Category: News

Last week 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).

The continued use of this poisonous ammunition has health consequences for wildlife (especially birds of prey), the environment and for humans – see here for further information.

Many thanks to Green Party Life Peer Natalie Bennett who has 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.

UPDATE 24th April 2023: DEFRA Minister responds to question on gamebird shooting industry’s failure to stop using toxic lead ammunition (here)

Last month I wrote about how a number of key conservation and animal welfare organisations had apparently been excluded from submitting evidence to the Scottish Government’s independent review on whether the Scottish SPCA should be given increased powers to enable them to investigate a wider suite of wildlife crimes (see here).

A Freedom of Information request had revealed that the non-governmental organisations that had been invited to contribute evidence to the review (Scottish Gamekeepers Association, Scottish Land & Estates, British Association for Shooting & Conservation, and the National Farmers Union Scotland) greatly outweighed the number of conservation/animal welfare organisations invited to participate (limited to the RSPB).

Significantly, a number of important organisations were missing from the list of invited participants, including Scottish Badgers, Scottish Raptor Study Group, OneKind, League Against Cruel Sports, Scottish Wildlife Trust.

It was notable that the pro-gamebird shooting organisations that were invited to participate had all previously been vociferously against giving more powers to the SSPCA (no surprise!) whereas the excluded organisations had all been previously supportive of increased powers.

I wanted to understand whether it was the Scottish Government that had excluded conservation/animal welfare organisations from participating in the review (Scot Gov had previously told me that it had provided a list of ‘key stakeholders’ to the independent Review Chair, Susan Davies FRSB), or whether that decision to exclude them had been made by Susan Davies.

It’s taken the Scottish Government a whole month (!) to respond to my latest FoI with the following:

It appears, then, that the decision to exclude all those conservation and animal welfare organisations from participating in the review was made by the Review Chair, Susan Davies.

This is surprising, given Susan’s long-standing career in nature conservation. However, as I pointed out in an earlier blog, if the independent review DOES recommend increased powers for the SSPCA, then by inviting an overload of anti-SSPCA game shooting organisations, the Review Chair has cleverly covered off any opportunity for them to suggest their views were under-represented in the review process.

Time will tell. We now have to wait for the review to be published, having been submitted to the Scottish Government in October 2022.

Today this blog reaches its 13th year anniversary.

Who would have guessed, thirteen years ago, that I’d still be writing it? I’m sure, in fact I know, there are plenty who wish I wasn’t, but their ongoing attempts to intimidate and harass simply strengthen my resolve to continue with it.

The blog is approaching nine million views:

As ever, huge thanks to those who help fund my time, those who work with me behind the scenes (you know who you are), to those who send me information, to those who take the time to comment here, and especially to those who share blog posts on social media channels – raising awareness of the illegal killing of birds of prey was the main driver behind setting up this blog and it continues to be one of its main objectives.

Thanks for your continued support.

The National Trust (NT) has terminated another grouse-shooting lease in the Peak District National Park after the RSPB uncovered evidence of suspected wildlife crime on one of the NT’s tenanted grouse moors.

The shooting lease, on NT moorland at Park Hall, was held by a nearby grouse shooting estate called the Hurst & Chunal. It is understood that the NT lease on Park Hall was a short-term, one-year lease, initially.

However, in February 2021 the RSPB filmed an unidentified individual at dusk on Park Hall, placing rodenticide blocks (Brodifacoum) inside holes on the moorland that were suspected to be part of a badger sett. This was reported to Derbyshire police who launched an investigation, along with Natural England and the Health & Safety Executive. The RSPB has published a detailed blog about this case – see here.

The police investigation failed to result in a prosecution. Enquiries were made by Derbyshire Police’s Rural Crime Team after the search, including interviews of suspects. After a review, the police informed the RSPB that they could not bring criminal charges in this case. 

The Natural England/HSE investigation is believed to be ongoing.

Meanwhile, the National Trust has taken the decision to terminate the grouse-shooting lease and will not be renewing it or offering it to another tenant; instead the moor will be now be re-wilded.

This isn’t the first time the NT has terminated a grouse-shooting lease in the Peak District National Park.

You may recall, back in April 2016, I published a video of an armed man crouching next to a decoy hen harrier on Ashop Moor, which, incidentally, is also part of the NT’s Park Hall & Hope Woodlands Estate in the Peak District National Park.

That video footage, filmed by two local birdwatchers, sparked outrage and significant public pressure was placed on the National Trust to take action against its shooting tenant (believed to be Mark Osborne).

As a direct result of that public pressure, in June 2016 the National Trust announced that it was pulling the shooting lease four years early and the shooting tenant was asked to leave by April 2018.

In June 2018, the National Trust announced a significant change in how it was going to select new shooting tenants, ‘to work with us to create a new exemplar model delivering outstanding moorland nature conservation with grouse shooting’ (see here). Many saw this as welcome progress from the NT but others saw it as a ‘lost opportunity’ to remove driven grouse shooting altogether from NT land.

Since the NT modified its tenancy agreements in 2018, at least one new tenant has been and gone, and at least one current tenant is hosting a number of successfully breeding raptor species whilst moderately managing a driven grouse shoot (far less grouse shot in 2021 compared to the thousands shot on some of the more intensively-managed moors).

It was rumoured last year that the NT had agreed to introduce even more modifications to its moorland tenancies, such as burning restrictions, the removal of medicated grit, and the removal of traps and snares, although I haven’t yet seen a formal statement on this from the National Trust.

I think the National Trust’s decision to terminate the grouse shooting lease at Park Hall, AND its refusal to offer the lease to anyone else, deserves much applause. Full credit too, to the RSPB’s Investigations team for providing the evidence needed by the NT to take such decisive action.

Three years ago in February 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 spectacularly 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).

Fortunately for us, a new, independent project was established, led by experts at Cambridge University, to monitor the professed voluntary five-year transition from toxic lead to non-lead ammunition in the UK. Called SHOT-SWITCH, the project intends to test wild-shot pheasants offered for sale across Britain each year and determine if they have been killed using toxic lead or non-lead shotgun ammunition. Interestingly, the project is supported by funds from the RSPB and from Waitrose, who you’ll recall were the first supermarket to be heading towards a ban on selling game meat shot with lead ammunition (see here, but who seem to have been duped by the shooting industry last season – here).

To find out more about the SHOT-SWITCH project please visit the webpage here

For the last two years, Shot Switch has published peer-reviewed scientific papers to demonstrate that 99.5% of the pheasants they tested contained toxic lead shot (see here and here).

This year, year three of the study, the scientists have published another peer-reviewed paper, and guess what? Well, you can read it for yourselves:

They’ve also issued a press release, which reads as follows:

VOLUNTARY UK INITIATIVES TO PHASE OUT TOXIC LEAD SHOT FOR PHEASANT HUNTING HAVE HAD LITTLE IMPACT

Three years into a five-year pledge to completely phase out lead shot in UK game hunting, a Cambridge study finds that 94% of pheasants on sale for human consumption were killed using lead.

The pledge, made in 2020 by nine major UK game shooting and rural organisations, aims to protect the natural environment and ensure a safer supply of game meat for consumers. Lead is toxic even in very small concentrations, and discarded shot from hunting poisons and kills tens of thousands of the UK’s wild birds each year.

A Cambridge-led team of 17 volunteers bought whole pheasants from butchers, game dealers and supermarkets across the UK in 2022-23. They dissected the birds at home and recovered embedded shotgun pellets from 235 of the 356 pheasant carcasses.

The main metal present in each shotgun pellet was revealed through laboratory analysis – conducted at the Environmental Research Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands, UK. Lead was the main element in 94% of the recovered shot pellets; the remaining 6% were predominantly composed of steel or a metal called bismuth.

The results are published today in the Conservation Evidence Journal.

At the request of the Defra Secretary of State, the UK Health & Safety Executive assessed the risks to the environment and human health posed by lead in shots and bullets. Their report proposes that the use of lead ammunition be banned, and this is currently under review. While remaining committed to phasing out lead shot voluntarily, many shooting organisations do not support the proposed regulatory restrictions.

“If UK game hunters are going to phase out lead shot voluntarily, they’re not doing very well so far,” said Professor Rhys Green in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, first author of the study.

He added: “The small decrease in the proportion of birds shot with lead in the latest UK shooting season is nowhere near on track to achieve a complete transition to non-toxic ammunition in the next two years.”

This is the third consecutive year the team has conducted the analysis. Their latest study shows a small improvement on the 2021/22 and 2021/20 shooting seasons, when over 99% of the pheasants studied were shot using lead ammunition.

In separate initiatives, some suppliers of game meat for human consumption – including Waitrose & Partners – have voluntarily announced their intention to stop selling game killed using lead shot. An assurance scheme has also been launched to encourage suppliers and retailers to facilitate the transition.

The team did not find any pheasant on sale in Waitrose in 2022/23 despite repeated visits to 15 different stores. Waitrose staff reported that the company had not been sufficiently assured by any supplier in 2022/23 that all pheasants had been killed using non-lead ammunition.

“Waitrose is the only retailer we know of fully complying with the pledge not to supply pheasant killed using lead, but it’s only managing this by not selling any pheasant at all,” said Green.

Steel shotgun pellets are a practical alternative to lead, and the vast majority of shotguns can use them or other safe lead-free alternatives. Shooting magazines and UK shooting organisations have communicated positive messages for three years about the effectiveness and practicality of non-lead shotgun ammunition.

Shooting and rural organisations – including the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust – have consistently provided information and detailed guidance to encourage the transition from lead to non-lead ammunition since 2020.

“Denmark banned lead shotgun ammunition in 1996, and a successful transition was made to steel and bismuth. It’s safer for the environment and gives game shooting a better image,” said Green.

A previous study led by Green found that pheasants killed by lead shot contain many fragments of lead too small to detect by eye or touch, and too distant from the shot to be removed without throwing away a large proportion of otherwise useable meat. This means that eating pheasant killed using lead shot is likely to expose consumers to raised levels of lead in their diet, even if the meat is carefully prepared to remove whole shotgun pellets and the most damaged tissue.

Lead has been banned from use in paint and petrol for decades. It is toxic to humans when absorbed by the body and there is no known safe level of exposure. Lead accumulates in the body over time and can cause long-term harm, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease and kidney disease in adults. Lead is known to lower IQ in young children, and affect the neurological development of unborn babies.

Funding from the RSPB and Waitrose supported this work.

ENDS

UPDATE 7th March 2023: Question tabled in House of Lords on gamebird-shooting industry’s failure to stop using toxic lead ammunition (here)

UPDATE 24th April 2023: DEFRA Minister responds to question on gamebird industry’s failure to stop using toxic lead ammunition (here)

UPDATE 24th April 2023: BASC slurs expert study on amount of toxic lead ammunition in pheasants as ‘pseudoscience’ (here)

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

Max Wiszniewski is Campaign Manager for REVIVE, the coalition for grouse moor reform.

He’s written a comment piece for today’s edition of the National, discussing the current SNP leadership race which Max thinks is a perfect opportunity to tackle land (and grouse moor) reform.

His article is reproduced below:

THE leadership election for the Scottish National Party, the party of government, could literally change the face of Scotland.

Scotland will soon have a new first minister at a time when land reform and grouse moor reform is high up on the political agenda. Parliamentary bills on both are due in the not-too-distant future and real reform remains popular with both the public and particularly within the membership of the SNP.

After more than two decades since we established the Scottish Parliament, our nation still has the most inequitable land ownership in  the developed world.  Members of the SNP may be familiar with the figure that around 432 families own more than half of Scotland’s private land. 

There has been important, albeit very limited, progress in diversifying land ownership in recent years but new leadership at the top level is Scotland’s opportunity to really go for it.

Grouse moors are a metaphor for land reform issues in Scotland – a lot of land used for the benefit of very few people at the expense of our wildlife and the environment – with a steep cost to rural people who deserve so much better than the limited opportunities these large estates afford them.

An area around half the size of Wales is managed for grouse shooting in Scotland which provides fewer jobs and opportunities than alternative land uses.

Nature-based tourism, excluding “field sports”, is worth more than £1.2 billion overall – more than 50 times to our economy than grouse shooting, while forestry has an economic impact over 15 times greater per hectare.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of animals like foxes, stoats, weasels, crows and even “non-target species” like hedgehogs are killed every year, just so more grouse can be shot by very few people for the controversial “sport”.

In a time of climate crisis, an area of more than 200,000 football pitches is regularly burned on grouse moors (muirburn) to make the land more suitable for grouse, scarring the landscape and damaging our vital peat reserves – an internationally significant carbon sink.

If we seek to advance opportunities for rural people, jobs in shooting grouse for sport is not in our future. With the destruction to our wildlife and the environment, grouse shooting offers nothing for a modern Scotland under new leadership. We need real reform.

Whoever is elected, the new party leader should take confidence that tackling this issue properly and speeding up land reform efforts would be popular with the SNP membership that elected them.

In 2020, despite it getting lost as part of a conference “super-motion”, an SNP membership motion to essentially end driven grouse shooting was backed by more branches than any other resolution that year. 

Moreover, if the enthusiastic support for radical land reform – including progressive land taxation – from the hundreds of people at Revive’s SNP conference meetings is anything to go by, the SNP leadership really can be brave.

The Scottish Government has started some good work on the grouse reform front but needs to go much further. It most certainly should not be brow-beaten by those representing large, landed interests into watering-down what it already has proposed or from going further.

The new SNP leader may also recognise that despite what is claimed, these powerful vested interests do not represent rural Scotland or most of its people (who are actually against grouse shooting).

The lobbyists for sport shooting do, however, wish to halt the change the SNP have aspired to for decades.

All the unsustainable things that take place on these moors, so more grouse can be shot for sport, must end to allow us to transition to a more diverse mosaic of land uses in upland Scotland.

This will help diversify land ownership as well.  It’s estimated that for every brace of grouse killed for sport, £5000 can be added on to the estate’s value for the owner. If you end the speculative land value created from this unsustainable land use, coupled with land reform, it can help more communities take back our land. 

The successful Langholm buyout of a former grouse moor in southern Scotland, which is revitalising the local area, is a great but rare example that depended on immense dedication and voluntary efforts from local people to achieve it as well as huge sums of money to  be raised.

The Government should use a push and pull philosophy. As well as incentives, they should use the law to disincentivise individuals or overseas corporations from owning large estates like grouse moors – to bring down the price of land for communities to purchase.

Land taxes should not be one of the tools that are left off the table. Having the land ownership diversity of a normal European country like one of our Nordic neighbours is not radical, it’s inherently sensible.

Whatever happens in this leadership election, we hope all the candidates will openly commit to pursuing the inherently sensible cause of land reform, land taxes and real grouse moor reform in Scotland. If so they will change the face of Scotland for the better.

The new leader should have no problem saying to the people of Scotland that this land is our land. This country is yours, and it’s time to take it back again.

Max Wiszniewski is Campaign Manager for Revive, the coalition for grouse moor reform

ENDS

Formidable land reform campaigner Andy Wightman has revamped his ‘Who Owns Scotland‘ website – a fantastic resource for anyone interested in land ownership and a site I’ve used countless times to investigate locations of raptor persecution crimes.

Here’s a new brochure from Andy to encourage new subscribers:

If you have any questions about the project, please contact Andy at admin@whoownsscotland.org.uk

You might also be interested in following Andy’s personal blog, Land Matters, here.