The RSPB statement on gamebird shooting – click here to read it.
It’s written in black and white and yet already there are some who are giving it their own interpretation.
Driven grouse shooting
Critically RSPB says;
We will provide an annual assessment of progress and review our position within five years. Failure to deliver effective reform will result in the RSPB calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting.
https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/martinharper/posts/outcome-of-the-rspb-s-review-of-gamebird-shooting-and-associated-land-management
I’m looking forward to seeing this annual report card on driven grouse shooting. Every disappeared Hen Harrier will be a black mark on the report card, every incident of burning on peatland will be a black mark, every shooting season which pours more lead ammunition into the environment is a whole flock of black marks. DEFRA and the Scottish government are both having their cards marked as well as the shooting industry (and in all this RSPB is calling shooting an industry rather more often than it did) and the RSPB will review its position within (not ‘after’ or ‘in’ five years but ‘within’). ‘Within’ includes tomorrow, and a couple of years of no progress at all will provoke louder and louder calls from the RSPB membership for the Society to make good its promise and call for a ban of driven grouse shooting. I wonder what would happen if Scotland introduced licensing and DEFRA remained intransigent? There might even be the prospect of the RSPB calling for a ban of driven grouse shooting in England while supporting licensing in Scotland in this devolved UK.
Here is a new infographic:
Here is a statement – click here.
And here is the link to the evidence review on grouse shooting – click here.
Non-native gamebird releases
If anything, the RSPB position on this subject is a much greater leap forward. Here, the RSPB will call for licensing of gamebird shooting, which would have to include the banning of lead ammunition, within (same word, ‘within’ – words are important) 18 months unless there is substantial progress, and specifically ‘unless the required standards can be put in place and implemented in the next 18 months (from Autumn 2020)‘. This will become a focus of the next RSPB AGM unless the RSPB acts publicly before then because 18 months takes us only through one season of gamebird releases and through two shooting seasons (one of which we are in right now!).
Here is a new infographic:
Here is a statement – click here.
And here is the link to the evidence review on lowland gamebirds – click here.
Although it has been criticised for doing too much (by the indolent shooting industry) and for not doing enough (largely by those who want all shooting to be banned wherease RSPB wants all shooting to be reformed but maybe some of it to be banned if not reformed, and by those who haven’t read any of this stuff) the RSPB has committed itself, at its AGM no-less, to quite a pile of work and a timetable for action. Some of this has come as a surprise to many RSPB staff who were no more aware of where its Council were going with this than were we, the members. Some RSPB staff will be very pleasantly surprised, others less so, but Council has spoken – and spoken very clearly.
Producing this annual report on shooting needs a bit of thinking about – and I hope RSPB has thought about it already. It would have to involve a range of staff from scientists, policy wonks and investigations staff – it will require a bit of realignment of work for it to have any impact on anyone. When should it appear? Well 12 August or 1 September would be ideal so I would expect the first of these well before the RSPB’s next AGM. That would allow assessment of legislative progress, estimation of the scale of gamebird releases (through FoIs) and potentially by analysis of citizen science data.
RSPB Council itself will need to make sure that it does not drop the ball having started this game.
I’ll come back to this more than once today.
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We are told that there are a few (a very few by the sound of it) decent operators in the Driven Grouse Shooting industry. Therefore, why oh why are Defra/ Natural England not bringing in legislation on the lines the RSPB are demanding, to support these few decent operators? By not doing so they are putting any better operators at a disadvantage compared to the rogue ones. In other words Defra /NE are actually encouraging bad practice and criminality in the shooting industry by doing absolutely nothing. What an awful lot they are.
I attended the AGM. I admit to being a bit underwhelmed as the review was announced but the more I look at this along with analysis from you and others, the more I concur with review’s conclusions.
RSPB will hold the shooting industry to account to make clear improvements and we, the membership, can hold the RSPB to account via the AGM. The changes we are expecting are reasonable and evidence based.
I would have liked to see measures to cover animal welfare. For example, competence requirements for shooters and 3rd party scrutiny to reduce the number of injured birds. A substantial proportion of don’t get picked up and probably die slowly. Of course, it will be argued that RSPB is not an animal welfare organisation. That is true: However, it is neither a health and safety organisation nor a Human Resources organisation but it has policies for both.
“A substantial proportion of don’t get picked up and probably die slowly. Of course, it will be argued that RSPB is not an animal welfare organisation”.
Apart from the animal welfare implications of this, these birds will eventually be eaten by scavengers who will ingest the shot, leading potentially to lead poisoning in species such as red kites and buzzards amongst others.
Yes, that’s fair comment. Again, there is little or no data.
In fact it’s hard to think of anything worse for the global climate that you could do to a non-forested piece of land than burn peat. Ploughing it up wholesale would be about the only thing you could do which would produce more carbon dioxide.
I suppose you could argue that using peat-based compost is mainly a recycling process and many gardeners give little thought to the provenance of their growing material. We gave up peat-based products long since, mainly by making our own product. The difficulty now is ascertaining whether the plants you purchase are grown on in peat. This information is difficult to come by and even so I haven’t found a garden centre that doesn’t sell peat-based products even if they stock peat-free.
This is excellent stuff, doesn’t pull any punches whilst just reporting the facts and relevant points, or at least most of them. I read through pretty quickly so might have missed it, but there didn’t seem to be any mention re the amount of land unavailable for any other use including conservation due to it being farmed intensively to produce feed for pheasant and RLP. The use of soymeal as a supplement may also implicate artificially raising gamebirds in rainforest destruction. This has to be compared against the positive claims made for cover crops and habitat management, I suspect we could end up with a rather heavy deficit if so.
Likewise I didn’t see any mention of shooting’s legacy of non native plants such as rhododendron, cherry laurel, cotoneaster, snowberry, salmonberry, Japanese rose being used to provide shelter for shivery, damp pheasants. These invasive plants are squeezing out the native fauna and flora from our woodlands and other habitats. Not only has the shooting community failed to acknowledge their role in this and to make amends they are still planting out some of these species. Increasingly organisations like The Conservation Volunteers and the Woodland Trust are highlighting this (if not yet that planting is continuing) and the role of shooting in it so it was disappointing to see it not mentioned.
I did raise both these points in the consultation document on gamebirds the RSPB had for its members, is there a minimum number of times they have to be made before any notice is taken? I know I bang on about things like this ad (nauseum?) infinitum on this blog, but it’s good to have an outlet and Mark Cocker has quoted 236,000 tons of cereal being used to raise gamebirds so I’m in some not so bad company. The RSPB statements were a big leap forward and I’m actually very pleased with them though I don’t sound it, but even so they were still significantly under gunned by leaving out what could/should have been included.
There are so many fundamental questions and points about field sports in this country that should be made again and again until there’s an answer or an admission there’s no acceptable answer, but they’re rarely if ever mentioned. My absolute ‘favourite’ typifying this ludicrous situation is the grotesquely inflated red deer population maintained for stalking in the Scottish Highlands. Not only is this creating additional problems and unnecessary expense for conservation, farming and forestry projects there it substantially increases the risks that motorists will be injured, maimed or killed in a road collision with a deer, an inescapable fact surely? Yes the field sports sector is being allowed to kill people, literally. Imagine if a development or a conservation project was proposed that carried the same threat to health and safety that open hill deer stalking does, it would be vilified in the press for even being suggested. So in a sense maybe it’s small beer after all that shooting contributes to economically depressing rural communities and homes being flooded too, what’s that against a death caused by a stag coming through a windshield?
An excellent comment Les. I cannot find any reference to non-native plant spp. in the RSPB supporting papers. The link that Mark gives is a fascinating review of lowland gamebirds in a long read of over 140 pages! Follow the links to download and I recommend p64 for interesting background on your observations. My links of course do not work but Mark’s do!
…here is the link to the evidence review on lowland gamebirds – click here.
Impacts of woodland management on plants p64
Thanks Richard. I tried to set up a Gov.uk petition to make it illegal to plant out non native plants like snowberry for game cover, but unfortunately it was refused on the basis it wasn’t clear enough which surprised me as I honestly don’t know how it could have been clearer. I might make another attempt. Clearing invasive plants forms a massive part of conservation work and organisations like TCV and the Woodland Trust increasingly acknowledge how bad things are and that much of the infestation originated from game shooting – a lot of our rhododendron problem certainly does.
The worst part is they are still planting out known invasives which I discovered when clicking through the internet and found a letter from someone in the then GCT Scotland concerning a consultation on the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act. They wanted dispensations from the part outlawing the introduction of non native species into the environment namely cover plants like snowberry and cotoneaster – and the writer of the letter mentioned in it he actually knew these were an issue, but they could be planted in areas that didn’t have a high conservation value! Well they certainly wouldn’t have much conservation value after they were planted.
They can pretend they have nothing to do with raptor persecution and that mass slaughter of other predators is vital for saving other wildlife, but I’d like to see them defending putting in non native invasive plants when thousands of volunteer hours and millions of pounds are spent elsewhere removing them. That’s a bloody scandal and would publicly shred their phony conservation credentials generally and thereby weaken their air of credibility when trying to fend off any concerns from our side.
The issue needs to be taken up seriously though. I was happy to highlight this as it was pretty much my responsibility after I stumbled across that jaw dropping letter, but I’ve done everything I can as a common or garden punter and that’s not enough. The shooting community could and should be drawn over hot bloody coals for this, they deserve to be they’ve left a ‘legacy’ of invasive choked, wildlife poor woods up and down the country which they’re not only failing to take responsibility for and amend, they’re still adding to.
Following up the deer threat on the roads, In 2014 I think Mark tried unsuccessfully to get figures from DEFRA on the economic costs of road traffic ‘accidents ’ caused by pheasants. Others on the list at that time then provided useful UK cost estimates and figures for such incidents in Sweden. Since then additional studies may have been completed on the subject?
Certainly the police, insurance companies , AA and other motoring organisations the NHS especially through hospital A and E departments must in 2020 have more data on human injuries and possibly near misses due to pheasants on the road (if not the treatment costs for people and repair costs for vehicles). These data may be difficult to extract and I doubt we would get the full picture of all the human injuries cause by pheasants. However, if you don’t look, you don’t find and so there’s no problem which will suit governments and those with vested interests in pheasant shoots.
Many road safety organisations now do not use or like the word ‘accidents’ because they look for causes of crashes. Hence RTCs (road traffic crashes) are often the preferred term and not RTAs. In that context there’s surely a powerful argument for stating that human injuries and deaths due to the release of millions of pheasants often in woods next to roads are not unforeseeable ‘accidents’. They are crashes that are bound to occur and often very predictable in certain places.
Collisions with pheasants are frequently impossible for even the slowest drivers to avoid at times ( and without risks to other motorists through taking evasive action) on particular stretches of road although legal liability at the moment is unlikely to follow when direct and indirect crashes result.
Remove large numbers of pheasants from the UK and you remove the cause of these human injuries and even fatalities on the road. Fewer fatalities than those caused by deer perhaps but still too many just for the pleasure of shooting these birds. See below for some examples.
Tragedy of biker, 52, killed by a pheasant. 2008 https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/69408/Tragedy-of-biker-52-killed-by-a-pheasant
Staffordshire motorcyclist died after pheasant knocked him off bike 2102 https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/staffordshire-motorcyclist-died-after-pheasant-189341
Motorcyclist killed by pheasant that struck his helmet at 60mph. Wales. 2016 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/21/motorcyclist-killed-pheasant-struck-helmet-60mph/
Teaching assistant, 20, dies in crash after ‘pheasant flies into her car’. 2019. https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/natalie-haywood-boston-lincoln-horncastle-3434165
Very timely to see this article by Ian Newton published today. Copy and paste:
https://www.bou.org.uk/blog-newton-raptor-persecution-grouse/