Here are a few things that caught my eye recently, and I will be writing more about some of them next week:
- Wild Justice forces DEFRA to act on non-native gamebirds – see DEFRA announcement. I wouldn’t say that this was too little too late, but it is late and it isn’t clear whether it will amount to very much at all. But it’s good that legal action has caused something to happen.
- RSPB announces consultation on shooting – see here. This is to be welcomed and I welcome it.
- Chris Packham had a dead Badger tied to his gate on Thursday night after he got home from a Wild Justice event in London (see Charlie Moores’s blog about the event here).
- Liam Stokes (ex Countryside Alliance and then DEFRA) has become the British Game Alliance’s new chief executive. He needs to lead them away from lead.
- Guardian article – grouse moor owners threatened government with legal action. ‘Defra says it intends to ban the burning of heather and will publish its plans shortly.‘. Looking foward to seeing them!
You can see how the shooting industry is under pressure from different positions. All are its own fault for failing to clean up its own mess over the years. Expect a potentially important announcement next week. We are indeed in the end game for driven grouse shooting.
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Looking forward greatly to a ban
The moors can become a haven for wildlife full of biodiversity.
Thank you for your tireless work
Very clear direction of travel in all of these articles. If you throw in Dongria Kondh’s protest outside Natural England’s Leeds Office as well and NE’s promised response; pressure seems to be building across the board.
Well done and please keep up the good work, together with Ruth and Chris of course!
Great stuff Mark.
I too welcome the RSPB consultation. However, my natural cynicism leads me to wonder whether this will be announced through the mag as well as online. To give every member a right of reply it should be. This would of course need a lengthy article to explain why the consultation is needed and all the issues surrounding it.
Given the facts, I believe the majority of its 1.2 million members would be surprised at what is going on in our countryside and would want to see an end to it.
Will the RSPB be that brave?
Love it though I do I’m afraid not. A couple of years ago at a vegan festival where I was manning a stall I saw that the RSPB one had very uncharacteristically an awful lot about raptor persecution on it including images of poisoned, trapped and shot birds of prey. When I mentioned how pleased I was at this the RSPB guy said that usually this was ‘too strong’ for them to do and it was only because of the expected dispositions of those attending the event that it was felt to be acceptable this time. I think that’s wrong and the slaughter of birds of prey in the belief it will assist a hobby is as immoral and unnecessary a reason for losing wildlife there can be, and therefore there’s no better reason for supporting conservation organisations. Putting info on its Skydancer page isn’t the same as raising awareness among the wider membership who don’t happen to read it. When I set up the UKgov petition to get a proper economic study of driven grouse shooting I was chuffed as hell it got a very good plug on the Skydancer blog, then increasingly frustrated that was all the RSPB did to acknowledge its existence leaving more work for me and many others to get it over 10,000 signatures at the eleventh hour.
What exactly would be the problem if the RSPB publicly stated that targeted ecological restoration including the reintroduction of the beaver in the uplands would not only have enormous conservation value, but significantly reduce flood risk for homes, businesses and genuinely productive farms downstream? Especially at a time when we have an obesity crisis and perhaps as much as forty percent of our food goes to waste why is avoiding awkward questions for those receiving public subsidy to farm shitty upland soils (and for grouse moors) seen as more important than a full and open debate about how to have fewer families flooded out of their homes? Isn’t the latter more important along with not compromising democracy? I keep bringing this up because I find it incredibly frustrating.
Yes shooting especially DGS is on the back foot hopefully this will remain a permanent position and it will soon be gone. The folk who have such sad twisted minds that they think it appropriate to hang an dead Badger on Chris Packham’s gate will along with their stupid friends no doubt be gleeful. I have simple message for them your loosing and doing this persuades ever more folk of the reality of what Chris is all about and thankfully engenders him and us more support.
I noted this week the possibly arrival in mid Wales of some legal Beavers, the entirely ill informed coverage on BBC Wales and the predictable anti Beaver ignorance of landowners, farmers and fishermen.
I couldn’t find the feature on BBC iPlayer, but I can fully believe that all the landowners, farmers and fishermen did their best to demonise the beaver and its possible return to Wales. I don’t think there’s another species with the potential to act as a catalyst for the ecological restoration with associated ecoservices we need and therefore to upset the rural gravy train as much as the beaver does. The knives are out for it no mistake. We haven’t even started to publicise its capacity for creating firebreaks on our tinderbox moors yet and have still an awful lot of people won’t know about its role in reducing floods. They’ve recently published the findings after years of studying the two beaver populations in Devon, the enclosed trial and the free living one on the river Otter. They found that after prolonged rain when the ground was saturated with water the ‘roughness’ beavers added to waterways in the form of dams and loose wood still helped slow the flow. That’s remarkable. And the very best place for it to help us would be up in the very rainy uplands where a lot of the current (un)economic activity requires public subsidy draining money from other services that the bulk of the population could benefit from and not increase the flood risk they live under. I can’t think of a stronger and more practical case for rewilding than with the beaver, but it’s not being put forward in a cohesive manner by the relevant organisations.
I would love Rewilding Britain to go to the people of Gloucester and consult them as to if they should continue to help subsidise the Welsh sheep farming that’s increasing the chances their homes will be flooded – as RB consulted Welsh farmers about potential restoration projects (that would cut flood risk for other people) this seems only fair, in fact an obligation. Aren’t the people of Gloucester members of the public and local communities too? Who is it that’s really disadvantaged Welsh sheep farmers or Gloucester townies, one gets public money, the other can get flood water? However, as I understand it there is a population of free living beavers in Wales not causing the apocalypse it’s supposed to quietly getting on with feeding and breeding and I don’t think the reasonable people in Wales will be any happier about having them ‘removed’ than the public was about that on the river Tay or Otter. Mutton Mafia your days are as numbered as those of the grouse moor owners. https://www.exeter.ac.uk/creww/research/beavertrial/
It’s amazing how, in the face of shooting’ intransigence the DGS issue has ballooned – what started out as a conservation issue over Hen Harriers has spilled over into flooding (sorry!), climate change, lowland Pheasant releases, how and why we kill wild birds (the General License), the morality of shooting and human health (lead). In Calderdale today we potentially have a very serious challenge to A Government probably unfit to deal with it (although we know where they stand) – the issue of whether one individual has the right to seriously impact literally hundreds if nor thousands of his fellow citizens – it all come back to whether or not there is ‘Society’ (remember Margaret Thatcher and ‘there’s no such thing as society). Quite a memorial to that tragic pile of dead Hen Harriers.
And, as Les points up, where on earth is conservation in the media coverage of flooding ? Why aren’t I seeing RSPB, Wildlife Trusts, the National Trust standing up and forcing the issue of land management to slow the flood ? Unlike the traditional flood controllers who will now be bidding for billions for more failing hard defences, we need both hard & soft defences – and now we are out of the CAP we can pay farmers for what the country needs, not just maximum food production.
Although they have admittedly dragged their heels so far, I am pleased that DEFRA will not be pushing any legislation through, that would impact on the upcoming gamebird release programmes.
The farcical timing of last years General licence decisions, was a justifiable focus of the shooting
communities anger.
A decision on future practice, say, this coming Autumn, should give no cause for complaint .
The challenge to the release of game birds has been made beacuse it is very likely unlawful. In the circumstances dEFRA should make sure it is compliant and if it is not not authorise any releases that might put it in a difficult position.
Shooters should support any government body that ensures its operations and licencing are legal. Shooters of course are not the only clients of DEFRA but they are among the most vociferous and powerful. Defra also serves the population at large and it is for those that cherish a rich environment that Wild Justice is acting. It is sobering to think that the desire to shoot ever growing numbers of non native birds is so insatiable that millions more than the environment can support are annually imported from the continent for the soul benefit of the hunters, and to the detriment of our native wildlife..
An excellent piece (six pages) in British Wildlife by Peter Marren “Will Natural England survive?” Well worth a read, some interesting points well made:)