Author: RaptorPersecutionUK

In February this year, a team of scientists from Cambridge University published a study that found that 94% of pheasants on sale in the UK for human consumption were killed using toxic lead (see here).

It was the third scientific paper published by the ‘Shot-Switch‘ group, which was established in 2020 to monitor the shooting industry’s professed voluntary five-year transition from toxic lead to non-lead ammunition in the UK; a massive U-turn by the shooting industry after defending the use of toxic lead ammunition for years.

The Shot-Switch team buys pheasants from retailers during each shooting season and undertakes rigorous scientific tests to determine whether they’ve been shot with toxic lead or non-lead ammunition.

This third paper, published in the highly-regarded Conservation Evidence journal, documenting that 94% of pheasants on sale during the 2022/23 season were contaminated with toxic lead, demonstrated that the shooting industry’s voluntary initiative to phase out toxic lead shot for pheasant hunting has so far had little impact.

This is fairly embarrassing for the game shooting industry, obviously, and, unsurprisingly, there was very little public response from them when the peer-reviewed paper was published in February.

Also unsurprisingly, at least one prominent shooting organisation has raised what it calls ‘significant concerns‘ about the accuracy of the most recent paper’s conclusions.

The Chief Executive of BASC (one of the nine shooting organisations that in 2020 committed to the 5-year voluntary transition away from toxic lead) wrote to the paper’s lead author, Professor Rhys Green, to raise those concerns in March 2023.

You can read what those concerns are, and how the expert scientists have responded, in this letter that’s just been published on the Shot-Switch website:

Astonishingly (or not!), BASC has responded today by publishing an outrageous slur on its website where it describes the Shot-Switch study as “pseudoscience“.

The BASC statement also fails to provide details of the Shot-Switch scientists’ responses to BASC’s concerns:

Of course the shooting organisations will want to undermine and discredit any research that demonstrates the industry’s intransigence and complete failure to self-regulate; it’s their stock response and they’ve been doing it for years (see their endless attempts to discredit scientific reports of ongoing raptor persecution, for example).

And it’s really no surprise that BASC is fronting this latest attack, given the revolt this organisation faced from its own members when it finally U-turned in 2020 and suggested a move away from toxic lead ammunition. I expect BASC’s latest response is to try and placate some of those members (and perhaps entice back some of its now ex-members).

But I’m really surprised at Dr O’Gorman’s accusation that the Shot-Switch project is “pseudoscience“. As someone with a PhD, he’ll know the appropriate process for challenging peer-reviewed scientific rigour is to submit a rebuttal to the journal that published the research, rather than pen a nasty, derogatory article on a website without providing the detailed responses of the expert scientists he’s accusing of false results.

Can we expect to see such a letter in the journal Conservation Evidence? No, thought not.

Fortunately, as the Shot-Switch scientists have had the decency to be transparent and publish their responses in full on their own website, people can read the evidence for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

It’s worth noting the following statement at the foot of the Shot-Switch website:

‘The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Waitrose & Partners contribute to the costs of materials and reagents for the study.

SHOT-SWITCH also approached two of the leading science-based organisations that made the joint statement on the 24th of February 2020 (BASC and GWCT) in April-September 2020 when the project was being planned and invited their involvement in its design and funding. Similar approaches were made in August 2021 and August 2022. BASC and GWCT have so far declined to participate in the project’. 

UPDATE 16th August 2023: BASC ‘forgets’ to mention evidence showing no difference between penetration level of lead vs steel shot in ‘game meat’ (here)

Last month, Green Party Life Peer Natalie Bennett lodged a parliamentary question for DEFRA to answer, asking what steps the Government plans to take to end the use of toxic lead shot given the gamebird-shooting industry’s continued failure to do it voluntarily.

Her question came after a new scientific study was published, led by eminent researchers from the University of Cambridge, showing that three years into a five-year pledge to completely phase out lead shot in UK game hunting, 94% of pheasants on sale for human consumption were killed using toxic lead ammunition (see here).

Here is Natalie’s question:

And here is the reply from DEFRA Minister of State (and gamebird shooter) Lord Benyon:

Christ almighty. Almost another year to wait for a decision from DEFRA on whether to restrict the use of lead ammunition, when the risk from this toxic poison to wildlife, people and the environment has been known for, literally, decades.

UPDATE 13th September 2023: Is DEFRA can-kicking the decision to phase out use of toxic lead ammunition by gamebird shooters? (here)

REVIVE, the coalition for grouse moor reform in Scotland has produced a guide to help people respond to a request for views of the long-awaited grouse moor reform bill, formally known as the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill.

This is the Bill the Scottish Government introduced in March 2023, in response to the 2019 Werritty Review, which recommended a grouse moor licensing scheme in an attempt to address the ongoing illegal killing of birds of prey on grouse moors. The Bill is also designed to regulate grouse moor management ‘to ensure grouse moors are managed sustainably’.

Now the Bill has finally been introduced, this is how it will progress through Parliament over the coming months.

It is currently at Stage 1 in the process, which is where a cross-party Parliamentary Committee scrutinises the Bill. The committee (in this case, the Rural Affairs & Islands Committee) will hear from experts, organisations and members of the public, including an opportunity for some to present oral evidence, and then the Committee will write a report detailing its view of the Bill and there’ll be a subsequent Parliamentary debate before the Bill progresses to Stage 2.

Rather unhelpfully, some commentators from ‘our side’ are refusing to engage with the Bill because they take the view that a grouse moor licensing scheme is unacceptable, arguing that we should instead be pushing for a ban on grouse shooting. In my view, that’s counterproductive because a ban isn’t on the table, and won’t be until such time a licensing scheme proves to be ineffective. The licensing scheme is seen as an unavoidable, proportionate next step by the Scottish Government so for now, it’s either (a) get behind the licensing scheme and try and make it as robust as possible, or (b) refuse to engage, allow the game-shooting industry to water down the proposed regulation and put up with the status quo. I prefer option (a). If the licensing scheme proves to be ineffective, then will be the time to push for a ban, because the Scottish Government won’t have anywhere else to go, having exhausted all other routes.

Some of you may think you’ve already responded to a consultation on this Bill, and you’d be right. The Scottish Government held a public consultation last autumn (here) prior to drafting this new Bill, and that consultation elicited an impressive 4,863 responses.

The latest call for public views and evidence is different to that consultation. This time the request has come from the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee who are about to start scrutinising the Bill.

The Committee is calling for the public’s views on a number of specific issues to help inform its deliberation of the Bill. The closing date for submitting views is Friday 5th May 2023.

Having seen how some of the game-shooting organisations are encouraging their supporters to respond (e.g. BASC, whose guidance basically amounts to, ‘Say no to everything‘!), the REVIVE coalition has produced a handy guide to help its supporters engage more constructively. Click here for REVIVE’s guidance.

Please note, it’s only a guide. If you have different views, or personal experience, feel free to express those, in your own words.

Please also note, anybody can respond to the request to views. It’s not restricted to Scottish residents.

Here’s the link to REVIVE’s guidance again (here).

Many thanks.

Earlier this week the seedy Daily Mail published a disparaging headline about Chris Packham, this time screaming that Chris ‘faces calls to be sacked‘.

It was published in response to a short video Chris had posted on Twitter about attending a Biodiversity Earth Day rally in London today, which Chris described as “a family-friendly affair” and which the organisers had described as ‘a procession for nature, a parade of reflection and celebration, with masks, costumes and nature based art to honour and respect our natural world and all endangered species‘.

I wondered who it was that was calling for him to be sacked this time – I imagined it would be the usual suspects at the Countryside Alliance or their pro-hunting/shooting associates, who rarely miss an opportunity to launch an attack on Chris and who repeatedly pile on the pressure to the BBC demanding that Chris lose his job (e.g. here, here, here).

But this time it wasn’t them.

Instead, it appears that the justification for this headline was solely based on five words written by an anonymous Twitter user who has just 50 followers:

Little wonder that this so-called ‘news’ paper has been banned as an ‘unreliable’ source by Wikipedia.

Dear Cabinet Secretary,

We, the signatories to this letter, support the Scottish Government proposal, as part of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill, that all muirburn should require a licence, regardless of whether it takes place on a grouse moor or not.

We also support proposals to redefine deep peat depth. However, we recommend the Scottish Government redefines this as 30cm (as opposed to 40cm). This would take Scotland beyond the ambitions of the UK Government. In addition, we request you consider the purposes under which a licence to muirburn might be requested and accepted.

At least 163,000 hectares of Scotland’s landmass is regularly burned for grouse shooting, particularly concentrated in certain areas of the country. It is estimated that around 40% of the burned area has taken place over deep peat (as it is currently defined).

Even if the muirburn code becomes a mandatory legal requirement of land managers, the large areas in which muirburn takes place will be hard to police without significant resources and without continued significant risk to our vital peat reserves.

We note that BASC Scotland (in response to government plans on February 28^th, 2023) said it would be ‘unfeasible, laborious, and impractical for land managers to be expected to measure peat depth across their land as part of a licensing regime’.

We believe this argument fails to account for the Government’s climate change efforts.  As the grouse shooting industry has shown time and time again, particularly with regards to raptor persecution, voluntary restraint cannot always be relied upon. Moreover, against the recommendations of the UK Climate Change Committee they simultaneously argue, that best practice is widely followed while attempting to make the case that burning over peat is actually a good thing and should be allowed.

To draw a different conclusion on how muirburn should be handled, to make the regulation of muirburn manageable, in addition to our above points we propose that a licence should not be given for muirburn when the purpose is increasing grouse numbers for sport shooting.

In situations where there is evidence to support muirburn taking place, where alternatives like cutting are not available, we would not oppose this. These situations could include responsible research, creating strips for wildfire breakage points (as opposed to large less effective patches that are common on grouse moors) while peat should be avoided. We also support wider efforts from the Fire Service and the Scottish Government on public education initiatives and training land managers of all types to prevent wildfires where possible.

Large monocultures like heather moorland present their own challenges to fighting wildfires and that a more diverse mosaic of flora, fauna and trees can alter wildfire intensity and make them easier to tackle. Moving away from muirburn on our moors will unlock our land’s potential to provide far better resistance to wildfires over time, and also enable greater biodiversity and carbon sequestration potential.

The main point is that due to the risk of our vital peat reserves; our lack of faith in the grouse shooting industry to look after and prioritise peatland over grouse shooting; the difficulty and resources it would take to effectively enforce the licence; and because keeping so much of our land in state of monoculture stops the development of greater biodiversity: a licence should not be given for muirburn when the reason is as unnecessary as ensuring more grouse can be shot by a few people for sport.

We strongly urge you to consider and adopt the above position. To do so would be to aid the Government’s own stated goal to transition to more appropriate, economic and biodiverse land uses for our people, our wildlife and the environment.

Signed,

REVIVE

John Muir Trust

Friends of the Earth Scotland

Scottish Raptor Study Group

Rewilding Britain

League Against Cruel Sports Scotland

Raptor Persecution UK

Reforesting Scotland

Common Weal

North East Mountain Trust

The conservation campaign group Wild Justice has just published the findings of its latest research into the level of toxic, poisonous lead shot found in gamebirds (pheasants and partridges) on sale in supermarkets and from some online traders during the 2022/23 shooting season (see here, here and here for their most recent blogs).

In 2020, nine UK game-shooting organisations made a massive U-turn after years and years and years of defending the use of toxic lead ammunition, and said they wanted to drag the industry into the 21st Century by making a five-year voluntary transition away from lead ammunition (see here).

A lot of us were sceptical because (a) we rarely trust anything the industry tells us; (b) previous ‘voluntary bans’ by the industry on a number of issues have been unsuccessful (e.g. see here, here and here); (c) the ongoing failure of the shooting industry to comply with current regulations on many issues, including the use of lead ammunition over wetlands (here), means there should be absolutely zero confidence in its ability and/or willingness to stick to any notional voluntary ban; (d) the Scottish Gamekeepers Association refused to sign up to the proposed five-year transition period because they believe there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that lead can have damaging impacts on humans, wildlife and the environment (here); and (e) in the very same year that nine shooting organisations committed to the five-year transition, BASC announced it was set to fight a proposed EU ban on the use of lead ammunition on wetlands (see here).

Wild Justice’s latest results demonstrate that, with the exception of the partridge breasts sold by ‘Eat Wild’, all of the gamebird meat tested contained high levels of poisonous lead, well above the legal limit set for non-gamebird meat such as pork, chicken, lamb and beef.

The gamebird shooting industry has just two years left, within its own proposed five-year voluntary transition period, to get its act together on this public health issue.

And it’s not just a public health issue. It’s also an issue of sustainability. We’re often told (by the industry) that gamebird shooting is sustainable. But have a look at the Wild Justice blog about the pheasant breasts it bought and tested from Lidl stores in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic (here). According to the packaging, Lidl pheasant breasts were shot in the UK, then sent to Poland for processing, then shipped to Northern Ireland & the RoI to be put on the shelves in Lidl stores!

No matter how much the industry spins the narrative, this cannot possibly be described as sustainable in any way, shape or form!