Grouse shooting is still with us but its supporters must be counting the years. The ratchet of progress is irresistible and driven grouse shooting is doomed. 2018 brought its demise a bit closer and so will 2019. I’m looking forward to 2019.
2018 was the year when:
- there were very few Red Grouse available for shooting in many parts of the country – a combination of weather and disease. Red Grouse will be pushed further and further north by climate change over the next few decades and some of the best grouse moors will become uneconomic because of it. Capital values of grouse moors are bound to fall. The writing is on the wall.
- the Labour Party, not the most reliable ally of nature conservation, came out with a forceful statement on grouse shooting on 12 August. The SNP already has a policy in favour of licensing and the Green Party favours a ban of all field ‘sports’. This is a small but real political issue and there are several Conservative MPs who are supportive of grouse shooting who may well lose their seats in the next general election – which could easily be in 2019. Even the outgoing chair of Natural England supports stronger means to combat wildlife crime including withdrawal of the general licence and vicarious liability.
- raptor persecution continues unabated, and flagrantly, but the voices raised against it grow every year. We have seen more outcry (not before time) from National Parks and AONBs protesting at the bad publicity that these areas receive from frequent persecution incidents. The Peak District Raptor Forum is a lame duck and limps on despite being shot in its webbed foot by one of its members; the blame is clearly with moorland representatives. The review of protected landscapes in England cannot but recommend something to tackle the massive stain of wildlife crime against ‘protected’ species in these ‘protected’ areas.
- the EU infraction proceedings are putting pressure on Defra and NE to cease burning of blanket bogs and yet their chosen way of pretending to address this issue through agreeing poor management agreements, estate by estate, is palpably inadequate.
- let’s not forget Gavin Gamble’s e-petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting – it gathered nearly 50,000 signatures to show that people still care and of course in Scotland the SNP government is very slowly moving towards licensing of shooting estates.
- having lost a legal challenge about its unlawful agreement with Walshaw Moor Estate NE is now in the middle of a hearing of two challenges, from the RSPB and from me (us!) over its licensing of brood meddling. Whatever the result of these challenges the case has provided plenty more grist to the mill which is grinding down grouse shooting and has fired a shot across NE’s bows over taking daft decisions just to please the shooting industry.
Not a great year for an industry based on the pointless sport of shooting birds for fun. But what will 2019 bring?
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Well said Mark the driven grouse shooters as well as all those who practice so called “country sports”, must’be starting to feel they are stranded on a mud bank with a spring tide coming in fast all around them such tha they will be engulfed very shortly. I for one will not be offering them any life lines.
The point about capital values is key. Would anyone buy a grouse moor as an investment in 2019, knowing that it can only lose value over the coming years? Once the money starts to bleed away, the whole industry begins to collapse. Those involved are desperate to stop this happening and so are willing to fund big PR campaigns, but they must know they are fighting a losing battle.
Well said , Mark . Also that oft trotted out chestnut that it helps the local economy is well flawed. How many beaters , local unemployed and student made a few bob this season ? Here in the Angus glens , one shooting estate has big , fancy lodges which accommodate large numbers of shooters and even provide chefs and staff. No one has to leave so no pubs or shops benefit. In another local Glen the primary school is closing and even though the keepers kids attend no landowners are stepping in to reverse the situation.
It’s only by accident that I came across a policy document from the RSBP where they state that local contractors should be given preferential treatment. Disgusting how little credit conservation organisations get for the money they bring in when grouse moors get lauded for doing so when they don’t.
Part of the problem is that tourism is unequivocally part of the service economy, and being part of the shooter’s brigade’s hangers on is not seen as being so (although it is, let me be clear on that), and we’ve spent decades making jokes about people in the service economy, deriding them, and generally looking down on them. People who have status in the shooter’s economy (real and imagined) don’t want to lose that status and become mere service workers, and those in the area looking for jobs want to imagine getting a statused job and not a service one. That is why the wildlife tourism angle is always such a hard sell.
It also ties in with the general derision of the green, environmental, and animal welfare sectors too. We’ve being making jokes about those for decades too, and nobody wants to throw in with a sector where they can imagine people making the same jokes about them as they just made about others. Somehow that has to be tackled to.
No, I have no answers. All I can do is point out the problem and hope someone in the movement has an idea about countering the issues (or even acknowledging it, the RSPB seems very loathe to even acknowledge there is a public perception problem) and can come up with something.
Maybe it is just as simple as next time you hear someone making one of those jokes, you give them a telling off and a lecture on the dignity of all labour; or if you hear one of those jokes on telly then drop an email to the network (the BBC can be reached through bbc.co.uk/complaints ) and telling your family that it isn’t funny and just perpetuating a harmful stereotype. I know they won’t thank you for it, and will probably give you a lecture about lightening up or the “its only a larf” retort, but eventually it might stick.
An excellent overview ofthe dituation from Mark and those commenting above.
If we continue to scream, quietly and politely, there is hope that those who are responsible for the present position are held to task.
Slowly but surely the general populace are becoming aware of the crimes the hunting industry commit in pursuit of their so called sport. Chris Packham’s CBE can only help to publicise the importance of protecting our wildlife, and who knows, perhaps more champions of the environment will be recognised for their work in helping to make this country are safer place for all wildlife.
The apologists and enablers of the crimes must surely be questioning their own tactics. It is certainly time to address their wilful dereliction of responsibility and their negligence in putting their own organisations in order. Perhaps there should be an ignoble award – a CBE for “Corruption of the Bloody Environment”
I’d love to see 2019 be the year when we finally see the dreaded Fenn Trap outlawed, once & for all!
Each day brings the end of driven shooting in the UK, grouse, pheasant and partridge. They all have downsides, habitat trashing by pheasants, habitat trashing by us to further grouse high densities and the days of large kills must somehow enure the participants to unnecessary death, pleasure killing as my friends ” the Bills” call it. The participants, their PR organisations peopled with their apologists for all this and the crimes committed by them and more seriously their employees , the keepers will soon be unable to stem the tide of change and it will be swept away into history. The sooner the better.
The Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative may well be a lame duck but… it’s fantastic, well documented proof of the inability of shooting to get a grip of the actions of its members and of the ongoing issues of persecution in the National Park
8 years and no progress for raptors!
2017 RPUK FOI’s uncover the Moorland Association and gamekeepers trying to derail publishing the report, first class work RPUK.
2018 an agreed report from ALL the members, clearly showing that persecution remains a major issue, how can shooting possibly deny the issue when it’s clearly documented in their own report?
2019, the end? Just a pile of paperwork to be reviewed when a new government takes charge all pointing towards the failure of self regulation or even any constraint and a peer reviewed scientific paper to reflect on what used to be.
Thanks for all your hard work Mark, wishing you a very happy New Year
In addition to all that you say above, Mark, and that the other comments add to, I’m also encouraged that the issue of raptor persecution is beginning to be mentioned more and more in mainstream journalism, and not only in nature conservation circles or articles. One example among several recently was in last Saturday’s Guardian, where the Travel supplement led on ‘The UK’s most beautiful walks’. An article on a walk in Bowland said: ‘but don’t expect a sighting of the emblematic bird of this AONB, the hen harrier: the moors are managed not for their benefit, but for grouse’.
All of this is a direct result of your and others’ determination and persistence in getting this into public debate: thank you!
Any romantic Lady Chatterley style image of gamekeepers is thankfully being condemned to history as is the cosy real fire image of life on a Grouse Moor.This is an industry of hard profit,mass slaughter of native wildlife,widespread criminality and environmental vandalism. Your blog has really helped put that message out there and more and more people are getting it.Bring on 2019,can’t wait for further inroads into the demise of Driven Grouse shooting.