On the Inglorious 12th, the opening day of the Red Grouse shooting season, Luke Pollard, shadow DEFRA Secretary said:
The government has failed to cut wildlife crime and a decade of austerity has left these birds [protected raptors] vulnerable to poaching, with fewer police preventing poaching and fewer officers able to catch those responsible.
We need a new approach to protecting and restoring the numbers of these iconic species, with a review into how grouse moors operate and proper licensing in place.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/12/call-grouse-shooting-licensed-rise-bird-prey-deaths
This follows 2018’s call by then Shadow Secretary of State, Sue Hayman, for an independent review of grouse shooting (maybe a bit like the Werritty review in Scotland).
The main opposition party in England is hardening its stance all the time against grouse shooting and this is largely for the same three reasons as everybody else except dyed in the wool grouse shooters, the Conservative Party and Natural England; first, the growing evidence of systemic environmental harm even when the law isn’t broken, second, the blatant disregard for wildlife protection laws shown by so many of the advocates of grouse shooting and third, the lies and nastiness that walk hand in hand with the futile defence of this outdated land use.
An industry that is worthless in economic terms and yet damages ecosystem services on which we rely, and which to make its profits depends on crime against wildlife and whose proponents are wilfully blind cannot, as I’ve written here so many times, expect to continue in its current state.
So, well done Labour and well done to everyone, inculding those of us who have attended Hen Harrier Days, signed petitions and used social media to spread the word! This is another step forward.
And the joint Wild Justice, RSPB and Hen Harrier Action e-action has passed 30,000 actions on this, the Inglorious 12th. All those with Labour MPs in England should now expect a response from their MPs committing Labour to grouse moor reform while the Conservatives stand wilfully blind to the issues.
Please consider signing up to the e-action here https://wildjustice.eaction.org.uk/saveourskydancers . Thank you!
Rentagob Anderson surfaces again.
Cop – I’m glad to see her back – she’s such a sweetie! But, as has been obvious for a few years now, despite Amanda’s PR skills, she hasn’t got anything to say to the rest of the world. She is speaking to the dinosaurs who pay her salary and who between them are bringing driven grouse shooting down. They might’ve been better off staying silent.
I’ve always got a problem with the term “dinosaurs”, Mark. As I’m sure you know, they were an incredibly successful taxon, remaining extant for around 165 million years, and leaving the avian legacy. Unlike the tweed disease, who’ll do well to last a couple of ugly, blood-stained centuries, leaving nothing but a bad smell. That said, brain to body mass ratio might be a fair analogy! 😉
Who would need a licence and exactly what would licensing achieve? How would it change current practices? Who would police it? Or is the goal it would be a step towards a total ban of driven grouse shooting?
John – those are all good questions. And the trouble is that a poor licensing system would achieve very little except to show that licensing hadn’t worked – and that would quite possibly lead to a ban. Actually, the other problem is that, of course, the Lbour Party is not in power! Yet! But the SNP is and it is their party policy to introduce licensing so let’s hope they get on with it soon!
So what would be the scope and the aims of good licensing?
I struggle to see how it would help ensure your goals are met, without considerable resource on the ground which brings in the question of funding, which in its self would be an issue.
Could licensing just not be a distraction and an acceptable way for dgs to continue as is.
john – it could, but it might not be. You’re only telling me what I’ve been telling the world for years. thanks.
But failed licensing is a step on the way to a ban, and successful licensing is a step forward. You’ll notice that both involve having licensing.
But if asked, and I have video evidence (soon to be revealed) to prove it, I’d opt for a ban. Tomorrow if possible.
This is very good news from Labour and presumably will also be the policy of the Labour Party in Scotland too. They have not got many Scottish MPs but their few are important in supporting the SNP to give them a clear majority in the Scottish Parliament. So we now need movement from the SNP. Come on SNP.
Realistically I think a total ban on driven grouse shooting will not be secured all in one go. It will be a gradual process but this is a really good step in this process. Thanks to great campaigning efforts, all the evils and criminality associated with driven grouse shooting are steadily becoming more evident to the general public, so isolating the shooters and those many Tories with vested interests in this evil.
Perhaps it won’t be too long now before we see the “rats” leaving the sinking ship.of Driven Grouse Shooting.
A move in the right direction but I have great misgivings about the whole idea of licensing of grouse shoots. As the licensed are hardly likely to co-operate fully over licensing ( most licensing seems to work because of the compliance of the licensed– think Dog licences and why they died a death) it will need a robust monitoring system, probably very robust and almost full time, plus a acceptance of the levels of proof of transgression ( killing raptors/preventing breeding of raptors etc) as accepted in civil cases. Anything else will represent very little progress, as we currently get so few of the associated wildlife criminals into court. A poorly funded and non robustly policed system will just prolong the life of this unacceptable, negatively biodiverse and otherwise damaging use of our uplands, we and they deserve much better.
Sorry Mark AA is not a sweetie, she is the lying mouthpiece of a wilfully blind and criminality based cabal.
There was a good piece about uplands, rewilding and DGS (though as usual ‘balanced’ by an interview with a keeper) on Radio 4’s Farming Today this morning with Tim Birch (Derbyshire WT) making all the points really well.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000lmgw 4.26 minutes in.
Just for the record, what I got yesterday from my Labour MP, Fabian Hamilton was “I receive a large amount of correspondence and I do not give priority to email. I aim to respond within 20 working days. While I am always happy to hear the views of my constituents I do NOT reply to automatically generated campaign emails.
Thanks Fabian!
So Mike send him a personal email or batter still a letter still making all the relevant points. As an MP is his essentially honour bound to respond or you should complain.
I did and I also referred him to today’s article in the Guardian should he want to catch up on the newly announced Labour Party policy re licencing!
He has now replied to me confirming that he is contacting the Sec of State on my behalf.
Mike – that’s the way to do it! Well done.
If licensing is such a good thing and won’t prolong DGS by another 20 years then Luke Pollard should be invited to write a guest blog explaining how he thinks it could work. Maybe he knows something that we don’t, (like the RSPB).
Very odd use of the word ‘poaching’ by Luke Pollard! Hardly correct in this context!
Richard – you can’t license a hobby without breaking eggs?
I had the usual tory drivel in reply to my Hen Harrier day letters to the MS’s representing mid Wales. I cut and pasted much of Mark’s suggested reply adding a bit here and there. It will be interesting if
1. I get a reply
2. I get a response from DEFRA and the Welsh Environment person.
I’ve only had the one tory reply, nothing from our Labour folk or UKIP (Hamilton).
If you go on the MA’s Facebook page you can see Swinton Estate, part of my old stamping ground keepers and beaters in masks, gloves and visors, has nobody told them they are outdoors FFS. However it is funny.
As someone who would prefer licensing to a partial ban perhaps I should once again try and put my point of view in the light of some of the comments on here.
Firstly, no one on either side of this licensing/banning discussion is proposing to get rid of grouse shooting. Those looking for a ban on driven grouse shooting appear to be happy for traditional ‘walked up’ shooting to carry on without any restrictions. Those looking at licensing are clearly not opposed to grouse shooting carrying on provided it complies with whatever licence conditions are in place.
One of the issues has to be what does a licence look like. No one knows at the moment, so any comments about the potential failings of such a licence are conjecture. Likewise no one knows what uncontrolled ‘walked up’ shooting might look like in the future or what gamekeepers might be asked to do to make it financially worthwhile.
What is a licence. It is something given to somebody to allow them to undertake what would be an illegal act without it. There are 2 types of licence in my opinion; those such as the old dog licence, game licence and excise licence (all control you doing something but in my opinion with the sole aim of getting revenue in for the Govt) and there are licences that exist to make sure that before you do something you can show that you can do it safely, properly or professionally (these include such things as driving licence, gun licence).
If you give someone a licence it comes with conditions (check your driving licence). Do something in breach of those conditions or against the law whilst using the licence and it can be taken away and the thing you want to do becomes illegal again.
If we apply that to grouse shooting, a good licence should contain conditions such as limiting the number of managed grouse per hectare (GWCT produces figures that would support this), restricting methods of shooting, preventing or restricting the killing and culling methods of non target species (legal and illegal), requiring annual returns, requiring ad hoc inspections and I could go on.
If banning DGS is successful, we need to know what that actually means legally and what does ‘walked up’ shooting legally mean. If walked up shooting is unlicensed, as now, how will we know it is being undertaken lawfully and not transforming into DGS by another name, how will someone monitor it, how do we know what is being killed: in exactly the same way we do now, with difficulty. There is an answer – to ensure that walked up shooting works, license it. So why not license the whole of grouse shooting.
I understand the scepticism over licensing, I spent 30 years as a police officer dealing with issues like this.
My belief is that licensing all grouse shooting is stronger than banning part of it but leaving the rest uncontrolled.
Bob our positions are actually not miles apart. I would like to see and end to ALL driven shooting because to my mind it is a complete corruption of hunting and is essentially using live targets much as one does clays . Couple that with all the bad things that go with it in either intensive grouse or the millions and millions of non indigenous pheasants and red legs released, lord only knows what that does to our ecology. Of course after a ban all other forms of shooting should nay must be controlled through a licensing system.
For me transgression in terms of killing specially protected wildlife be that raptors, Wildcats, Pine Martens or the Adders routinely killed on many moors to a level of civil court proof would result in a ban of 2-5 years, second offence by the same enterprise life ban.
‘Do something in breach of those conditions or against the law whilst using the licence and it can be taken away and the thing you want to do becomes illegal again.’
Bob, is this not the crux of the problem? Exactly how do you police thousands of acres of moorland? The issue comes down to money. There will never be enough people on the ground to make it work.
Sure, a ban will still be abused, just as the fox and hare bans are, but at least people hearing guns will know that it’s going on.
George Monibot tells us in the Guardian today that there are nowhere near enough Environment Agency staff to police river pollution incidents. The government are hardly likely to make DGS a special case.