Over the past week I have been contacted by many people through a variety of media about the RSPB’s position on grouse shooting.
It’s fair to say that I have had a mixed response – some offering full support (which is much appreciated), while others wishing we would back the call for a ban (these are also appreciated, especially the polite ones). A flavour of the critique is captured in the comments on Friday's blog but some of the criticisms that we have received (usually via twitter) have been, let’s say, more blunt.
So, I thought that it would be useful to share a few insights into our position.
The RSPB is an evidence-based organisation but also one with values. Our values reflect our charitable objectives to undertake conservation for the public good.
For example, we are supportive of renewable energy in the fight against climate change, but we oppose developments that will impact on wildlife populations and important habitats. On the other hand, we are against airport expansion unless or until it can be demonstrated that a growth in capacity will be consistent with obligations to greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Equally, we are neither for or against organic or farming that uses pesticides or even GM crops. We care about the impact that those farming practices have on the natural environment and we work with any farming system to help recover farmland wildlife populations.
We are also neutral on the ethics of shooting but we do care about the environmental consequences of that activity.
And the growing evidence of the environmental impact of ever intensive driven grouse shooting led us in 2012 to conclude that self-regulation of this industry had failed and so we would advocate a licensing system designed to reduce the negative impacts.
Others, including two of the RSPB’s Vice-Presidents and my predecessor, Mark Avery, would like us to go further and are calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting.
I have doubts as to the viability of such a proposition but I respect their position, even though I disagree with it. What I do not respect, is the drip-drip of scorn that is levelled at the RSPB about our position and our wider work to protect birds of prey.
On this issue and in this job, I have learnt not to get riled by comments but when people have implied over the past week that we do not have the courage to support a ban on grouse shooting, I take exception.
To me, courage is staying up all night protect a hen harrier nest. Courage is managing a nature reserve next to an intensively managed grouse shoot, where the gamekeepers of the neighbouring estate patrol the borders, yes with guns. Courage is installing cameras on estates where bird of prey crime is thought to happen in the hope of catching the criminals in the act. Courage is appearing in a witness stand in the face of a defence lawyer who attacks both the evidence and the character of the person providing it.
This is the courage that RSPB staff and volunteers demonstrate again and again. And I will go further and suggest that courage is looking your friends at Natural England in the eye and telling them that they were wrong to enter into an ill-conceived management agreement with Walshaw Moor Estate and that this would trigger a legal challenge.
It also takes courage when members of the shooting community speak out against others who need to improve the way their shooting estates are managed.
I think that change is coming. In Scotland, the Government is seriously considering whether to introduce a licensing system for driven grouse shooting. This is long overdue but would be a welcome step.
Given our neutrality on the ethics of shooting, we do not make a judgement about the rights or wrongs of people driving red grouse across a moor to be shot (provided it does not affect the conservation status of red grouse). We focus our efforts on the environmental damage caused by grouse shooting: the peatlands that are damaged by burning, the water that is polluted, the predators that are illegal killed. We believe that a licensing system, a reformed approach to consenting burning on peatlands, restoration of these special sites coupled with better enforcement and tougher penalties for wildlife crime can address these issues. And we will work with anyone to make this happen and give credit when and where it is due.
As I have written previously, if the economics of any business – including grouse shooting – was dependent on environmentally unsustainable practices, then I would argue that it was time for that business to change.
I do not expect that this blog will change the minds of those that support a ban – indeed, that is not my motivation. To those that do not like our position because you want us to support a ban, I at least ask you to respect our position. To those that do not like it because it challenges your sport, I ask that you look at the growing public concern associated with your sport and encourage you to seek reform from within the shooting community.
If you have any comments on this blog, as ever, it would be great to hear your views.
Prasad, it is precisely because we are unique in this country in being able to offer driven grouse shooting that people come from all round the world to enjoy this inimitably challenging sport, and are prepared to pay a significant premium to do so. That is what helps to pay for the management which in turn provides the further conservation benefits I have referred to.
It is no coincidence, incidentally, that one of the primary objectives of Langholm 2 (where the RSPB has been an important partner) was to restore the moor as a viable DRIVEN grouse moor. I am afraid to say that the less intensive kind of management one finds on moors that only practise walked-up shooting does not deliver anything like the same range or quantity of biodiversity. And if you had no management at all on these moors, as you and George Monbiot seem to advocate, far from being the wonderful nature reserves you suggest, you would either find the depressingly barren scenario that obtains in the Berwyn area of Wales (with the exception of Ruabon, where there is a gamekeeper), or else end up with the land being turned over to forestry for necessary commercial reasons.
For what it’s worth, I have no criticism of the RSPB’s own science in this field. For example, they did terrific work in Northern Ireland in the 1990s on the devastating impact of predation on curlews. My gripe is that they have a tendency to delay unduly in converting the findings of their science into effective prescriptions on the ground.
That said, I am pleased to see that they are gradually becoming more forthright in acknowledging the importance in certain circumstances of undertaking effective predator control. They have learnt, for example, that habitat management by itself is not always the way to reverse the remorseless decline in some of our species of greatest conservation concern (Fisher & Walker; Conservation Evidence (2015) 12, 48-52).