Category: News

Last year Waitrose became the first (and only?) supermarket to ban the sale of gamebirds that have been shot with toxic lead ammunition (see here).

It was a bold move but one that was welcomed across the conservation sector.

Meanwhile, after years of consistently defending the use of toxic lead ammunition (e.g. here’s a classic example from one of the industry’s ‘figureheads’ (ahem) claiming that concerns were “nonsense”), in February this year a suite of shooting organisations announced that they wanted to promote a voluntary ban on the use of toxic lead ammunition and see an end to its use within five years. They had clearly seen the writing on the wall and decided to jump before they were pushed, although according to a statement from the Wildfowl & Wetland Trust (WWT), a group that’s been at the forefront of campaigning against lead ammunition for a very long time,

‘While the transition to lead-free ammunition is a positive move forward, conservationists stress that previous voluntary bans have been unsuccessful and without policy change at government level, there will still be risks to human health, wildlife and the market for game birds. A full restriction will contribute to the further removal of poisonous lead from our environment‘.

And not every shooting organisation was in support of even a voluntary ban. Those doyens of scientific research, the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, refused to sign up with the other shooting organisations because, they claimed, the impacts of lead “must be better studied” (see here). The irony of that statement wasn’t lost on any of us.

And just to confuse matters further, just last month the UK shooting industry as a whole stated it was to fight a new forthcoming EU regulation restricting the use of toxic lead ammunition on wetlands (see here).

It’s with some interest then that  John Gregson, senior manager of agri-food communications at Waitrose, gave a very strong presentation at the GWCT’s recent Game 2020 Conference on the company’s stance on lead shot.

This video is well worth watching. Aside from positioning himself as a former editor of the Shooting Times, and switching between talking about himself as a member of the shooting industry and as a Waitrose spokesperson, presumably to allay any fears amongst his audience that he might be perceived/smeared/dismissed as being ‘anti-shooting’, Gregson gives a compelling argument about why the shooting industry MUST drop the use of toxic lead ammunition ASAP – he argues that “we don’t have five years to get rid of lead“.

It was also good to hear him speak well of several scientists (namely Drs Debbie Pain and Rhys Green) who have worked for decades to demonstrate the no-brainer notion that toxic lead ammunition has to go.

Will the shooting industry listen?

Here’s the 25 minute video:

The young bearded vulture that summered in the UK has been photographed flying over Beachy Head on the south coast, presumably heading back to France.

A number of photographers captured the vulture’s apparent departure yesterday, including this fantastic image from Peter Alan Coe:

The vulture, nicknamed Vigo, had been a cause of concern in the summer as it’d chosen to hang out in the Peak District in ‘one of the worst 10km squares for raptor persecution in the UK’ (see here). However, it was able to avoid being shot or poisoned on a Peak District grouse moor, probably due to all the extra attention on the area from visiting birdwatchers with high-powered optics.

In September Vigo left the Peak District and was seen in the fenlands of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. This change of location allowed fieldworkers to go in and collect moulted feathers from one of the favoured roost sites in the Peak District and these were sent off for genetic analysis. A few days ago the results were in and the Vulture Conservation Foundation confirmed that Vigo was a female and had hatched from a nest in the Alps in 2019 (see here).

The threat of illegal persecution doesn’t end just because she’s leaving the UK. Last weekend there was a report (here) that another young Bearded vulture, hatched this year at a zoo in Germany and released during the summer as part of the French reintroduction scheme, had been found shot in Cevennes National Park.

Imagine you are a member of the gamebird shooting industry in the UK, you’d just heard about the RSPB’s plans calling for gamebird shooting reform, and then you’d read the following damning editorial, in The Times no less, you’d surely realise the writing’s on the wall:

And if you were a member of the gamebird shooting industry that had just read this opinion piece from a paper ostensibly seen as being on your side, how would you feel if you then read the reactions of the organisations who are supposed to represent your ‘sport’ but are effectively sticking fingers in ears, denying there’s any need for reform and are instead dancing in a circle singing ‘Tra la la, I can’t hear you‘, e.g. BASC (here), Moorland Association (here), Scottish Land & Estates (here)?

These knee-jerk reactions have been slammed in another editorial, this time in today’s edition of The Guardian (read it here).

The final two paragraphs are compelling:

‘There is no good reason for the oppositional stance that has become a reflex of many countryside organisations. It is the enormous dangers facing the natural world that should concern them, not a confected threat to their way of life. Self-regulation has failed to stop birds of prey including hen harriers from being poisoned by gamekeepers. Nor has it led to advances in land management, despite greatly increased public awareness of the risks of flooding, and the burning of peatlands (carried out in order that grouse can feed on new growth). Even the editor of Shooting Times was moved, in 2018, to decry the “greed that has crept into shooting”.

Ministers cannot continue to look away as landowners dismiss concerns rooted in public opinion and evidence. Conservation efforts must be recognised, and destruction punished. Impartial research into the shooting industry should be ordered. It is reprehensible, given the huge climate and biodiversity challenges facing us, that those who claim to have rural interests at heart appear determined to block progress‘.

It’s not just the broadsheets covering this subject. Have a look at this:

It’s an article that features in a publication called First News, a weekly UK tabloid aimed at 7-14 year olds and with an estimated circulation of 2.2 million. Thanks to the blog reader who sent us this (who also happens to be a teacher who says he’ll be highlighting the issue with his class).

The writing is definitely on the wall. It’s now just a question of when, not if.

‘Raptors in Britain are still affected by illegal persecution’ is stating the bleedin’ obvious to many readers of this blog but it’s still an important statement to repeat, especially when it’s done by one of the world’s most distinguished ornithologists, Professor Ian Newton.

Ian has just written a review paper on the subject, which again won’t contain anything not already known to many blog readers (that’s why it’s called a review paper, after all) but it’s still worth a read because Ian’s writing style is second to none, in his ability to condense complex ecological principles in to a language that anybody of moderate intelligence can comprehend. (His 1979 book Population Ecology of Raptors is still THE best in its field).

His review article, Killing of raptors on grouse moors: evidence and effects has just been published in the British Ornithologists Union (BOU) journal Ibis and is open access, which means you don’t have to pay to read it.

You can download it here:

To accompany the review article in Ibis, Ian has also written a short blog on the BOU website that can be read here.

Ibis is an important platform for Ian’s article for a number of reasons – it’s one of the most well-respected ornithological journals in the world, which means its papers are viewed with high regard by an international audience, and this particular article is likely to reach a wider audience than might normally be interested in UK conservation simply because Ian wrote it!

At the end of his scientific review, Ian has included a discussion section where he outlines the various options for reducing the ongoing killing of birds of prey on driven grouse moors: vicarious liability, licensing and banning.

He’s a bit behind the curve on this, as he suggests, ‘Only dialogue, mutual understanding and compromise are likely to lessen this conflict‘. It sounds like a reasonable approach and is one adopted by many when they first learn about what’s going on, but has to be seen in the context of decades of failed talks, decades of failed partnerships, decades of denial, decades of continued illegal killing and decades of sticking up two fingers to law-abiding society.

Even the mild-mannered RSPB has almost reached the end of its tether, offering the game-shooting industry one final drink in the last chance saloon before calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting.

Some of us are already there – last orders were called some time ago and now it’s chucking out time.

The campaign group Wild Justice has announced the launch of its Raptor Forensics Fund, with an initial budget of £10K available to support police investigations in to raptor persecution crimes.

This fund was first proposed in April 2020 after discussions with a number of Police wildlife crime officers who were frustrated that funding cuts and delayed decision-making was impacting on their efforts to submit evidence for forensic testing in suspected cases of bird of prey persecution.

Several months on the fund has just launched this week with funding provided by Wild Justice, Northern England Raptor Forum, Tayside & Fife Raptor Study Group and a number of individuals.

The Raptor Forensics Fund will be administered solely by the PAW Forensics Working Group and guarantees funding support to police officers and other statutory agencies (e.g. SSPCA) to cover the cost of x-rays and post-mortems in the early stages of investigations and then potentially more funding to cover the full cost of further forensic analysis once a crime has been confirmed.

It is hoped this funding will increase the opportunities for police officers and other statutory investigators to get the raptor-killing criminals in to court.

Let’s see how long it takes before the first funding request appears. Not long, would be my bet.

For further information about the Raptor Forensics Fund please click here.

For further information about Wild Justice’s activities you can subscribe to the free newsletter here.

At this morning’s AGM, the RSPB announced the findings of its year-long policy review on gamebird shooting.

The full statement can be read here.

The main thrust of it is that the RSPB sees two separate approaches, one for driven grouse shooting in the uplands and one for lowland pheasant/partridge shoots, although there is a general principle for both, as follows:

‘First, we believe that new laws backed up by tougher enforcement will be needed to end the illegal killing of birds of prey, to end the use of lead ammunition and to end vegetation burning on peatlands.  These practices are entirely incompatible with the imperative to address the climate and ecological emergency and there are perfectly practical alternatives.  

Second, we believe that all intensive gamebird shooting should be regulated to reduce the negative environmental impacts‘.

There’s nothing stunningly novel about this, nor controversial. It’s just common sense and it shouldn’t have taken a year-long review to reach such a conclusion.

Here’s what the new policy says about driven grouse shooting:

For “driven” grouse shooting, where beaters drive the birds towards the guns, we believe that the intensification of land management practices over the last two decades is unsustainable and damaging.  Between 2004 and 2016 there was a 62 per cent increase in the number of grouse shot.  We have concluded that reform leading to an improvement in the environmental condition of our uplands will most effectively be achieved through the introduction of licences for “driven” grouse shoots.  These would set minimum environmental standards which, if breached, would result in losing the right to shoot.  The RSPB has today set out the principles for how this system could operate. 

Our focus is not on “walked up” grouse shooting, but we will re-double our efforts to secure effective licensing for “driven” grouse shooting, and we will learn from the developments anticipated soon on this issue in Scotland.  We will provide an annual assessment of progress and review our position within five years.  Failure to deliver effective reform will result in the RSPB calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting. 

To be perfectly honest, this announcement is a bit underwhelming. Perhaps it needs some time to sink in. They haven’t explained why they’ve decided to wait for five years before calling for a ban, when all the evidence to support an immediate ban is overwhelming, and much of that evidence has been collected by RSPB’s own staff!

It’s not clear what measures will be used to assess what the RSPB describes as annual ‘progress’ or ‘effective reform’. These details need to be made available.

Here’s what the new policy says about pheasant and partridge shooting:

‘For the release of non-native pheasants and red-legged partridges, we propose a different approach.  From the data available, the number of birds released annually is estimated to have grown to at least 57 million.  Our evidence review shows that habitats created by land managed for these birds can provide benefits for wildlife.  Nevertheless, it also shows that there are substantial negative environmental consequences from the industrialised form of this shooting, including the direct and indirect impacts that released birds can have on other wildlife.  This situation is recognised by some in the shooting community.  A recent review of evidence published by Natural England and the shooting organisation, BASC, reached similar conclusions. 

We are keen to work with public bodies and the shooting sector to help address the issues with urgency.  Important first steps would be to ensure a reduction in the number of gamebirds being released and full compliance with existing reporting rules. Ultimately, we believe that further regulation will be necessary to drive up environmental standards. We will call for this within 18 months if significant progress is not secured‘.

Errm….well, waiting for 18 months is better than waiting for five years, but again, more detail is needed to understand what the RSPB judges to be ‘significant progress’.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. This morning’s announcement was simply an overview statement given during a ten minute slot during the AGM and knowing the RSPB there’s bound to be a stack of supporting evidence on which they’ve based their new policy and probably a much more in-depth description of the markers they’ll use to assess progress.

But yeah, still mostly underwhelmed at the moment.