Chris Luffingham, Campaigns Director of the League Against Cruel Sports says:
‘Driven grouse shooting is essentially a series of massacres in which up to 700,000 birds are shot on moorland each year, according to the shooting industry’s own figures.
It causes a huge amount of unnecessary suffering with many grouse being shot and wounded and falling to the ground to die a painful and long and drawn out death.
It also causes collateral damage to other wildlife as gamekeepers wage a war of persecution on them – birds of prey such as hen harriers, golden eagles, buzzards and peregrine falcons are being relentlessly and illegally killed.
Gamekeepers are using the archaic and cruel practice of snaring to kill predators such as foxes and stoats on moorlands – but snares are indiscriminate, and other species, such as badgers and hares, also get caught and die lingering deaths. Moorland animals are being cruelly killed to facilitate a ‘sport’ blasting other moorland animals out of the sky.
At the League, we see animals being killed in a wide range of bloodsports, from dog fighting to fox hunting. The pain is the same, but when it comes to ‘game’ bird shooting, the numbers are horrific. The number of victims, which can be birds or other animals that just get in the way, is in the millions. It’s a scandal that this country not only allows this kind of suffering, but in many ways encourages it, on economic grounds.‘
To join Chris Luffingham, please sign Gavin Gamble’s e-petition which calls for a ban on driven grouse shooting.
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Chris – probably worth mentioning that fox snare traps meet international humaneness standards (unlike the common mouse trap for example). Best. Andrew.
There is nothing humane about using any snares.
Hello Andrew, re snares something I only found out about when I happened to stumble across it was a VERY interesting paper on page 28 of this issue of the Scottish Birds Journal https://www.the-soc.org.uk/files/docs/about-us/publications/scottish-birds/sb-vol22-no01.pdf It was co authored by a retired gamekeeper who was alarmed at what he’d seen snares do to capercaillie, as you’ll see really shocking stuff. I doubt very much that this is no longer a factor in the capercaillie’s decline, along with the dependence on deer fencing for tree regeneration projects because so many estates are reluctant to cull their deer enough to render it unnecessary – have you ever put up deer fencing Andrew, it’s a sod. Strangely the game keeping profession today seems very reluctant to raise the past and probable present role snares and deer fencing have had on our ailing capercaillie populations. Instead they keep saying it’s down to pine marten and the RSPB not shooting enough things generally, they’re also reluctant to give credit to recovering pine marten populations helping the red squirrel by noshing up the chubby greys. Hope this helped you.
No, they do not.
Andrew Killtruth rapidly in and out again, leaving no discernable effect other than a bad smell. Bet his missus loves him!