As they’ve done in previous years, the Hunt Saboteurs were out in force yesterday on the Inglorious 12th and managed to stop three grouse shoots in Yorkshire.
A large group of saboteurs, travelling from many different regions, converged on the moors to disrupt the shoots – you can read about what they got up to here.
UPDATE 15th August 2023: Hunt Saboteurs stop another grouse shoot in Yorkshire (here).
Ruabon Moor, the so-called ‘grouse capital’ of North Wales, has featured on this blog a few times in recent years.
Three satellite-tagged hen harriers ‘mysteriously vanished’ there (Heulwen in 2018; Aalin in 2018; Bronwyn in 2019) and a poisoned raven was discovered there in 2018 (here).
It seems that some other odd things have been happening on the moor, including the discovery of this quad bike, covered in camouflage netting ‘strewn with dead birds’ and an armed gamekeeper crouching in the heather nearby:
This, along with a dodgy-looking trap set near to a pigeon coop on the moor, have been discovered by a team called Wildlife Guardian and they’ve blogged about it all here.
Well worth a read.
Press release from the Scottish Greens:
THERE’S NOTHING GLORIOUS ABOUT GROUSE SHOOTING SEASON
The so-called Glorious 12th is a festival of violence
There’s nothing glorious or humane about the driven grouse shooting season, which begins today with the so-called ‘Glorious 12th’, the Scottish Greens have said.
The Party’s rural affairs spokesperson, Ariane Burgess MSP, has branded it “a festival of violence” and a “cruel and outdated hobby.”
At present the Scottish Government is progressing the Wildlife Management and Muirburn Bill, which will introduce a licensing system for grouse shooting and the practice of muirburn.
These measures are a necessary response to incidents of illegal persecution of Scotland’s iconic birds of prey, such as golden eagle, which have occurred on or near to grouse moors over several years [Ed: several decades!].
The measures on licensing muirburn will also protect peatlands which have a vital role in locking up carbon emissions. It’s also important that in a climate crisis where wildfires are more prevalent that we know who is undertaking muirburn when and where.
The Scottish Greens have long opposed blood sports. The Party has welcomed the introduction of the bill, which was a key commitment in the Bute House Agreement, and believe it is a vital step for protecting Scotland’s iconic nature and our environment.
Ms Burgess said:
“There is nothing glorious or humane about the 12th of August. It is a festival of violence. Far too much of our land is given to this cruel and outdated hobby.
“The intensive burning and degradation of our landscapes to try and improve the habitat for red grouse so that there are more of them to be shot is unnecessary, and damages the local environment and our climate.
“The Scottish Government’s Wildlife Management and Muirburn Bill will be an important step to protecting our wildlife and curbing the environmental degradation and ritualistic cruelty that lies at the heart of this so-called sport.
“Our world renowned landscapes and nature are for all of us. They must serve local communities, rather than the interests of the small number of wealthy people who pursue these niche and elitist blood sports“.
ENDS
Two days ago I revealed that Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (‘bird flu’) had been detected last month in a red grouse in the Scottish Borders (here).
In response, the Green Party is calling for a halt to grouse shooting and wants DEFRA to investigate the prevalence of this highly contagious disease on grouse moors.
The following statement was published yesterday by the Green Party:
The Green Party has called for grouse shooting season which is due to begin tomorrow (August 12), on what is known as the Inglorious 12th, to be cancelled following reports of avian influenza in red grouse in Scotland.
Green peer Natalie Bennett has called for all shooting activity to stop and for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to investigate how prevalent Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza is among birds on grouse moors.
Bennett said:
“We have seen reports today that Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, the disease that is cutting such a swathe through our wild bird populations, has just been found in red grouse in Scotland.
“Grouse moors, with their maximum annual population, are a bio-disaster waiting to happen tomorrow when the shooting season opens.
“It’s extremely concerning that, as things stand, tomorrow will see people walking and driving all over the moors, with their shotguns at the ready, about to pick up at least some of those lead-laced carcasses and spread them around the country.
“How, even given the prominent position of grouse moor owners and shooters in our corridors of power, can this biorisk be accepted?
“All shooting due to take place must be halted while this risk is fully investigated to ensure the safety of both wildlife and people across the country.”
ENDS
As I discussed in my earlier post, there’s very little detail about where this infected red grouse was found (‘Scottish Borders’ is a big region) and how many other dead red grouse, or other species, were found with it (we know that testing is limited and does not include every infected bird found, which compromises our understanding of the spread of this disease – this RSPB blog is a good primer on the subject).
Given the unnatural high density of red grouse on many driven grouse moors and their use of communal grit trays (disease reservoirs), avian flu could rip through these grouse moors in a flash, affecting not just red grouse but cross-contaminating other species and especially birds of prey that may consume the infected carcasses.
A former UK Government Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer, Alick Simmons, had this to say about it on Twitter this morning:
Green Peer Natalie Bennet is right – DEFRA should be calling an immediate halt to driven grouse shooting and undertaking an assessment of the risk.
And not just DEFRA – given the extent of driven grouse moors in Scotland, NatureScot should be doing the same. They were asked to do last year but refused, saying: “There have been no recorded cases of avian influenza in any grouse species“. Well there has now, and on a Scottish moor!
Let’s ask them what they policy is now. Please send (polite) emails to:
and
This is a guest blog by Max Wiszniewski, Campaign Manager for REVIVE, the coalition for grouse moor reform.
As another shooting season of Scotland’s most contentious and controversial blood sport begins it’s clearer than ever that grouse shooting is a problem that must be tackled. This will be a key test for the Scottish Government. Not just in how it plans to make the country more biodiverse and better for our wildlife but this will signal how serious it is with its ambitions for land reform, something the SNP and Green Party memberships support passionately.
In the leadup to this moment hundreds of thousands of foxes, stoats, weasels, crows and so-called non-target species like hedgehogs have died so that more grouse can be shot by a few people for sport.
Much of our land has been burnt (muirburn), threatening our vital peat reserves, to make the land more suitable for grouse and another year has gone by where vast areas of moorland have been denied their chance to become more biodiverse because of grouse moor monocultures.
Meanwhile, tens if not hundreds of thousands of grit stations, many filled with high strength toxic medication, litter the countryside to keep grouse numbers artificially high while lead shot is contaminating more of our uplands.
Since when did Scotland the Brave abandon reason for madness?
Driven grouse shooting became popular with elites during the Victorian era with the advent of the breech loaded shotgun and as railways increased access to landowners’ estates. But since the 1990s onwards, growingly popular techniques like filling medicated grit stations with Flubendazole, saw an immense increase in intensive grouse moor management. There’s a financial motivation for this. It’s estimated that for every ‘brace’ of grouse shot, £5,000 is added to the valuation of an estate.
The industry’s circle of destruction exists because the pressure to maximise grouse numbers is at the heart of the problems we see today. It was in the 1990s of course that Scotland’s first, First Minister Donald Dewar called the killing of our birds of prey a “national disgrace“. Grouse moor management’s association with raptor persecution is very well known and Scotland now looks like it’s (finally) going to do something about it.
Scotland’s Parliament is working on the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill which would require grouse moors to apply for a licence. If it was deemed that (illegal) wildlife persecution likely took place on a particular grouse moor, or if there was a pattern of bad behaviour, that licence could be revoked.
Also up for reform in this Bill is wildlife trapping legislation and muirburn licencing but if these serious issues are to be tackled properly then the Government needs to go further – in spite of pressure from shooting estate lobbyists, who quite frankly want to block all necessary reform.
For instance, it’s a good thing that traps on grouse moors and beyond are to require a licence to operate. But what are the reasons a land manager should be able to obtain a licence to use killing traps? Is increasing grouse numbers for sport shooting a good reason to get one?
REVIVE supports the licencing of muirburn, as the Government has proposed, to regulate it in order to protect (some) of our essential peatland. (Peat is essential of course because of the immense amount of carbon it can store in a good state while muirburn has helped to keep it in a dry and degraded state for decades.) But should a licence to burn be given for a purpose as cruel and frivolous as increasing grouse numbers for sport killing?
The SNP and Green Party see themselves as parties of land reform – it’s part of their DNA.
Grouse shooting is a metaphor for land reform issues in Scotland: huge swathes of the country, managed poorly for the benefit of very few people at the expense of our wildlife, the environment, greater biodiversity and better opportunities for our people. REVIVE genuinely believes that there is will from those in Government to change Scotland’s status as the nation with the most inequitable land ownership in the western world. Just 432 families own about half of Scotland.
The Scottish Government can and should be bold and brave in the face of large landowning lobbyists. Despite their protestations, Scotland (including rural Scotland) doesn’t support grouse shooting for sport.
If the Government and the Scottish Parliament are serious about land reform then they should start with grouse moors and signal to their members, to rural Scotland and to the nation as a whole, that they can change the face of Scotland for the better.
ENDS
Extinction Rebellion is planning a protest at Dundee Airport tomorrow on the opening of the grouse-shooting season.
They held a similar protest last year (here) timed to coincide with the arrival of grouse shooters on private jets, all heading for the grouse moors of the Angus Glens.
Extinction Rebellion has written the following ahead of tomorrow’s protest:
The 12th of August is the start of the grouse-shooting season. Dundee airport is used for private and chartered flights –major concerns given aviation’s contribution to the current climate disaster. Both are also disproportionately damaging and need to end.
Grouse-shooting
15% of Scottish land is used for grouse-shooting. Breeding grouse only for them to be shot, notionally for sport (or fun?!) has huge environmental costs. Grouse moor management results in the culling of hares and deer. It also involves the legally sanctioned killing of predators such as foxes, weasels, stoats and crows, as well as the illegal persecution of birds of prey. Hen harriers, red kites, golden eagles and peregrines mysteriously cannot survive in the vicinity of grouse moors, or, strangely, go missing.
Burning peat and heather on grouse moors not only releases carbon into the atmosphere but also destroys the habitat of many birds and other creatures. Draining of moorlands and other land management practices greatly increase risks of flooding in lowland areas.
Private flights
While 80% of the world’s populations has never flown, they are the ones most likely to be affected by the current climate disaster. The United Kingdom is the biggest private jet polluter in Europe. A private plane is 14 times more polluting per passenger than a commercial plane and 50 times more polluting than a train. A single jet releases two tonnes of CO2 in an hour. The world average per person is 4.7 tonnes of CO2 annually.
Meet outside Dundee airport.
11am Saturday 12 August
Bring a sign, placard or something to make a noise with – all welcome
Dundee Airport, Riverside Dr, Dundee DD2 1UH.
ENDS
A ‘new’ report was published this week, commissioned by the Regional Moorland Groups (an organisation with unclear funding sources that represents grouse moor gamekeepers) that makes all the usual claims about grouse shooting being sustainable and brilliant for the environment, biodiversity etc etc.
Unsurprisingly, it’s being touted around the internet by the grouse shooting organisations as part of their annual propaganda campaign as we approach the start of the grouse-shooting season on the Inglorious 12th August.
It’s not actually a new report at all, it’s a re-hash of a similar report that was published in 2021 written by the same author.
The latest version of the report has been described as being ‘truly objective’ in the accompanying press release. Not just objective then, but truly objective.
Here’s a photo of the truly objective author, Simon Denny, screen grabbed from an interview he gave to Sporting Gun in 2021:
I’ve had a brief glance through the ‘truly objective’ report and particularly at what’s been written about the illegal persecution of birds of prey on many driven grouse moors, mainly as a guide to whether the rest of the report is worth reading. It’s not.
Denny does admit that some gamekeepers do kill birds of prey on grouse moors (well he could hardly deny it, could he?!) but he then tries to diminish the extent of these crimes by basing his (flawed) argument on the number of gamekeeper convictions, which are notoriously difficult to get, rather than on the massive pile of peer-reviewed scientific papers demonstrating the systematic killing of many raptor species on many driven grouse moors. ‘Truly objective’? I don’t think so.
Denny then argues that birds of prey are also killed by people other than gamekeepers, again presumably to try and deflect attention from the industry. I don’t think anybody would sensibly argue that it’s only gamekeepers that kill raptors in the UK – that’s patently untrue – but what Denny fails to address in his ‘truly objective’ report is the disproportionate number of gamekeepers convicted for raptor persecution offences in comparison to the rest of society. This helpful pie-chart from the RSPB’s latest Birdcrime report (2021) doesn’t appear to have made it into Denny’s ‘truly objective’ report:
I also note in the report that Denny refers to Wild Justice‘s legal challenge against Natural England’s General Licences as ‘vexatious’, which is interesting. The word ‘vexatious’ in a legal setting refers to litigation that is designed to cause problems for someone but with little chance of succeeding. Given that Wild Justice’s legal challenge against Natural England’s General Licences was wholly successful (in other words, Natural England’s lawyers accepted that the General Licences were indeed unlawful and consequently had to amend them), Denny’s description of Wild Justice’s lawful and successful challenge isn’t even accurate, let alone ‘truly objective’.
I won’t be wasting any more time on Denny’s drivel but for those of you who want a good laugh the report can be read here:
Last month, water company United Utilities (UU) announced at its AGM that it will not be renewing grouse shooting leases (or pheasant and partridge shooting leases) on its land once the current leases expire in 2027 (here).
This position was widely welcomed by the conservation community but the gamebird shooting organisations were furious, even making half-veiled threats in the national press (see here).
United Utilities stood firm against the backlash and published a statement to further explain its decision (here).
This week, United Utilities has published another statement but its earlier decision now seems less clear. Here’s the latest statement:
GAMEBIRD SHOOTING ON OUR LAND
At United Utilities we are committed to managing, and investing in, all of our assets to improve water quality and resilience for the benefit of the communities we serve. These objectives alone underpin the land management policies we apply to the 56,000 hectares of land that we, as a company, own.
In July 2023, as part of an update to our land management policies, we identified 6,000 hectares that we will be restoring for nature and biodiversity.
On a further 12,000 hectares of land, we began to extend that work to improve catchment resilience including plans to not renew around 20 licenses for game bird shooting as they came to their end.
Since that announcement, we have received representations on behalf of the local rural communities about the potential social and economic impact this decision might have.
We take our responsibility seriously to engage fully with our community stakeholders. In response to these representations we will work with local communities affected and each licence holder to fully understand the impact of any proposal, to ensure we minimise the impact on livelihoods and maximise the opportunities available.
We will seek to identify how, in each case, we can best balance our commitment to improving water resilience whilst minimising the impact on individual communities and the environment.
We are aware there are many voices and points of view and we will listen to everyone involved.
ENDS
I’m not sure how to interpret that, to be honest.
Is it a clever ploy to placate the very angry shooting industry without actually having any intention of back-tracking on its earlier decision, or is it an indication that UU has buckled under the weight of online abuse and has opted for a quieter life by deciding to renew the shoot leases after all?
Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe UU has no intention of renewing any shooting leases but wants to explore other potential employment opportunities for those who may be out of a job if the shooting leases go.
Time will tell.
A case of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), otherwise known as bird flu, has been confirmed in red grouse in Scotland, according to DEFRA.
The confirmation has appeared in DEFRA’s running tally of confirmed bird flu cases in wild birds, which is a spreadsheet that’s updated weekly (see here).
The spreadsheet entry states that H5N1 was detected in a red grouse in week 30 (July 24 – July 30 2023) in the Scottish Borders:
There isn’t any more detail about the location, nor how many birds have been found infected/dead, just that a single bird has been tested and found to be positive.
If this infected red grouse was found on land managed for driven grouse shooting it’s of serious concern. Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza causes severe disease and high mortality in birds and has already killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of wild birds in the UK, impacting on the populations of globally significant species.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza is transmitted by the spreading between birds of nasal secretions and droppings, and it also spreads to birds of prey via the predation of infected birds. Some UK raptor species have already been badly affected, including golden eagles and white-tailed eagles (e.g. see here).
We know that many driven grouse moors are (mis)managed to produce an artificially-high density of red grouse for shooting. Another highly contagious disease, Cryptosporidiosis (Bulgy Eye) is rife on many intensively-managed driven grouse moors. It was first detected in wild red grouse in England in 2010 and then spread rapidly, via communal medicated grit trays, and by 2015 had affected high density red grouse on half of the 150 grouse moors in northern England. It has also been detected in Scotland, although the extent of the spread in Scotland is not known because the shooting industry is keeping quiet, and, for reasons unknown, NatureScot isn’t undertaking any surveillance of the disease (see here).
If the highly contagious Cryptosporidiosis disease can spread so rapidly via red grouse secretions and droppings found in grit trays on the moors, then so can Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza.
Last year I argued that it would be ‘irresponsible’ for grouse-shooting to go ahead during the avian flu epidemic (see here). In response, the Scottish Government said: ‘…there have been no recorded cases of avian influenza in any grouse species, and there are no restrictions in place on grouse shooting’.
Given that Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza has now been confirmed in red grouse in the Scottish Borders, and the grouse-shooting season opens on Saturday (the Inglorious 12th), how will the Scottish Government respond?
Shouldn’t they be restricting shooting as a precautionary measure, at least until the extent of the disease is evaluated?
The news this week that at least 98 hen harriers are now known to have either ‘disappeared’ in suspicious circumstances or been found illegally killed, mostly on or close to grouse moors (here) is not something the Moorland Association wants anyone to highlight.
That’s hardly a surprise – this is the lobby group for grouse moor owners in England and it has a well-deserved reputation for distorting the truth when it comes to raptor persecution (e.g. see here, here, here, here, here, here, here etc etc).
What is a surprise, though, is the staggering indifference it has just demonstrated to the ongoing illegal persecution of hen harriers on grouse moors. The indifference isn’t staggering, but the decision to display it so publicly is astonishingly stupid.
It posted this tweet yesterday, in response to the news of the 98 ‘missing’/killed hen harriers since 2018:
The tweet has attracted a great deal of online criticism, and deservedly so.
I pointed out that it was like saying, ‘Allegations that 221 women have been killed in the UK since the murder of Sarah Everard wilfully ignores the increase in the human population, now at its highest for 100 years‘.
Mark Harris tweeted: ‘I robbed a bank yesterday and the police came to arrest me. They wilfully ignored the fact the bank’s profits are at an all time high‘.
There are others, but my favourite response so far is from Gavin Deane, who wrote to the Moorland Association: ‘Your post would only make sense if your position was that persecution is acceptable so long as there’s enough breeding success. Perhaps that is your position, but it shouldn’t be. Breeding success is irrelevant to RPUK’s point‘.
I think Gavin nails it. As I wrote the other day (here), one of the main concerns about DEFRA/Natural England’s decision to ‘reintroduce’ hen harriers to southern England is that it will provide a distraction to what’s going on on northern grouse moors. It’ll allow the grouse moor lobby to claim that hen harriers are doing ok in the south (assuming they survive) and so there’s no need to worry about focusing resources/time/attention to the ongoing criminality on the grouse moors.
In my view, the Moorland Association’s tweet has just demonstrated that very position.
Meanwhile, I asked the Moorland Association if they’d like to chat about the number of hen harriers that have suspiciously ‘disappeared’ on grouse moors, or been found illegally shot, since Natural England’s last update in May.
The Moorland Association’s response? They’ve blocked me.
Not to worry, the news will be out soon enough and it’ll be fascinating to see how they try to limit the negative press – they’re going to have one hell of a job on their hands, given the number that have disappeared / been killed in the last three months.
Raptor Persecution UK 