There is, of course, no need for anyone to wait for a legal ban on lead ammunition, or for Defra to stir themselves – they can just switch themselves. The legal move will sweep up the recalcitrant, the uninformed and the bloody minded and selfish. For example, the RSPB made the decision to drop lead…
Category: LEAD AMMUNITION
Dear Secretary of State
Dear Ms Truss It is six months since you received the report of the Lead Ammunition Group and your department has, so far, not commented on it. Given that the findings of the report demonstrate human health impacts and wildlife health and conservation impacts your idleness is unacceptable. Each day you delay you are complicit…
Westminster Hall debate on lead ammunition
There will be a Westminster Hall debate on lead ammunition next Tuesday on 8 December from 1630-1730. Members of the public are welcome to attend. It might be a good idea to contact your MP ahead of this debate and tell her or him what you think about the issue. These debates are fairly low-key…
Let them eat Lead!
In a typical act of generosity, grouse moors are donating excess carcasses of lead-shot Red Grouse to the poor and elderly. The science shows that the average lead-shot Red Grouse has lead levels that are higher than would be legal in other meats. Lead is a poison for which there is no harmless level for…
400 waterfowl will die from lead poisoning in the UK today
The estimate of c73,000 waterfowl being poisoned each winter in the UK by ingesting lead ammunition means that c400 will die from poisoning today. And tomorrow. And Sunday. And Monday. Poisoned – hardly a clean kill. See these videos about lead poisoning (here and here and here and here) and then realise that you can…
BASC is clueless
In a muffled statement, because it’s very difficult to hear the words of those whose heads are stuck in the sand, BASC say that: ‘there is no risk to those who do not eat shot game meat more than once a week throughout the year’. This simply isn’t true. There is no level at which…
RSPB and WWT support Rob Sheldon’s e-petition
Yesterday the RSPB and WWT started to mobilise their memberships to support Rob Sheldon’s e-petition to ban lead ammunition. This is good to see. The main RSPB Twitter account, @natures_voice tweeted once yesterday (and again this morning) and this was backed up by rather more active support from @rspbcymru and @jazzyjeff, and @wwtconservation and @wwtworldwide…
Coverage of yesterday’s lead report
As well as the Today programme, there was coverage of the Oxford Lead Symposium publication on BBC TV at breakfast time. This online piece with interviews with WWT staff, Danish hunters (‘I’m a conservationist,’ said Niels Kanstrup, ‘I’m a hunter, too. I think it’s a fair and sustainable way to use natural resources, but we…
Shoot a few, poison a few more
Back to another Tim Bonner quote from his blog in the Huffington Post. I said that I would remind you of what he wrote: ‘Bonner, presumably on the basis of shooting some ducks, regards the estimates of dying waterfowl from lead poisoning in the UK each year as ‘nothing more than speculation‘. Remember that quote…
Norwegian blues over lead
You may remember that I said I’d come back to Tim Bonner’s thoughts, in a Huffington Post blog, on Norwegian lead levels in meat. This is what I wrote: Much is made of the partial reversal of the ban of lead ammunition in Norway. Bonner says that lead is still banned for use in…