Category: News

Earlier this month the RSPB in England announced that members of the public had been using the new Burning App to report upland fires to the RSPB, many of which were on peatland inside supposedly protected areas (see here).

This information is crucial for the RSPB to build a picture of where lawful, and more importantly unlawful, fires may be being used as part of grouse moor management practices, to inform policy-makers about the need for better protection of blanket bog and other peatland habitats.

[Gamekeepers setting fire to a grouse moor in Aberdeenshire in February 2022]

Last week RSPB Scotland also issued a press release calling on the public to help. Here’s a copy of that press release (from 17th March 2022):

Members of the public have reported 72 burns to RSPB this season

• The RSPB’s new upland burning reporting app has documented over 72 reports of burning in our uplands from 1 October 2021 to 3 March 2022.
• All of the reported burns were on likely peat (equal to or greater than 1 cm) with more than 1 in 4 on peat deeper than 30cm.
• 1 in 5 reported burns were in a protected area (SSSI, SAC or SPA) The RSPB is calling on members of the public to report incidents of burning in our uplands using their Survey 123 app before the end of the burning season.
• The data collected will help make the case for better protection of our globally important blanket bog and other peatland habitats. 
• The RSPB supports Scottish Government’s stated commitment to introduce new legislation soon to ban burning on deep peatlands and to licence all moorland and grass burning to protect our people, our nature and our climate. 

This burning season, the RSPB launched the Burning Reporting App, allowing members of the public to simply and anonymously submit evidence of burning in our upland areas.

Burns can take place from the start of October until the end of April across our moors, hillsides and glens in Scotland. This practice is used by gamekeepers, deer managers and farmers to remove old heather and grass, with new growth preferred by grouse, deer and sheep to eat. However, these burns can have a significant impact on our upland landscapes, as well as on the diversity of habitats and species which call them home. In addition to carbon released during the burn itself, repeated burning reduces the landscapes’ ability to deal with extreme weather including flooding and drought, reduces vegetation structure and diversity and can lead to a reduction of water quality through the release of soil carbon.

Ahead of the end of this burning season in April, the RSPB is asking members of the public to report instances of burning in our uplands using the Survey 123 app.

These reports will help to support the RSPB’s call for the Scottish Government to take action to ban burning on peatlands, adopt a much tighter definition of peatland soils, and to licence all moorland and grass burning.

Duncan Orr-Ewing, Head of Species and Land Management for RSPB Scotland said, “We have had a great response from the public to our App, and with over 70 reports of burning so far, it’s clear that the Scottish public are eager to do their part to prevent further damage to these internationally significant landscapes for nature conservation and climate.

Peatlands are vital carbon stores and home to some of our most precious wildlife but burning threatens the natural heritage of these areas and damages peatlands.

In the context of the nature and climate emergency, we need to restore our peatlands to healthy condition through re-wetting, not by burning them. It is estimated that degraded peatlands in Scotland currently contribute about 13% of total Scottish greenhouse gas emissions.

In Scotland, the voluntary code of practice for burning, the Muirburn Code, says that burning on peatlands should not take place however RSPB is concerned that such burning does, in fact, continue. It is clear from the reports we have received so far that burns are being conducted on peatland soils and in some of our most important protected areas for wildlife.

Whilst we are pleased that the Scottish Government has announced that it is working towards licencing burning and a ban on burning on peatland, we urge this action to be delivered as soon as possible.”

Oriole Wagstaff, Casework Officer for RSPB UK said, “We cannot protect our uplands if we do not have a full picture of the land management undertaken throughout them. With many burns taking place in remote areas, we need the public to support us and report these burns.  

Our new burning app is providing vital information on the extent and location of burning across our upland areas in Scotland.  Information gathered to date shows that burning on peatlands is still happening and with some regularity.

We are grateful to the public in helping us with our objective of ensuring that any burning of vegetation in our uplands is carried out in future under a licence, providing protection for all public interests, and so that all burning on deep peatland soils is halted. 

In Scotland, burning can legally take place until 15^th April, with extensions available until 30^th April.  We are interested in reports of burning activity to assess its sustainability, particularly in relation to burning on peatland soils.”

To anonymously report a burn and download the app (available on iOS and Android), members of the public can visit the RSPB Burning website. There they can find instructions on how to download the app, as well as information on how to spot a burn and to stay safe when reporting a burn.

ENDS

UPDATE 31st May 2022: Investigation reveals widespread burning on grouse moors despite Government ban for protected peatlands (here)

Earlier today, BBC’s Crimewatch Live programme featured the arson attack on Chris Packham’s home last October (see previous blogs here and here).

The programme showed new evidence, previously unseen by the public, and it was very clear that this was a targeted and orchestrated attack by individuals intent on sending Chris a sinister message.

You can watch the Crimewatch Live episode here and the arson attack is the first feature, but this recording is only available on BBC iPlayer until 10.45hrs tomorrow morning (seems a bit ridiculous that a programme relying on help from the general public to solve crimes is only available online for 24hrs) so I’ve also transcribed the discussions and screen grabbed some of the images. [UPDATE: thanks to the blog reader who sent a link to the archived recording on YouTube here].

Transcript:

Presenter Rav Wilding: Last October, TV presenter and conservationist Chris Packham was the target of an arson attack right outside his home in the New Forest. Earlier I spoke to Chris and also Detective Inspector Howard Broadribb from Hampshire Police to find out more about what happened that night.

Chris Packham: Yes, October 8th, myself and the dogs went to bed, rather early for us at just before midnight, and then shortly after half past 12 there was an enormous explosion, that was the first I knew of the incident. The car had clearly exploded, the bang was tremendous, I mean the dogs flew off the bed and started yelping and barking straight away. Where I live we’re not prone to any sort of loud interruptive noises at night so it was quite startling, and then of course it came to pass that this vehicle had been parked outside the gate and was ablaze, thankfully attended by the fire service and the police of course, who manged to douse the flames. It had by that stage destroyed the gates, damaged a lovely old tree that’s by the gates there which obviously saddened me as well. But it wasn’t until the morning that we were able to fully assess the damage. The car was completely burned out, it got so hot the engine block had melted so it was quite an explosion.

Rav: Goodness me. I know that since this happened, Chris, you have upgraded security at your home but this clearly must have had a big impact on not only you, your family, your animals as well?

Chris: Yeah, I mean since the threats started a few years ago, and they’ve been manifold in different forms, so we’ve had death threats, initially in the post, we’ve had people posting us human excrement, and animal excrement, and other offensive items, I’ve worked really closely with Hampshire Police, they’ve been absolutely superb, I cannot commend them enough for the care, attention and diligence that they’ve shown, and they’ve also offered a lot of advice about how to improve the security.

A long time ago I remember listening to a Yoko Ono song, one of the lyrics was, ‘A neurotic builds a castle, a psychotic lives in it’. I’ve never wanted to live enclosed, I’ve wanted the freedom to express my views and ask people to change their minds, but subsequent to this upscaling of the threats we have again taken police advice and increased the security at the property.

But as you say, it’s quite frightening, it’s a direct attack if you like, rather than dead animals being left outside which I’m afraid has become quite commonplace. It’s an upscaling and yes, my partner, who is relatively resolute, was certainly perturbed. My step-daughter, who’s grown up in a theatre where I have been campaigning and has perhaps been even more used to the threats, is concerned about my welfare more than anything else, to be quite honest with you.

Rav: Oh Chris, it’s just awful, everything you described and I really hope today we can get some answers for you, but thank you for joining us.

Chris: Thank you.

Rav: I’m going to go now and speak to the officer dealing with this case right now, this is Detective Inspector Howard Broadribb from Hampshire Constabulary. Awful, what we’re hearing from Chris there, so what do you know about what happened on the night of this incident?

Detective Inspector Howard Broadribb: So, Chris mentioned the 8th October but we’ve put together a time line and what we know is it actually started on the 7th October, where a Mitsubishi Shogun [the get-away vehicle] was purchased from an address in Somerset. That then came into Southampton on the 7th and during the course of the afternoon/evening it’s made several trips between Hampshire and Dorset.

Just after 7pm it uses a petrol forecourt in Bournemouth, which is a Co-op forecourt, where it draws petrol into that vehicle.

Rav: And we can just see images of that now, so what do you know happened after that?

DI Broadribb: So we also know now that on the evening of the 7th around 11 o’clock at night and midnight a Land Rover Discovery was stolen from an address in Marchwood, which is also in Southampton. We know that the Land Rover Discovery and the Shogun travelled in convoy and at 22 minutes past midnight the Shogun is seen to drive past the entrance to Chris’s house, shortly followed by the Discovery, where the driver’s turned the lights off, drives down and parks directly outside the gates to Chris’s home.

He [the driver of the Discovery] then spends three minutes and 40 seconds, which is a long time, setting fires inside that vehicle. He’s not afraid of being caught, he’s not panicking, he then very casually walks away towards the direction of where the Shogun was parked up. You can see, the Land Rover’s been completely destroyed as Chris has described, destroying his gates, absolutely terrifying.

Rav: Yeah, we can see that now, the devastation, and it’s just awful what happened, let alone the amount of damage that was caused to this property.

So, at the time, you didn’t have any witnesses that had come forward, this is a very rural location, but you’re still hopeful that someone can help today?

DI Broadribb: Yeah, you’re right, this is a very rural location but again, going back to that time line, what we do know is this began with the Shogun being purchased in Somerset. When it was bought, the people who bought it loaded it onto a Ford Transit low loader and that was then used to bring the car back to Southampton.

What’s unusual is the low loader is a Ford Transit bearing the number plate BU06 HDY; actually that’s not the number plate for that vehicle. That belongs to another completely different low loader. So, I’m looking for anyone who saw that low loader with the Shogun on the back, being driven, who was driving it, any passengers, on that day?

Rav: That would be really significant – so the number plate that was on that low loader is not what it should be?

DI Broadribb: Correct.

Rav: Ok, and we’ve got details of that on the screen. Also, you would like to know about who was actually putting the fuel in that car. We’ve got a still image of that person there.

DI Broadribb: Absolutely, and it’s a really clear image of someone putting petrol into that car, so I want to know who that is. That is on the 7th October but equally if you saw someone driving that vehicle [Shogun] around the 7th/8th or even since then, I’d like a name of who that is, and also if you’ve seen that vehicle since I’m really keen to find that vehicle. Equally the low loader, we’d like to recover that as well. If you’ve seen who’s driving it, passenger, again, contact me.

Rav: Could be some crucial info there. Have a good look, do you recognise any of the vehicles? Or do you recognise this driver? If you have any information it really could help police catch the people responsible. If so, please do get in touch, our number is 08000 468999.

ENDS

Press release from Cambridge University (16th March 2022)

Birds of prey populations across Europe suppressed by lead poisoning from gun ammunition – study

• Toxic lead ammunition used by hunters has long been shown to kill raptors – or birds of prey – by contaminating their food.
• New study uses data on lead levels in the livers of thousands of dead raptors to calculate the impact of lead poisoning on their population size.  
• Europe is missing at least 55,000 adult raptors because of lead poisoning, with populations of White-tailed Eagles 14% lower and Golden Eagles 13% lower than they would otherwise be.

Poisoning caused by preying on or scavenging animals shot by hunters using lead ammunition has left the populations of many raptors – or birds of prey – far smaller than they should be, according to the first study to calculate these impacts across Europe.   

When birds like eagles and Red Kites scavenge carcasses or eat injured animals with fragments of toxic lead from gun ammunition embedded in their bodies they can become poisoned, suffering slow and painful deaths. Smaller doses have been shown to alter behaviour and physiology.

Now, scientists from the University of Cambridge have used data on lead levels in the livers of over 3,000 raptors found dead in more than a dozen countries to calculate the extent to which poisoning by lead ammunition has affected Europe’s raptor populations.

Researchers estimate that, for ten raptor species, poisoning from lead ammunition alone has resulted in an absence of around 55,000 adult birds from European skies.

Worst affected are species like eagles that are naturally long-lived, rear few young per year and breed later in life. However, even populations of species familiar to bird-watchers across countries like the UK, such as the Common Buzzard and Red Kite, would be significantly bigger were it not for lead ammunition.

For example, the study suggests that Europe’s White-tailed Eagle population is 14% smaller than it would have been without more than a century of exposure to lethal levels of lead in some of its food.

This is closely followed by the Golden Eagle and Griffon Vulture with populations 13% and 12% smaller than they would otherwise have been. Northern Goshawk numbers are 6% smaller, and both Red Kite and Western Marsh Harrier populations are 3% smaller.

Common Buzzard populations are 1.5% smaller, but this equates to almost 22,000 fewer adults of this widespread species, say the researchers.  

They estimate that the overall European population of ten raptor species is at least 6% smaller than it should be, solely as a result of poisoning from lead ammunition. The findings are published today in the journal Science of the Total Environment.   

The scientists say that a range of alternatives to lead shotgun cartridges and rifle bullets are widely available to hunters and work well. However, efforts by UK hunters’ organisations to instigate voluntary bans on lead shot in hunting have had almost no effect.

Research by the same Cambridge authors published just last month shows over 99% of pheasants killed in the UK are still shot with lead, despite hunting groups urging members to switch to non-toxic gunshot in 2020, with the aim of phasing out lead use by 2025.

“The continued blanket use of lead ammunition means that hunting as a pastime simply cannot be considered sustainable unless things change,” said lead author Prof Rhys Green, a conservation scientist at the University of Cambridge and RSPB.

“Unfortunately, efforts to encourage voluntary shifts away from lead shot have been completely ineffective so far,” he said.

“The kinds of reductions in raptor populations suggested by our study would be considered worthy of strong action, including legislation, if caused by habitat destruction or deliberate poisoning.”

Currently, only two European nations – Denmark and the Netherlands – have banned lead shot. Denmark plans to follow this up with a ban on lead rifle bullets. Both the European Union and the UK are considering legal bans on all lead ammunition due to effects on wildlife and the health of human consumers of game meat, but many hunting groups oppose this, according to researchers.

Some raptors are poisoned when they scavenge from dead animals killed with lead ammunition. This can be a whole carcass lost or abandoned by hunters, or – for example – the guts of a hunted deer, discarded to reduce carrying weight.

As well as vultures, which rely on scavenging, many other raptors also scavenge when the opportunity arises, including eagles, buzzards and kites. Many dead pheasants at UK roadsides carry lead shot and fragments in their bodies and are scavenged by buzzards and kites.

Other species, such as falcons and goshawks, are exposed through preying upon live animals with lead embedded in their bodies from being shot and injured but not killed. X-ray studies of wild ducks in the UK have shown that about a quarter of live birds have shot in their bodies. Injured ducks or pigeons are less likely to be able to evade predatory birds.

“It’s taken decades for researchers from across Europe to amass sufficient data to enable us to calculate the impacts of lead poisoning on raptor populations,” said study co-author Prof Debbie Pain from the University of Cambridge.

“We can now see just how substantial population impacts can be for some of our most charismatic and vulnerable species – species that are protected by EU Regulation and the UK Wildlife & Countryside Act.”

“The avoidable suffering and death of numerous individual raptors from lead poisoning should be sufficient to require the use of non-toxic alternatives. These population-level impacts make this both doubly important and urgent.”

For the latest study, researchers used population modelling to calculate how big Europe’s raptor populations would have been were it not for the destructive impact of a single “additional mortality factor”: lead poisoning from ammunition.    

They took data gathered since the 1970s from the livers of thousands of dead raptors in 13 nations and tracked the relationship with “hunter density”: average numbers of hunters per square kilometre in each country, using data from the European Federation for Hunting and Conservation.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, places with a higher density of hunters had more poisoned raptors. Scientists used this relationship to predict rates of poisoning in countries without data from bird livers, but where “hunter density” is known. Their results indicate that a country with no hunters using lead ammunition would have virtually no lead-poisoned raptors.

Scientists say their estimates are conservative, not least as data on poisoned raptors is limited and hugely difficult to gather. For many European raptor species, including some of the rarest ones, there were insufficient data to estimate how great the risk is.

ENDS

The full paper is due to be published online today and when that happens I’ll post a link to it here. [Update: read the paper here]. Meanwhile, here is the paper’s citation and abstract: