The most controversial aspect of gamebird shooting is whether you call its unwilling participants gamebirds or game birds. Aside from that it is widely agreed that things must change. But mass shooting of gamebirds has become a habit, a bad habit, and the macho so-called leaders of the shooting industry are so stuck in the mire that they cannot see what harm current practices, and their denial of any error, is doing.
Yesterday the paper of the establishment, still, The Times, published a leader in which the following appeared:
The quantity of non-native game birds needs to be regulated to protect wildlife
One option would be to require pheasant shoots to obtain licences, which could be withdrawn in the event of a failure to protect wildlife. The case is plausible, and the RSPB’s intervention is temperate and driven by evidence.
Those pheasants that are shot but left lying become food for scavengers such as foxes, crows and rats, whose numbers have increased and which in turn become a threat to native species such as curlews and lapwings.
The era of big shooting parties ought to have given way to a balance of recreation and rural conservation. It is instead being recreated. Licensing shoots is not a draconian proposal. It would ensure, on the contrary, that game as well as other wildlife continue to thrive in rural Britain.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-of-the-release-of-game-birds-into-the-countryside-licence-to-shoot-s0n8dhwjk
We would not see those words in The Times if the RSPB hadn’t done its review of gamebird shooting and we probably wouldn’t have seen that review were it not for pressure from the membership and the Wild Justice legal challenge on impacts of gamebird releases which will be heard in a few weeks time (3 and 4 November) and which was kicked off in July 2019. And quite honestly we might not have seen them if the shooting industry’s spokespeople weren’t so unpleasant to any who question their unregulated hobby.
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Great to see the Times recognising the problem and coming out in favour of licensing.
The main problem for those opposing it is frankly that they are too embarrassed to be seen to change. Which means admitting you were wrong!
This is a reasonable position to take but if we go down this route what is a “reasonable” number of game birds to be released nationally and even more important we need an independent view of what the density of released birds should be in specific habitats such that said habitat is not trashed ( as many are today, we have a very good local example) nor the ecology impacted heavily. Once established such densities should become the legal maximum. We need to move away, or shooting does, from the current position which is essentially who can kill the most in this terrible form of canned “hunting.”
Also all shot game should have a market and none should be dumped. Regulation must also ensure that non-toxic ammunition is used. This will ensure that not only is game of all types fit for human consumption but also any unretrieved quarry and spent shot does not poison wildlife or the environment.
Despite all this my own view remains that in the long term all releases should be stopped. Surely hunting is really about taking a small proportion of natural surplus to either eat oneself or for it in other ways be eaten by others. We need to engender a respect for the quarry, they are not just targets. I can well remember a goose shoot to get rid of some of the “vermin Greylags” in which at least one bird was left badly wounded in a water body with neither dog nor boat sent to retrieve it. I left before the gun in question walked past me otherwise I would probably have hit him very hard!
Thinking of your Greylags, I think back to helping on a fairly big Pheasant Estate that also reared a lot of ducks. The ducks were released and fed (they were almost tame) alternately between two small ponds across a valley and on shoot days the Guns stood in the valley below as two teams of beaters flushed them back and forth between the two ponds. They were far too high, 50 yards and the rest, but the Guns loved it. The next morning, feeding the ponds was like a grim battlefield scene of the lame, winged and dying pelleted that had come back exhausted in the evening, and we used to polish a few off with the .22. I am ashamed at my own part in it. This is the sort of shite that is still totally normal, despite the best practice guides that have been put out by BASC and GWCT for over 30 years. So that it can start to hold the shooting world to account with hard evidence, will the RSPB now be expanding it’s Investigations Team’s capacity…and getting stuck into this type of “routine” horror-show as well?
This is all very well and obviously a step in the right direction. However, what we will also need is a Government that will enforce the law/regulations. Based on their track record, I don’t feel very confident that the present Government can be relied on.
PeterD – not the one down here, but the Scottish government should be taking the first step soon and that will leave the door slightly ajar down south, but it may we ll take a Labour government to introduce such measures. Although, if successful, the Wild Justice legal challenge on Pheasants and RLPs might do quite a lot of it.
Well said Mark
That is really good from the Times. A rational analysis based on the facts. So niece to read something sound from the press for a change instead of it screaming falsehoods all the time.
All credit to Wild Justice. The court action next month, I am sure, is causing a lot of people to start to think hard about the destruction and damage caused to our native wildlife by game bird shooting. Also so well done RSPB for pitching their tougher policy, judging from this newspaper leader, just about right.
No doubt there will always be the very right wing publications, like the Daily Mail screaming the odds, but at least one of the more rational papers are talking sense.
It would be so niece to find that Defra and Natural England support the RSPBs new policy and are prepared to legislate accordingly but I fear that is a very long shot. They are a terrible lot.
Again, let’s hope the provincial Governments pass legislation to support the RSPBs stance.
Alan – you’ll be in trouble Using the term provincial. I’d recommend national.
Point taken Mark
Alan, I think Mark was a little selective in his choice of quotes, it’s not complete. Others have quoted the whole of the article. See Twitter if you don’t subscribe to the Murdoch press! Hope you enjoyed the AGM, missed having a chat with you and Mark!
Thanks Richard, as you say missed meeting up and chatting. I think the RSPB did very well in very difficult conditions I certainly do not subscribe to the Murdoch press. Avoid at all costs!!!
That’s an awful lot of [the rest of this comment has been deleted because it isn’t relevant to this post – not even a little bit]
“Those pheasants that are shot but left lying become food for scavengers such as foxes, crows and rats, whose numbers have increased and which in turn become a threat to native species such as curlews and lapwings.”
This statement looks to totally ignore the fact that their is plenty of fox and rat control done around game shoots, after all foxes will take live birds. Also shoots operate to a code of good shooting practice and all effort is made to ensure no shot birds are left lying for scavengers.
John – you haven’t read, or haven’t understood, or perhyaps have ignored the literature.
Codes of practice are as good as compliance – piss poor in these cases. See GWCT admissions on stocking densities v codes of practice.
Well all I can say is that every shoot I know, put a lot of effort in to controlling fox numbers and rats it benefits the shoot to do so, just like picking all shot birds to suggest otherwise is wrong.
John – but Pheasants and partridges end up well away from the shoots on which they were released. The shoots have re;latively little control on the birds in practice and therefore their measures could only, at best, be partial.
I was always led to believe even by keepers I knew that fox control was good on grouse shoots and barely coping on many pheasant shoots with foxes constantly arriving to take the place of animals already killed ( nature hates a vacuum) in an area with a huge surplus of prey. The same is probably even more true of rats.
John: They still litter roadsides across various counties, whether from shot/injured birds or from RTAs – are you suggesting that these are retrieved? Or rather then that the responsible shoots should ‘litter pick’ the carnage up? Maybe they also need to be micro-chipped so motorists suffering from damage to vehicles can claim against the shoot which released them? Aware that the current regulations describe them as livestock till released when they morph to wild birds, then miraculously at the end of the season they can be caught & return to becoming livestock.
I think you should really have said that ‘SOME shoots operate a good code of shooting practice’. Certainly there are shoots where ‘pickers-up’ will do their best to find wounded or dead birds but where I live I routinely pick up dead birds in my garden which is adjacent to the usual first drive of the day and nobody has lifted a finger to try to find them. Usually there is a big rush to get to the next drive and so wounded and dead are left behind because the dog men follow the guns. At the end of the day the dead and dying result of the slaughter for fun are most certainly not a big priority for most commercial shoots!
If shoots still control rats with rodenticides they are also contributing to the decline of barn owls in our countryside. This practice was flagged up nearly forty years ago when Colin Shawyer was investigating barn owl declines.
Erm…
https://twitter.com/MoorlandMonitor/status/1315317288019677186
That lammergeire is going to get overweight -or dead. With all this roadkill.
There is an unnatural selection for fast takeoff by scavengers. Marsh Harrieres are over the limit – pers obs.