As well as the Today programme, there was coverage of the Oxford Lead Symposium publication on BBC TV at breakfast time.
This online piece with interviews with WWT staff, Danish hunters (‘I’m a conservationist,’ said Niels Kanstrup, ‘I’m a hunter, too. I think it’s a fair and sustainable way to use natural resources, but we can’t have it connected with spreading poisonous heavy metals in nature.‘) is well worth watching.
So, Rory Stewart and Defra – get on with it! For heaven’s sake what’s the delay about? This is a simple health issue, wildlife and human health, with a very simple solution.
Please sign the Rob Sheldon’s e-petition to ban lead ammunition.
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I hope SNH read this before they spread more lead over the island of Islay. With 25% of the Barnacle Geese to be shot this winter the only area not to have lead is over main water bodies. The trouble with that is most fields have water flashes in winter where the geese come to bathe and feed and look for grit where lead is still used.
£8.5 million is being used of your money to kill these geese and still pay the farmers more. They claim this will not disturb the main UK roost of Greenland white fronted Geese which has shooting/cannon guns 600 yards from the roost! They also think all this shooting will not effect a once £3 million tourist industry!
I would genuinely like someone to explain to me the advantages of using lead over any other shot.
Sure, alternatives are (I’m told) more expensive, but if we banned lead, wouldn’t normal market forces apply and bring the cost of these alternatives down? There must be more to this argument than I’m seeing.
The use of lead weights in fishing was banned years ago. We’ve banned the use of lead in petrol and paint. What is it I’m not getting here?
Further, if you allow ducks to ingest lead and then shoot and eat that same duck later, are you not then ingesting more lead than would normally be the case?
This morning I recieved notification that the petition to ban neonicotinoids use on crops (save the bees) is to get a hearing in parliament. I had a look at Rob Sheldon’s petition and it hasn’t even reached two thousand.
One petition was pushed by the Wildlife trusts, one wasn’t.
Sorry, can I add one more point to the above.
People involved on the shooting side of this argument are keen to tell us that there is no scientific data to support the ban of lead or its harm to wildlife.
Does this mean that there IS scientific data to to say that it’s NOT harmful. And if so, would they produce it.