This statement from a bunch of land owning, land managing and shooting organisations is to be welcomed but not praised. After years of hindering progress these ultra-conservative bodies have bowed to the inevitable and said they want (not that they will ensure) an end to lead ammunition use on live quarry within five years.
It’s not too little, but it is very late. And we know that these organisations don’t have much power over the actions of their members.
They were dinosaurs on this subject all along and the stuff about new technology is just an excuse.
Government has been pitifully slow in doing anything about this subject and now they can hide behind this announcement, which may not be delivered on the ground (most other promises haven’t been) for several more years.
My heroes on this subject are the members of the Lead Ammunition Group, especially its chair, the former BASC boss, John Swift, who changed his mind in response to the evidence and knowing that his former colleagues would attack him viciously (which they did).
Waitrose are heroes too. They led the way among supermarkets and that was writing on the wall.
But the main hero is a heroine too – Debbie Pain. She has been active on this issue, both as a scientist and an advocate, for decades. She deserves more of the credit for this change of position than anyone else, in my view, and she too has been reviled by shooting interests for years and years.
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Debbie Pain was elected to the RSPB Council last year as I wrote in my guest blog here at the time https://markavery.info/2019/10/29/report-on-the-rspbs-agm-by-lyn-ebbs/
What. a disgrace the MA is. They twist and turn in every direction to avoid doing what is right. Now they say it is going to take five years to change to non lead ammunition. How ridiculous can one get. Man landed on the moon not a lot longer than that after President Kennedy’s announcement. Of of almost equal disgrace is this Government for not taking any meaningful action in this matter.
Well past time they did this. And using the ‘new technology’ argument to save face.
How about putting forward Debbie Pain for an award then (CBE etc), for services to human and environmental health.
But still as arrogant as ever…
“It said the hunters should not fear the change and that both evolution, and the defence of tradition, was required to enhance the shooting community’s reputation as the “rightful custodians” of the countryside.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/24/uk-hunting-groups-call-for-end-to-use-of-lead-ammunition-by-2025
‘safeguarding the market for healthy game meat’. Are they saying that game meat is not healthy now then? Because of the lead content maybe?
And why has the ‘technology’ been so far advanced in other parts of Europe, and for our own wildfowlers?
More smoke and mirrors if you ask me. They will keep using lead until the law changes, and that’s not likely since they are the law.
If they are saying the meat is not healthy now, they are confessing to pulling the wool over our eyes, because their marketing message has always been that it is healthy.
A spot on Farming Today, sounds as if Andrew Gilruth has been doing a lot of talking – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000fnm5?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialSignIn&utm_content=Lead%20Press