With the news, from untrustworthy DEFRA, that they are going to drag their feet for another two years and then, perhaps, do something about lead ammunition we cannot be sure that we are really that close to an end to the shooting of lead into our environment and into our food. But, it goes without saying, that the end of lead ammunition is closer now than ever before – it’s just uncertain how close.
My involvement in lead ammunition goes back over 30 years. I was conservation director at the RSPB in the late 1990s when we persuaded the Labour government to bring in regulation of lead ammunition use – the original idea was a ban but the minister, Michael Meacher, phoned me up to discuss the fact that going for a whole ban would probably, almost certainly, lead to defeat and getting nothing, but a ban for shooting ducks etc and in wetlands would be on the cards. I took the bird in the hand rather than the two in the bush. I wonder where we would be if we had pushed on – we might have got a total ban by now but we would have had years of continuing use in wetlands, I guess, as a result.
I have been told, scores of times, by shooters, both individuals and representatives of organisations, that the days of lead are numbered – not so neatly numbered that more than 10,000 of them have passed since I first heard that phrase.
Lead ammunition is a strange issue – I can’t quite understand why more people, including medical people, aren’t stirred up by what shooting, mostly shooting for fun, does in terms of depositing a poison in our environment and in our food. But it seems an issue about which many just shrug.
The shooting industry lacks leadership and honour – the organisations say one thing one day and another another day. They have fought the phasing out of lead ammunition very hard for years, whilst telling me and others in private that ‘the days of lead are numbered’ etc etc. The worst example was the walking out from the Lead Ammunition Group of the representatives from the Countryside Alliance and GWCT – a crass, but successful, ploy to diminish the power of the eventual report produced in 2015 which recommended a phasing out of lead ammunition.
DEFRA then sat on the report for over a year and on the day before she left DEFRA for a new government role, and at the very time that David Cameron was making his sad goodbyes in front of the cameras after the 2016 Brexit referendum, Liz Truss said she wasn’t taking any notice of the LAG report. That too was a low point of DEFRA leadership.
The shooting magazines have done very little to educate their readers and certainly not to lead them in the right direction.
I’m really not sure why shooters and their mates in this government have been so reluctant on this issue. Nobody has ever been able to explain it to me.
But then again, both the RSPB and WWT, the NGOs who have done most on this issue, have been utterly weak in campaigning on this issue. If they had put their backs into this issue then it most certainly would have been resolved long before this.
Having a Conservative government for the last 11 years has made it much more difficult to get this fairly minor and very clear environmental matter fixed. If Labour had remained in power for one more term I expect that this matter would have been sorted by 2015. But it isn’t sorted yet, and there is no guarantee it will be sorted before 2023 at the earliest.
I am interested in how ‘we’ could have handled this better, what would have unlocked quicker progress? But, maybe we have all played a blinder and done much better than anyone could really have expected. We’ll probably never know.
But this issue, however close or far from its final resolution, makes an interesting case study in achieving change, very sensible change, in the teeth of an intransigent problem group who have the ear of government ministers (who don’t give much attention to environmental issues at the best of times).
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Well said all through Mark. What an absolutely dreadful lot the Tories are. They will do absolutely nothing to restrict in the slightest way the shooters who like killing our wildlife for fun. If they had any sense of decency they would have banned lead long ago but they have a zero sense of decency, in fact a rather negative one, especially this lot at Defra.
A cautionary tale in the perils of being reasonable in negotiations. Always kick up a stink, ask for the sun, the moon, and the stars, and be a bad winner if you get anything less. It is how the right keep on winning, after all.
“My involvement in lead ammunition goes back over 30 years.”
My involvement with lead goes further back. The field sport fraternity didn’t want fisherpeople causing problems. Stick together was the message. Lead isn’t a problem, apparently. I split from the “united we stand” field sporters over 40 years ago.
Coarse fisherpeople know what SSG means. Swan Shot Gauge. No. 1’s and 2’s are not white. And some of us know what lead poisoning actually looks like. It isn’t pretty. I remember euthanasing a gull. On the Norfolk Broads. I adopted tungsten shot. As an angler it meant I had to recycle the (much more) pricey shot. I just tried to persuade the people I associated with. And eventually I gave up angling.
Think of the Purd(ies). It might very well trash a few expensive guns (heirlooms, no less), especially those manufactured too long ago. Middle finger extended skyward in the general direction of a most exalted lord. ‘scuse me whilst I clear my throat in a very ungentlemanly manner.
With some reluctance, I have to admit that I think Random is absolutely right.
When dealing some farmers and shooters, most conservationists are like babes in the wood, totally out of their depth and unable to deal with the tactics of lying, distortion, intimidation, petulance and fake victimhood when they come up against them.
The gentleness, rationality, compassion and willingness to compromise shown by most people involved in conservation makes them great friends and colleagues to spend time with, but rather poor adversaries and negotiators when dealing with those that lack these good qualities.
I also don’t understand it. I read the details on the BASC website about lead shot and they offer no reason for lead to still be in use excluding possible damage to antique guns, “speak to your gunsmith” apparently. So why not sell ‘heritage grade’ cartridges in strictly limited quantities to people with certified heritage guns and ban the rest? Surely there can’t be years worth of stockpiled lead ammunition to use up before it can be banned from sale?
At a time when the government will be facing a public enquiry about putting other factors above public health, and at a time when they have less than 9 years to halt the decline of nature, and not to forget the pressure to clean up the shooting industry, this seems like it would be an easy win for them. Surely if Lord Poncington puts the health of his very expensive gun over the health of children and wildlife then the plebs would have a right to be slightly miffed about it? People are talking about petition fatigue though because there are so many of these issues that aren’t being dealt with and the public voice means very little to this government it seems.
Looking globally, I wonder what is happening elsewhere and what multinational bodies are doing to stop the use of lead? Starting with Europe that would be FACE, and then there are the gun crazed Yanks. Ballistically lead is logical, if outdated and toxic, but what about for rifles, is it still used? I have an air rifle which uses lead pellets; rabbit and pigeon are regular menu items. Will that have to change?
Actually, I am no fan of driven shooting as it is not venery, but I reserve the right to take for the pot in limited numbers by one means or the other, provided it is legal.
As an aside, every one of those who post on this site the words ‘killing for fun’ unless they are vegans are huge hypocrites and should desist. Sorry but it gets me riled. Rant over!
I disagree. It’s like saying that someone who drives an economical car to get to work can’t have a dislike of motorsport. Setting this bar of ‘you can’t campaign against climate change or wildlife crime unless you live a completely zero-impact lifestyle’ is the typical whataboutism argument that people come up with to justify their own harmful habits.
Have a look at the lead alternative air rifle pellets by the way, I’ve seen some good reports about them. I haven’t been shooting enough lately to switch but I’ll be giving them a go later this year I hope.
I see the Daily Telegraph, in its usual enlightened way, sees the very cautious move towards a possible ban on lead shot at some possibly distant point in the future as “a blow to field sports”. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/23/ban-lead-shotgun-pellets-latest-blow-field-sports/?utm_content=telegraph&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1E1NtaQYbcm4edKT7CWcr2yIFw18Z8QHe4hmX5xaXjhVXPBRUFD1sU6p0#Echobox=1616487866 (behind a paywall).