No maximum lead levels are set for game meat sold for human consumption in the UK so there is no protection for the consumer through food regulations. The easiest solution is to ban the use of lead ammunition. Tests have shown that lead levels in game meat (eg partridges, grouse, pheasant) on sale in UK…
Author: Mark
Born Bristol, UK
Educated: Cleeve House School Bristol, Bristol Grammar School and Downing College Cambridge
Ph.D. University of Aberdeen, Winter activity of pipistrelle bats.
NERC post-doctoral Research Fellow, Edward Grey Institute, Oxford University
Former Conservation Director of the RSPB, 1989-2011
Six reasons to ban lead ammunition (4)
It has been illegal to use lead ammunition to shoot wildfowl (in England) since 1999 but shooters are regularly breaking the law. In 2010 (10 years after a ban on lead ammunition for shooting wildfowl) a test of compliance showed that 70% of ducks available for sale for human consumption contained lead ammunition. This should…
Six reasons to ban lead ammunition (3)
From the findings of the Lead Ammunition Group: 10,000 children are growing up in households where they could regularly be eating sufficient game shot with lead ammunition to cause them neurodevelopmental harm and other health impairments. Gamekeepers’ families will presumably be at highest risk – and yet the shooting organisations have opposed any restraints…
Six reasons to ban lead ammunition (2)
Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of waterfowl die from lead poisoning in the UK every year. Spent lead shot – the bits that missed their target, accumulate in the environment and are ingested from the sediments of lakes and rivers by ducks searching for food. The lead pellets accumulate in the birds’ gizzards…
Six reasons to ban lead ammunition (1)
The Danes banned all lead ammunition (even for their Olympic shooting team) almost 20 years ago – in 1996. It’s not a new thing, or a radical thing, it’s a sensible thing because lead poisons waterfowl, is a poison in game meat shot with lead, and non-toxic alternatives exist. The Danes didn’t stop shooting in…
Guest blog – The Magic of Spurn Point by Daphne Pleace
A child of nature going back to it in my dotage and, hopefully, becoming feral. Volunteer for a few conservation organisations; trying to find a ‘patch’ (can it be a sea wall, or a park?); writing a book about psychological benefits of being in nature; doing an MA in Nature Writing; maintaining a blog at…
Glorious (by Tim Wootton)
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You are running out of time to visit the SWLA exhibition in the Mall Galleries, but you still have Friday, Saturday and until 1pm on Sunday. If you turn up there you might be struck by this lovely painting (or four of them) by Orkney-based artist Tim Wootton. Entitled Glorious, Tim tells me that it…
High Hope
People say that the world is speeding up, but some things take quite a while. I remember work starting on this paper, whilst I was still working at the RSPB in 2010: Twenty years of local farmland bird conservation: the effects of management on avian abundance at two UK demonstration sites, by Nicholas Aebischer, Chris…
Well done, Rob Sheldon!
A new e-petition has just appeared on the government website. Lead is a poison. Its continued use in ammunition poisons tens of thousands of birds each year and puts human health at risk. Safe, non-toxic ammunition is used in countries across the world. The UK supports an international agreement to ban lead ammunition. We should…
Bradford council votes unanimously against heather burning on Ilkley Moor
Last night Bradford Council voted unanimously (9/9) to recognise the significant environmental harm caused by heather burning and to implement a heather cutting programme. Burning has been retained for circumstances where it can be clearly shown as the only option available, which will require a substantial cost/benefit analysis to prove – not easy at all….