sheffield Tribune [here] did manage to speak to a representative of the Peak District Moorland Group who “accepted the situation that occurred was totally unsatisfactory for those that were affected by the lingering smoke”. He added that the PDMG hoped to organise a meeting with residents to discuss the smoke and explain why ‘consented low intensity vegetation burning’ was selected over other management options available to land managers.

But of course we haven’t heard anything about a public meeting.

Conclusion

I’ve witnessed an awful lot of burning over the last 10 years and the intensity of burning and amount of smoke produced in this incident was bad but not exceptional. Everybody noticed these burns because the smoke ended up in Sheffield and was measured. Countless smaller communities and individual dwellings suffer similar levels of smoke pollution throughout the grouse moor burning season.

If you live in Sheffield please write to your councillor and MP to ensure the smoke abatement notice does happen. If you live elsewhere write to your MP and ask what they will do after the next election to ensure moorland burning comes to an end.

ENDS