We (I’m not sure exactly who ‘we’ is, but it certainly includes this blog and many of its readers, along with the RSPB, Chris Packham, BAWC, Raptor Persecution Scotland, Raptor Politics and others) have changed the way the media look at the opening of the grouse shooting season – the Inglorious 12th (this year on Wednesday).
Instead of all the papers printing images of purple heather, blokes in tweed, recipes for grouse and mentions of this traditional British pastime, we now see questioning of the very existence of the most unsporting of field sports, and the most economically bankrupt of ‘industries’.
Stuart Winter in the Sunday Express, writes about the Hen Harriers that disappeared this spring in ‘unexplained circumstances’ and also the c2000 pairs of Hen Harrier that are missing from the British uplands because of illegal persecution.
As well as an editorial comment (supporting the RSPB’s position on grouse moor licensing) the Observer has a good full-page piece by Jamie Doward (Grouse Wars: feathers fly as the Glorious 12th nears). He quotes Tim Melling of the RSPB, who sounds like he has been reading Inglorious, as saying that ‘Nowhere else in the world do they industrially manage moors and drive the grouse to the shooters. It’s all about getting more shots in‘. The article also mentions the YFTB campaign and its massive pr error of last week, and the forthcoming report of the Lead Ammunition Group. It also mentions Hen Harrier Day but not the organisers of those events – but I’m sure BAWC, The Northwest Raptor Protection Group, Rewilding Bowland, the Tayside Raptor Study Group and the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club, Rachel French, Inspire Wild, Craig Lee, Aimee Nicholson, Ashley Watts, John Thurnell-Read and Luke Phillips won’t mind too much.
I think the best piece though, and it is often so, is that in the Sunday Times by Charles Clover. Although he calls our (for there are over 11,000 of us now) call for a ban on driven grouse shooting ‘ill-thought-out’, without going into any details of why this is so, he does say that we deserve some credit for ‘bringing about a belated realisation among grouse moor owners that their sport needs the support of the public‘. Well, the YFTB campaign, funded by ‘the British grouse industry’ is a strange way to get public support – slag off the RSPB for all you’re worth. It is very difficult for an industry that is really a pastime – and a pastime which is using wildlife for target practice – and a pastime which only the rich can afford to carry out – to get public support. And the more that the public know about driven grouse shooting, the more that the public will question its very existence. That’s why there is a book on the market that they can buy and be persuaded.
I’ll come back to more of what Charles wrote on Wednesday – the morning of the Inglorious 12th.
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I hope people concentrate on the damage to the upland environment, the peat burning, the risk of contaminated water courses, more flooding etc..
This has to be much more than a few moneyed toffs going bang for fun!
Yes, we all want to save H-Hs too, but some might try to turn it around to ‘hate wealth’. It is not that, but our heritage, our countryside, our fresh air…….
Pull together, we will win!
Another newspaper has an article:- http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/inglorious-12th-true-cost-grouse-6217048
A nice photo of you, Mark but the voting seems to be very against us at present – 80% pro driven grouse/ 20% against.
I think one of the main problems, although I’m sure it’s well addressed in Inglorious by Mark, is what driven grouse shooting is. This is one of the main points I’ve been trying to highlight in my commenting btl for some time i.e. what driven shooting is, and why it drives the obsession with killing raptors and predators. I’m sure most of the public have no understanding of this. Whilst I wish Mark well with Inglorious, an essential problem is that the book is only likely to be mainly read by the converted, with just a small proportion of the general public. It’s no sleight on Inglorious as Mark is doing a great job spreading the message.
This is what is lacking from most newspaper articles, a description of driven shooting, what it involves, and most importantly the rationale behind raptor and predator control.
One of the main issues I find little understanding of, and a lot of misunderstanding about, is why shooting interests try to wipe out raptors and predators in general. It is not simply a matter of predation, as is generally thought. The shoot managers are trying to maintain unnaturally dense gamebird populations. The problem is that these both attract predators, and the presence of raptors and predators tend to cause the gamebirds to disperse. Exactly what the shoot managers don’t want.
In other words, regardless of whether the predators present are a threat to the gamebirds, shoot managers will want to get rid of them because of their tendency to cause the gamebirds to disperse. This has profound implications. The shooters want to create the false impression that they want thriving ecosystems, and just a reduction in the predator population. They are not telling the truth, In reality the ambitious shoot managers want no predators or raptors at all if possible. This is what makes driven shooting diametrically opposed to the conservation of raptors, and why the 2 cannot coexist. The shooting interests know this, and this is why they peddle a knowing lie, that they want some sort of compromise. But this is just for public consumption, and not what they really intend.
The difficulty is getting these subtle points across to the public, and it’s what I try to do with my btl commenting. In other words, I am trying to reach the public which may not see or have read books like Mark’s Inglorious.
SteB1 – a film would be good wouldn’t it? I wonder whether anyone has that in hand?
A film would be an excellent idea. It’s a great way of changing perception, and getting the message across in this era of short attention spans. I have no idea if there’s anything in the pipeline, but I think this sort of project could have great appeal to up and coming filmmakers, and production companies. It’s the sort of thing which could be done very well visually, and capture the public imagination.