A good petition to sign

Mark 9 Comments

‘Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to sponsor a comprehensive and independent study into the full economic impacts of driven grouse shooting.’

This petition in Scotland is pushing at an open door – but it is certainly still worth showing that you support it.

Please sign it and get your friends to sign it too.

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9 Replies to “A good petition to sign”

  1. Mark thanks for promoting this! Yes the door is open(ish) as the petitions team were still looking at the draft of this petition Roseanna Cunningham the Scottish Government Environment Secretary announced her set of initiatives to deal with willdife crime on sporting estates in light of the SNH report on satellite tagged eagles ‘disappearing’. Looking at the economics and biodiversity of large sporting estates was on the list. A very pleasant surprise, it suggested this was a genuine attempt to sort things out not window dressing in spite of dismisal of giving the SSPCA additional investigatory powers – suspect that was due to her listening to ‘impartial’ advice that of course wasn’t. The estates and their keepers have a few high profile friends in the SNP. Technically the petition came first (he said smugly).

    I do hope that the petition will strengthen resolve for a competent survey by stressing how important one is and also sets parameters so that important considerations are not left out. For background info it’s best to go the petition PDF link rather than read the comments for discussion section. I took the opportunity to ‘make official’ two topics that I’ve been boring readers here to death with for a couple of years now (now it’s the MSPs’ turn!). One – the effects that muirburn may be having on our freshwater angling industry highlighted by the EMBER report – trout and salmon fishing are big parts of Scotland’s tourism/recreation sector and with salmon especially there are some who are as fanatical at catching it as others are at getting a big bag of grouse. The second is that the growing evidence for the efficacy of natural flood control measures should make us look at the uplands, which of course includes grouse moors, to see where there is capacity for complimenting peat bog restoration with riparian tree planting, insertion of large woody debris into watercourses and reintroduction of beaver to alleviate downstream flooding. Surely helping to keep more farms, businesses and homes dry is economically and morally superior to big grouse bags?

    If anyone signs please be aware there has been an issue with people thinking they’ve signed and they haven’t. Make sure after you’ve done the Captcha thingy to click on the black ‘Sign This’ box below it. Then you should see your name- please give full name and don’t use initials – appear in the ‘Most recent signatures’ box, then you know you’re on.

    I have no illusions that I was best person to do this, but nobody else has and I was so unbelievably pissed off at the ‘we’re vital for rural communities’ argument when driven grouse shooting due to its intensive, extensive and exclusive nature is almost certainly driving other activities with better job creation prospects away that I needed to do this. As far as I am aware no grouse shooter has signed which they should be queuing up to do if they are so sincere about how good DGS is for jobs and money. This is especially disappointing as I’ve been actively encouraging them to do so –

    Dear Mr Soames,

    I have drafted a petition requesting that the Scottish Government commission a full and independent study into the true economic costs and benefits of Driven Grouse Shooting (DGS). I believe that one would show DGS is no better in creating rural jobs than it is for wildlife conservation or animal welfare. No other country in the world outside of the UK has conservationists or rural communities racing to set up DGS in spite of the willow grouse ranging across northern Europe, Asia and America, which makes the enthusiastic claims from its supporters somewhat hollow.

    Of course if any practitioners of DGS sincerely believe that it creates employment rather than displaces options which are better economically and ecologically then they should have no fear in signing this petition – so far I do not believe one has. I am not certain whether or not your position as an MP allows you to sign a petition like this, but I wanted to offer you the opportunity to do so given your defence of DGS against a proposed ban last year at Westminster.

    Hopefully this petition will act as a template for a similar petition on DGS south of the border intended for the Westminster government. I am certain this is something you would welcome.

    Yours sincerely, Les Wallace

  2. Could England follow suit, ideally through Government but given BDGS debate and failure to look at the volume of evidence submitted &c., might it proceed through a crowd funded option?

    BAWC did fabulously well with the tagging of raptors appeal. This is possibly another option that the BDGS cohort might support?

    It would not be, in my humble opinion, unreasonable to ask the shooting fraternity to also contribute, and why wouldn’t they if their claims were underpinned with fact?

    The issue would be finding truly independent analysis free from establishment influence?

  3. Thanks for standing up and proposing this petition, Les. As you say, if the DGS industry is telling the truth about the important economic value of their sport, they should be signing in droves.

  4. Hi Mark.
    The link for the petition does not take people to the right page. It gave me the impression I had signed just by clicking the link. It might fool others too.

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