A friendly challenge to Martin Spray (WWT) and Mike Clarke (RSPB)

(This blog is long!)

Dear Martin and Mike

Your two organisations deserve huge credit for the role that they have played in getting us to a position where the prospect of lead ammunition being banned, on human health, animal welfare and nature conservation grounds is very high. This has taken years, and consumed years and years of your staff time. We wouldn’t be where we are now, perched on the brink of real change, without excellent work by WWT and the RSPB.

I was a young graduate working at Oxford in the late 1970s when researchers there, Jane Sears, Mike Birkhead, Philip Bacon and of course Chris Perrins, were studying and highlighting the poisoning of swans by lead fishing weights.  Accidentally ingested weights poisoned swans – rarely killing them directly but paralysing their muscles so that they could not swallow food and therefore starved.  Despite protestations by some ignorant fishermen, most lead weights were banned and swans are doing much better and fishermen have not lost their sport, they’ve just switched to weights that don’t poison wildlife.  I expect that the WWT was involved in some way with this work, though I can’t remember, but the RSPB certainly invested in it to some extent.

Years later, in the late 1990s, when I was RSPB Conservation Director, we were involved in persuading the government, when Michael Meacher was an Environment Minister, to ban the use of lead ammunition for shooting waterfowl (in England and Wales, Scotland followed suit but in a slightly different way).  This work, as best as I can remember, was led by Gwyn Williams and Debbie Pain at the RSPB (there will have been lots of others involved too) and is described briefly in Fighting for Birds (pp 248-253).

That ban on the use of lead ammunition in shooting wildfowl has been largely ignored by the shooting community.  Compliance with the law, as measured by the presence of lead ammunition in ducks on sale in game dealers and supermarkets ten years after the ban, was only c30%, ie most waterfowl carcasses being sold to the public had lead ammunition in them when the number ought to have been none of them. How shocking is it when people with guns don’t stick to the law?

And we know from research that has been done with BASC members that the non-compliance is not through ignorance but through deliberate non-compliance. Shooters have chosen to ignore the law and therefore levels of legal compliance are low, even after a publicity campaign by shooting organisations thus further proving that it is not ignorance of the law that is the problem but deliberate breaking of the law.

To my mind, this flouting of the law is reason enough to ban the use of lead ammunition. Parliament’s will was that lead ammunition should not be used in wildfowling and that law is being broken so a more effective solution should be put in place. If it hurts the shooting community in the pocket then they only have their own illegality to blame. And if it hurts pheasant shooters in the pocket then they only have duck shooters to blame.

The main reason why lead ammunition should not be used to shoot at ducks etc is that most shot goes into the environment, the wetland environment, rather than into ducks or geese.  That lead shot falls into sediments and is ingested accidentally by feeding waterfowl. If they ingest enough lead it kills them, if they ingest quite a lot of lead it poisons them but doesn’t kill them directly but increases their mortality to other threats.  Between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of wildfowl die each year because of ingested lead shot. This is both an animal welfare issue and a nature conservation issue. And that is clearly why both WWT and the RSPB have pressed for a ban on lead ammunition. They are right to do so and I congratulate them.

We’ve known about these issues, big issues, with wildfowl for many years which is why we campaigned for a ban on use for shooting waterfowl. Whilst that ban was in place and evidence was growing that the shooters were not complying with it, further evidence emerged on the impacts of lead on wildlife and on humans. A crucial moment was a conference on the issue of lead ammunition organised by the Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho in May 2008 but I’d become aware of some of the issues a couple of years before when representatives of the Peregrine Fund came to the Lodge to talk to us about diclofenac and vultures in India and Pakistan (but that’s another fascinating story).

The boss of the Peregrine Fund, the late Bill Burnham, after we had talked vultures said he wanted to show me something, and so we all looked (including Ian Newton, who was the President of the Peregrine Fund and, at the time I think still chair of RSPB Conservation Committee although he went on to be RSPB Chairman of Council of course) at some X-rays of a shot deer. One could see the trajectory of the bullet that killed the deer in the X-ray, but also, dotted about the X-ray were tiny bright dots. These were fragments of lead that had been shed from the bullet as it travelled through the animal’s flesh and were distributed through its carcasse. Too small to notice by eye very easily, and too small to butcher out of the meat, this deer’s venison was loaded with lead.  And so any creature, a fox or wolf or Bald Eagle, and any person, the hunter’s children or friends, who ate the deer meat was also ingesting lead.

We repeated this work on RSPB nature reserves where deer were (and are) culled and found the same results (not surprisingly) and I took a paper to RSPB Council many years ago which meant that the RSPB switched to the use of non-toxic ammunition for those rather limited activities where ammunition was used on RSPB land. But we (the RSPB) were shooting deer at nature reserves such as Abernethy to allow tree regeneration and venison from those deer were being sold into the human food chain and were finding their way onto the plates of RSPB staff and the general public. I was glad that we took that step long ago and still remain proud that we did so.

The conference in the USA looked at this issue in some detail and the word from the USA was that both nature conservationists and human health officials regarded lead as a serious issue (and the USA has had an effective ban on the use of lead in wetlands for years – and of course, it hasn’t stopped hunting or wildfowling).  Representatives from the UK shooting community were also at that conference – there is no doubt that the UK shooting community has known of this issue for a great number of years.

After the Boise conference Debbie Pain (by that time Conservation Director of WWT) and I (still Conservation Director of the RSPB) wrote to the Secretaries of State for Environment and Health (and to the devolved administrations in October 2009) highlighting the wildlife and human health impacts of lead ammunition. The text of our letter, which was roundly criticised by the shooting community, is available here on the website of the Lead Ammunition Group – the group that our letter called to be reformed.

The Lead Ammunition Group that was set up was top-heavy with representatives from shooting organisations and chaired by the Chief Executive of one of them – John Swift of BASC.  I originally sat on that group until I left the RSPB. Debbie Pain from WWT has been on the group throughout its existence and has played a major role in informing the group about the science of the subject and has been supported in WWT by the wonderful Ruth Cromie, and by RSPB staff such as David Hoccom, Jeff Knott and Rhys Green (again, there are probably lots and lots of others involved too).

After more than five years of deliberation and some prevarication the group’s findings are now available to the public and are reproduced at the foot of this blog.  The report is being sent out for further peer review (despite being written by experts in the first place – and what is the point of the Defra Chief Scientist’s team if they can’t play a part in this?) but the findings are public, are serious and require government action. There has already been too much delay.  Further delay, some of which of course we must expect, but further unnecessary delay means that politicians are failing to act on the clear findings of the LAG that there is no realistic alternative to withdrawing lead ammunition completely from use and sale in the UK (just as many other US states and EU countries have done – some of them decades ago – and when the evidence was less compelling than now).

It is a needlessly long story but it is coming to an end, I hope. The WWT and the RSPB have both played major roles in this story. They have documented the wildlife impacts and have done much to elucidate the human health impacts too. For that they should be given great praise from decision-makers in both areas of public policy.

In contrast, the shooting community has played an important role which is almost entirely reprehensible. They have denied the science, denigrated the WWT and RSPB (and the individuals involved in the work), used every tactic in the book to delay things and still have not made any positive move to respond to the science that shows that their hobby poisons people and wildlife. They have suggested that an attack on lead ammunition is an attack on shooting whereas they know that across the world other shooters are happily propelling steel, bismuth, copper and antimony into the flesh of their quarry with no hankering after lead. Tim Bonner, the Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, has spent the last few days trying to get Chris Packham sacked from the BBC rather than apologising for the Countryside Alliance’s position on lead (they are for it!) and claiming that (as well as the EU Directives being a threat to ‘the countryside’) the risk of a lead ban is now reduced.

The possibility of a lead ban is very much increased. The UK has already committed to banning lead ammunition as part of the EU delegation to an international conference last year. That commitment is not legally binding but let us see whether Ministers keep their words. There is no doubt that they should, and any doubt is lessened by the findings of the Lead Ammunition Group and its weighty scientific deliberation.

But nothing is certain in politics. Not even the good sense or the integrity of ministers when they are under political pressure from the other side. The Countryside Alliance and others will be lobbying like mad to keep poisonous and poisoning lead ammunition in use for as long as possible (it escapes me why – it seems to be a matter of machismo) and they have access to ministers unparallelled by wildlife NGOs.

Under these circumstances the politicians must be helped to make the right decision. If the shooting community is a rock, then the health and conservation communities and the public must be mobilised to be a hard place. And that job is the job of NGOs. And the NGOs to whom that task falls are the WWT and the RSPB, both of whom have existing trustee-approved policy positions to get rid of lead ammunition in the UK.

So my friendly challenge to the two of you, Martin and Mike, is to toss a coin and decide which of you will put your name to an e-petition on the parliament website calling for a ban on lead ammunition. And then you must both mobilise your memberships to support that e-petition (I promise I will do the same). You will easily get to 100,000 signatures in a matter of months and will generate a debate in parliament.  Let’s see how many MPs will speak in favour of poisoning children, adults and wildlife by continuing with lead ammunition when viable alternatives exist and are widely used across the world.

A lead ban is not assured but is is within our and your grasps. Martin, Mike, step up to the plate, at this time when NGOs are being widely criticised for being too silent, and do this thing.

Maybe you have plans along these lines anyway, but just in case, here are some suggested words that you could use for your e-petition:

Ban the use of lead ammunition for hunting and shooting of game and deer

Lead has been removed from petrol, paint and water pipes because of its poisonous impacts but is still used as ammunition. This has two major impacts. First spent ammunition, accidentally ingested by wildlife, needlessly kills tens or hundreds of thousands of birds each year in the UK. Second, lead ingested through eating game affects the health of 10,000 children and tens of thousands of adults each year.

These impacts are needless as non-toxic alternatives to lead exist and are widely used elsewhere in the world.

best wishes

Mark

 

 

The Findings of the Lead Ammunition Group as revealed by a letter from its chair, John Swift, to Defra.

Lead is a highly toxic hazard and presents risk at all levels of exposure. It is especially dangerous as a neurotoxin for both young people and for wild animals.

Some 6,000 tonnes of lead from ammunition used in shotgun and rifle shooting are being discharged every year. At least 2,000 tonnes of shot used for game and pest shooting are irretrievably and unevenly deposited on or close to the soil surface where it is available for ingestion by birds. It probably becomes unavailable to them quite quickly, though it remains in the soil and substrates for a long time with as yet unknown consequences. Some 3,000 tonnes are deposited on clay target shooting grounds.

Lead from ammunition can (and does) get into wildlife by several routes, mainly by ingestion by many species of bird in mistake for grit or food items, or in scavenged dead animals, or as the prey of some raptors. In areas of intensive shooting lead is taken up by some plants and soil microfauna getting into the food chain, but the research studies that have been done on this latter route are limited.

Lead from ammunition causes harm to wildlife and certainly kills some birds. Numbers are hard to be certain about, but almost certainly at least tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands annually in UK. The welfare effects in these animals, and the larger numbers that ingest sub-lethal doses, are sufficient to cause illness and can be very severe and prolonged for them.

Lead shot and bullet fragments can be present in game meat at levels sufficient to cause significant health risks to children and adult consumers, depending on the amount of game they consume.

Almost certainly some 10,000 children are growing up in households where they could regularly be eating sufficient game shot with lead ammunition to cause them neurodevelopmental harm and other health impairments. Tens of thousands of adults are also exposed to additional lead by eating game as part of their normal diet, and this could cause a range of low level but harmful health effects, of which they will not be aware.

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