A month ago
an article was published in the Guardian written by that keen writer on birds, Mark Avery. Its purpose was to persuade readers that grouse shooting should be stopped and the evidence presented was, in my view, overwhelming. We've known it all for many a year, of course, but the subject has become more high profile in recent times, with petitions including one to parliament, revealing the depth of feeling across the country. There is no justification that shooters can come up with that even begins to deal with the case against driven grouse shooting; those attempted are so feeble as to be laughable.
What rarely gets mentioned in the debate and the arguments used when this issue is discussed is the role of the conservation industry, those heroic saviours of our wildlife and countryside. How often do you hear of the wildlife trusts' attitude to this so-called 'sport'? or the RSPB and the National Trust. Apart from the occasional brief and usually non-commital comment you will struggle in vain to find reference to the issue. Members of both RSPB and National Trust are less reticent and RSPB members are often well ahead of the charity's bosses encouraged by Avery as RSPB in exile; that led to an appearance before the parliamentary select committee of an RSPB man alongside Avery.
This is all very interesting but why is it that these charities hang back on this. You get an indication if you read one of the comments below the line of the Guardian article. That ruthlessly honest commenter on the management of our landscape, Mark Fisher, exposes the underlying anomalies and fault lines in the approach of Natural England and the designations it's responsible for that allows grouse moor owners to claim their 'sport' benefits the landscape! I quote his comment here in full. If only there were more with his knowledge and integrity:
Grouse moors and their SPA/SAC nature
designations are one of the more intractable issues when the nature
conservationists of which you speak, laud them for sloppy peat and
alleged avian, reptile and invertebrate diversity, require them to be
actively managed, throw agri-environment funding at them, but mostly
hold their noses over the disgusting slaughter of everything else that
goes on there - and that includes the RSPB which routinely shoots foxes.
Because of this unholy alliance of vested interest between nature
conservationists and grouse moor owners, the latter get to assert that
they are saviours of "biodiversity" in that they are fulfilling the
management requirements of the nature conservationists who brag about
the extent and importance of heather moorland compared to continental
Europe. Its the perennial rolling of excrement in glitter.
About nine years ago, as part of the process for informing the uplands vision in Vital uplands: Natural England’s vision for the upland environment in 2060
various scenario workshops were carried out that looked at how the
future might look in 2060, and carried out an initial assessment of the
long term risks and opportunities that could influence the natural
environment by 2060. Unusually, the production of Vital Uplands was a
very inclusive consultation process, as were these scenario workshops,
in that they had a broad spectrum of views rather than the usual input
from vested interest. One of the more striking outcomes from the
scenario spinning was that grouse shooting would be banned way before
2060. Unfortunately, you wont find the report documents of those
scenarios, nor the Vital Uplands vision, as they were pulled a few years
after their launch as the vested interests complained about them,
essentially because they had not been given a veto over what they
contained.
Think about what that says about the ability of public will in this
country to have any influence on the future of its natural world. Why
don't we have a system like that in France - Grenelle de l'environnement
- which brings together all of civil society on an equal footing to set
ambitious national goals in many areas: biodiversity, natural
resources, climate change, relations between the environment and public
health, and issues of "environmental governance" and "ecological
democracy", all of which end up in a national implementation plan that
has legislative support. The quaint British custom of petitions hardly
seems to match up.
A resounding "Hear! Hear!"
