As just announced at the smooth, inspiring and excellent RSPB AGM the RSPB has a new position on gamebird shooting.
It’s not massively different, but it does represent a ‘Gloves off‘ moment as a commenter on this blog asked for. Well, maybe we should regard it as a ‘Gloves off, but it will take us a while to undo the laces‘ moment.
This new position goes a bit further than I feared it might, not as far as I would like, but about as far as anyone could hope for. And so, as a position it is a significant step forward.
But as RSPB would always say when welcoming good words from government, the real test is in the actions that follow. As an RSPB member I will be watching carefully to see that these words are followed with action.
Here is a summary:
The RSPB is neutral on the ethics of fieldsports (still). I’m not surprised but actually removing this eyesore from the Royal Charter is now something that the membership should campaign for – it’s an unnecessary and unhelpful anachronism.
RSPB wants legislative change on lead ammunition, burning on peat soils and wildlife crime.
Grouse shooting:
- RSPB is not too bothered about walked-up shooting
- driven grouse shooting – unsustainable
- RSPB will provide an annual assessment of progress and if there is not enough progress the RSPB will switch to calling for a ban within five years.
This is good – not perfect, but good. The annual assessment, provided it is rigorous and published, will be very useful. This may require redirection of investigation effort into assessing burning, gathering evidence for poor burning etc. And lead ammunition has to go too.
The RSPB will be providing a report card on driven grouse shooting and will be seeking its expulsion if things don’t improve. One can only hope that the RSPB makes it abundantly clear that this does not mean ‘We’ll come back to this in five years’ but could mean that the RSPB switches to calling for a ban in 12 months time if the shooting industry and governments continue to take the mickey.
Non-native gamebird releases
- there are substantial negative impacts both direct and indirect
- further legislation is needed
- reductions in gamebird released are needed
- as are full compliance with codes of practice
- RSPB will call for regulation within 18 months if things don’t get better
This is quite tough, and again is time-limited. Let’s face it, the Wild Justice legal case might do some of this for the RSPB if successful but we are glad to have prodded them into action on this subject.
RSPB staff will need to gather evidence and data on which to base their decision that there isn’t enough progress or that there is – that’ll be interesting.
All in all, this is a step forward in words, and I trust the RSPB to follow through with action. Shooting organisations should take the opportunity, in limited time, to reform and should be clammering for DEFRA to bring in reforms to save their ‘sports’ from further hassle from the UK’s largest real conservation organisation.
I wonder what the Wildlife Trusts will do in response to this? Something, I hope.
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What did the RSPB membership ask for ?
Disappointed the RSPB did not go further. The shooting industry is out of control as they now the torys will do nothing. I am also not happy with the SNP fence sitting on the subject as well.
I’m actually pleasantly surprised. The policy positions on DGS could have gone further based on the mountain of available evidence, but at least real time limits have been set; real challenges have been laid out to governments and shooters.
Based on many decades of bitter experience, do we really expect any meaningful changes from the shooters, other than a ratcheting up of the bile and personal attacks?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the RSPB will be having to change its position sooner rather than later.
The RSPB position has of course moved which is welcome but, depending on where you stand, it seems to have moved very little in several areas. It will not I am sure have gone as far as many had hoped it would. I’m a long-standing RSPB member, for over 50 years, and I am bitterly disappointed with much of their ‘new’ policy (sic) and can no longer support their tardy progress.
Can you inch your way towards an ethical position on shooting for pleasure? Can you ever be neutral on the ethics of field sports? It’s not like using a Likert scale and choosing a point midway between shooting and not shooting: there is no middle ground.
I’m a researcher by trade and often, almost always, if you ask a researcher/reviewer what’s wanted, the answer is ‘more research/review’. Of course more research and review that adds critically to our understanding of an issue is valuable but if you already have all the information you need to make policy or implement practice, then precaution and prevention and ethics indicate you should act upon it and not delay.
Governments and organisations like the RSPB, however, often seize on the need for more research or reviews or audits as a way of kicking things into the long grass and hoping they may be lost for ever. Other organisations suffer from the related conditions of paralysis by analysis and endlessly consulting people to ‘death’ on proposals that are never implemented. These conditions are currently prevalent across UK administrations on actions to protect raptors and their habitats.
So the RSPB will be providing a report card on driven grouse shooting. More delay. Then the report may translate into new RSP policy calling for a ban, then the RSPB may ask the current UK government to change policy, then the RSPB will be ignored. This does not seem like a way forward. The policy field in the UK on environmental and health issues is littered with examples of where calls for voluntary actions have failed for decades, where codes of practice have not been enforced, where regulations have been ignored and where acts have been meaningless.
I think the recent suggestions on your list make most sense. Supporting Wild Justice and active environmental NGOs pressing for change rather than quite passive and even moribund environmental organisations looks likely to make the biggest difference now.
I do so agree Mark that it is time for the RSPB to have their Charter changed so they no longer have to take a neutral stance on the ethics of shooting. At the same time the species of birds that are classed as game birds needs to be drastically reduced. For example it is ridiculous that snipe and woodcock are on the game bird list.
All this is a hang over from the Victorian times when bird numbers were so much higher and general public attitudes accepted shooting as a lot of people had to live off the land. Neither is any longer the case.
As you say I think the new stance by the RSPB is as good as one could reasonably hope for. I think the time limits and the calls for bans on lead etc are a really good thing.
Whether the wretched Government at Westminster will pay any attention to this new stance is very doubtful but hopefully the provincial Governments will.
What exactly would be the point of changing the charter? To turn the RSPB into an animal rights NGO presumably. There are other organizations for that. The RSPB is a conservation NGO hampered a bit, I think, by its name – but ‘RSPB’ is such a well known brand which is why it has not been changed. RSPB is being run by some excellent wise people – Council and management – determined to fight for conservation. The challenges wildlife and the planet face are huge. Opposing shooting for sport on principle would contribute nothing to solving those problems – quite the reverse.
Bob – I hope with a bit of time to think about it you will have realised what a foolish comment this is. You set up a straw man and harrumphed at him. This part of the Royal Charter was a quick fix for an issue over a centure ago, remember. No organisation should define itself by what it isn’t. The RSPB should ‘take no part in the question of [the killing of game birds and legitimate sport of that character] except when such practices have an impact on the Objects’ would be true whatever you put in the [ ].
Thanks Mark. Not at all!
The reason it was put there seems to me to be irrelevant. The important thing is what it has done and is doing. As the RSPB has evolved from a bird protection organization into a nature conservation one the charter has made it crystal clear that the society shall not become involved in any debate about the ethics of field sports. For conservation, that has worked well.
Do you want the RSPB to take a view on the ethics of shooting? If so, presumably you would like the RSPB to oppose shooting – moving the society into the sphere of animal rights? If you don’t want the RSPB to take a view on the ethics of shooting what is the point of altering the charter?
Kevin Cox made it clear that RSPB, within the existing charter and the charitable objects, can take whatever action it needs to based on conservation reasons, including if necessary calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting. What’s not to like about that?
So, we’ve spent the whole day at yet another RSPB AGM. Good value, didn’t cost a penny. It’s always good to hear of all the fantastic work the RSPB do in conservation throughout the UK and the rest of the world. Protecting our coasts, our wetlands, providing refuge for species of many taxa. Saving Albatrosses from fishing and predation on nesting grounds. Increasing the breeding of Roseate terns and many others. Presenting the RSPB Medal to Dr Ram Jakati for his work on saving vultures in India. I missed the presentation of the Volunteers awards this year! Oh, and quite a lot of dangerous work protecting birds of prey in our uplands (as you know, Mark, we’ve never missed a Hen harrier day) but others will no doubt comment on that.
Nothing wrong with what the RSPB have come up with after their one year review. As usual it lacks any form of dynamism and urgency.
Personally, I am pleased that the RSPB have previously vacated huge areas in this debate that are now filled by Wild Justice, RPUK, NERF etc. I like organisations that can honestly challenge the status quo and bring change to our moors, the life expectancy of our raptors and our overall environment.
Keep up your good work (for another 5 years at least!).
I’m both pleased and disappointed. Pleased the RSPB has moved somewhat but it is hardly a series of huge steps hence the disappointment. As I recall 86% of members wanted change but do we really need the last chance saloon for the DGS lot for another potentially 5 years. We know the arguments only too well, there are almost no good points in favour of DGS and they have been transgressing both the law and trashing our uplands well forever, THE LAST CHANCE SALOON WAS REACHED LONG AGO, in five years time how many more harriers, eagles, peregrines, goshawks and other raptors, mountain hares, wildcats, badgers etc. will have paid the price for this delay?
I had hoped for a more robust response to the release of millions of ecology altering alien game birds too but then their last chance saloon closes sooner. GO FOR A BAN OF THE RELEASES NOW!
What does it mean in reality? Who other than their members and apparently only 14% of them has an opinion on shooting, really care what the RSPB say.
All rather cumbersome, wasn’t it?
As a lobbying organisation, the RSPB remains woefully lacking in bite. There’s no sense of zeal, passion or purpose. No strength of leadership. No fire in the belly.
I thought it would at least have put out a hard-hitting media statement to coincide with its revised position. But, as yet, not even a squeak out of its PR department.
There has been a token expression of disapproval , but , with the AGM out of the way, the society will doubtless now return to its campaigning torpor.
I’m not defending their action, which as so many have mentioned feels like a marginal improvement, but please remember that they are a charity and Govt gagged charities through the Lobbying Act.
Thankfully we have Wild Justice, RPUK et. al. It is shameful that we (the public and tax payers) have to fund the law that seeks to prevent legitimate challenge and then we have to dig deeper still into our pockets to fund a challenge. But a number of successes attest to the level of anger against the seeming political support in some quarters that appears to turn a blind eye to increasing wildlife crime.
You’re spot on Mark the reference to field sports should be removed from the charter. It’s telling that there is one at all, there was no motivation to make ones about chicken farming or the trade in wild birds so why one for recreational shooting? It’s an ugly anachronism, field sports undemocratically given an exalted status – so much so it’s acceptable for more people to die in road accidents so Scottish estates can have a gross over population of red deer for easier stalking.
It would say a lot if the RSPB dropped that stipulation from its charter. Given that the Royal family is supposed to be politically neutral, why is their continued involvement/support of field sports acceptable they’ve always been politically charged activities – ‘keepers’ beating back the Kinder Scout trespassers for one, man traps and spring guns before that? Conservation on their estates is certainly very much secondary to the shooting. It’s a Royal Charter so this is relevant, the onus needs to be on the Windsors plc not RSPB.
This is at least a step in the right direction from the RSPB, they could have done less as many were probably thinking they would, I was pleasantly surprised expectations had been very low. In my copy of Nature’s Home, delivered yesterday, there was a superb article about the RSPB’S efforts re the conservation of deadwood and its inhabitants, which reminded me that at its best the RSPB is world class (not with magazine titles though). If more members show they will back it up hopefully it will start putting its neck out where it really has to – somebody needs to tell the public why status quo in the uplands means more of their homes flooded for starters.
The RSPB boldly chooses not to rock the boat. Mark, you might disagree, but this is barely a shuffle forward not a step. It just continues my perception that the RSPB is more concerned about conserving its Royal charter in the face of a pro-gameshooting Royal establishment than it is about protecting birdlife.
Random22 – you keep saying things like that, but tell us what is your evidence please? I only worked for the RSPB for 25 years and I saw nothing to confirm your prejudice.