- Cairngorms National Park Authority say grouse shooters may kill too many Mountain Hares, kill too many raptors illegally and are industrialising the hills.
- BTO Science round up – I received the very first of these by email recently and, although I haven’t read it all yet, what I have dipped into looks very good. Sign up here to see things like this.
- BTO assessment of the 2014 breeding season (for birds, of course)
- this blog did pass the 1,000,000 spam comments being filtered out on Wednesday
- The e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting stands at 20,100 today
- This Avaaz e-petition ahead of Pope Francis’s visit to the Philippines in January is worth a look
- ‘Grouse shooting’s failure to produce any meaningful number of harriers is as much of a middle finger to progress as petitions to ban the sport outright. To be quite frank, there is a considerable number of people involved in grouse shooting who are not interested in the conservation of anything except grouse, and the quiet joy of the hunter-naturalist is increasingly smothered by clamorous short-termism, greed and an unsustainable preoccupation with shooting tens of thousands of grouse every year.’ click here for the rest
- I almost forget that the Daily Mirror exists but this rant about what the Mirror sees as double standards by Prince William was interesting.
13 Replies to “Round up”
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Also interesting was the Mirror poll at the bottom of the piece. The question being “should shooting animals for sport be banned” was 64/36 in the yes camp. It may be a “rant” as you call it but Mirror readers overwhelmingly want shooting for sport banned. Perhaps they don’t count because it’s a tabloid.
The Daily mail argument is weak at best. Its the equivalent of saying how dare someone want to conserve the cuckoo and campaign to save the cuckoo but then in the very same day eat a chicken sandwich from Tesco…
Do you mean Daily Mail, or Mirror?
I don’t think the Mirror journalist has a weak argument.
All creatures deserve respect, whether endangered ones, such as the cuckoo, or the billions of chickens bred and slaughtered after a miserable existence in appalling conditions.
Of course Prince William is being hypocritical, unfortunately he is not the only one. He, and others, would impress me far more if they stopped participating in any hunting/shooting/cruel sports. My thanks to the Daily Mirror for raising this issue.
I resent your comment regarding ‘cruel sports’. When I go out shooting I go and shoot for the pot. The stuff I shoot ( rabbits, duck and pheasants generally) are all abundant and wild ( the pheasants are feral to be fair but are definitely not farmed/released locally) and are killed quickly after living a free life. Surely that’s more ethical than cage reared chickens for example or intensively reared beef, lamb or pork which is then transported god knows how many miles to be slaughtered?
Also I have major issues regarding some aspects of the shooting ‘industry’. I detest large scale releases of pheasant/partridge because of the effects on native flora and fauna. I don’t like the idea of ‘a good day’ being judged on how many birds are shot. It is also unacceptable to bring a native species close to the verge of extinction through business interests (hen harrier) but I can’t sign the petition to ban it, as I believe it is possible to have driven grouse shooting and hen harriers. Intensive moorland management will/is only leading to problems and I can’t have any sympathy with the grouse shooting fraternity as they only have themselves to blame for the current discord with their activities.
While I’m on a roll, could people who follow Mark’s blog, and people in general, please forget the ‘class’ issues in this debate. The majority of country sports are carried out by people who fit the majority of the non-urban demographic. This is my belief through experience and feel free to challenge it, BUT please challenge only if you have bothered actually talking and meeting shooters/hunters or whatever you want to call them. Most are normal, believe it or not and from ALL classes (hate that term, but I’m trying to be concise). Of course there are the ************* ( fill in as appropriate) as there are in all forms of life. That’s life and people.
So although I accept your sentiments could you and others pleeeeeeeeeeze look at the issues free from class prejudice and free from the idea that game shooting and thus shooting for the pot ( which almost all game goes into) is intrinsically wrong.
Rant over,
HAPPY SOLSTICE LOVELY PEOPLE
Martin – thank you and happy Christmas
Glad to read something that fits almost perfectly with how i feel. I do feel (and i was worried that it would lead to this) that there has been some mission creep with this petition and it has now turned an anti shooting and hunting campaign.
Peter – there has been no mission creep with the e-petition. It can’t change – it is written down. How others wish to portray it, I guess, is up to them.
sorry maybe not with the e-petition but with the organisations, comments, lobbying etc, behind it. its starting to feel to me an attack on the entire shooting community. the aims of the e-petition are very clear.
Martin,
I don’t shoot myself but am happy to eat venison, wild rabbit, pheasant, etc. Much happier than eating intensively reared chicken (which I don’t do unless socially unavoidable).
As a rural non-shooter I can confirm that it’s a wide range of people who shoot, particularly at the rough shooting/shooting for the pot/ informal pheasant shoot syndicate end (they all take turns to look after the few birds they release). And we definitely need more deer culled than are taken now – wild venison over farmed for both culinary and environmental reasons please.
I do have big environmental and economic issues with the heavily commercial end of the industry, of which driven grouse shooting is the most extreme example, but making it a class thing is far more likely to play into the hands of the Moorland Association’s present position than it is to achieve change.
Best focus on the environmental issues people – there are other places to make your views known if class war or animal rights are your thing!
Well said Bill – I couldn’t agree more!
I agree with your point that it does not help to make this a class issue – it’s irrelevant.
But many of the signers of the petition come from the animal rights groups and presumably are helpful in that respect.
Happy Christmas everyone!
As Joe W said.