SPONSORED: ‘What’s the problem with game shooting?’

SPONSORED

As a newly graduated zoologist, I first learned about the conservation value of game shooting, working on an EU-funded project to save the last few wild grey partridge in Ireland.

Employing staff, creating habitats and protecting nests from predators cost several million euros. As the population expanded, a targeted agri-environmental scheme was introduced by the Irish government to provide grants to encourage farmers to create and manage partridge habitats.

Three decades later the public funding has largely dried up, and the native Irish grey partridge faces an uncertain future. So too, the amazing diversity of plants and wildlife that also benefited from these gamebird management measures.

In England, the grey partridge has also declined and would be extinct were it not for shooting – the only places left where you will find viable wild grey partridge populations are game shoots. It requires massive investment and most of that comes from private not public money.

England’s land use framework, published on 19 March, contains proposals to review pheasant and red-legged partridge shooting and releasing with a possible ban being the outcome. Yet this is a sustainable use of land that has supported farming and forestry management for generations, shaping and protecting our most precious places for wildlife.

Defra’s review will start with a call for evidence, and it will become abundantly clear that sustainably run game shoots are biodiversity hotspots, quietly and diligently managed by thousands of clubs and syndicates in England.

As a case in point, I have recently had an update from the Monk Wood shoot near Chesterfield on the diversity of birds detected on the Merlin App bird song identifier.

The shoot brings together people aged 8 to 90 years old from all walks of life including those from local mining families. 

Jim Allsop and his team of volunteers have turned 190 hectares of land into an oasis for wildlife with many rare species including nightjar and bittern.

Five miles of hedgerows and shelterbelts have been planted, two miles have been laid, 50,000 trees have been planted, 70 acres of wildflower meadows looked after, 35 small ponds created, 20 acres of wild bird plots established and hundreds of bird nest boxes and duck tubes erected. Members take part in species surveys including great crested newt and woodcock.

These conservation efforts have been largely funded and supported by club members, many of whom help all year round, and also meet up in autumn/winter for shoot days, with circa 2,300 pheasants 600 red-legged partridges released annually.

The local Labour MP Toby Perkins has visited the shoot, as have Derbyshire county councillors and staff. The shoot works closely with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and an area of species-rich semi-natural grassland was recently designated a ‘Local Wildlife Site’.

This is the true face of game shooting in England, multiplied many times over covering every type of designation including Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Special Areas of Conservation, Special Protection Areas and National Landscapes. Those designations are because of land managed for shooting.

Take a moment to imagine what it feels like in their shoes right now – with the threat of a faceless civil service backed by government deciding that sustainable gamebird shooting and releasing that has been funding and incentivising habitat management for decades on shoots small and large is now a problem that should be banned.

If a ban is imposed, who will carry out the 14 million workdays every year? Who will pay the equivalent of £500 million annually for that conservation work?

We are talking about a network of nature reserves covering over 20 times the land owned by the RSPB and National Trust.

The combined conservation work carried out on those nature reserves would require the equivalent of 26,000 full-time jobs to match it, that’s significantly more than all the staff employed by Defra and Natural England. 

A call for evidence on gamebird shooting and releasing will be an opportunity for the truth to be heard from sustainably run game shoots small and large across the country that are key to delivery of the government’s own nature recovery strategies.

Another recent government salvo has poured fuel on already burning fires with the announcement on 23 March to consult on proposals to remove some species from the quarry list and to shorten certain shooting seasons.

Such proposals will do nothing for conservation because shooting is not a driver for species decline, habitat loss is, and land managed for shooting is helping species such as woodcock and snipe to recover.

Across the countryside, these proposals are not being viewed in isolation. They are increasingly seen as part of a pattern, a series of measures affecting rural activities and livelihoods. 

Whether intended or not, that creates a perception that the government is not working with the countryside, but against it.

Rural Labour MPs are increasingly concerned that the trust they have worked hard to gain in marginal seats is now being undermined by factions pushing the party into further self-defeating public relation disasters on countryside matters.

Who is advising Labour on rural policy, why are they consistently getting it so wrong, and who is holding them to account within the party?

Labour promised before the General Election that it was working to rebuild trust in rural communities. Trust is not secured through words alone, it is shaped by decisions. 

At a time when the government is looking for ways to deliver nature recovery alongside economic growth, gamebird shooting and releasing is exactly the kind of integrated, working-landscape model that policymakers should be supporting.

Will Labour choose to work with sectors that are already contributing to its objectives? Or will it impose solutions shaped more by perception than evidence?

Game shoots across England are not asking for special treatment. But they do expect to be understood.

If Labour is serious about growth and nature recovery, then weakening a sector that delivers both would be a serious misstep.

Getting this right will send a powerful signal that Labour is prepared to back a working countryside. Getting it wrong risks doing the opposite – and the consequences will be felt far beyond the game shooting sector alone.

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