Council under pressure to ban wildfowl shooting in nature reserve

BY ROB EDWARDS

ACOUNCIL is to consider banning shooting on its land in a bid to resolve a bitter dispute over the legalised killing of ducks and geese on a nature reserve. Moray Council will this week debate a ban on shooting in part of Findhorn Bay on the northeast coast. The ban has been recommended by officials in an attempt to appease local residents angry at the unregulated slaughter of birds.

Re s i dent s claim that shooting parties leave behind injured birds, along with spent shotgun cartridges, beer cans and other rubbish. Under the banner of the Friends of Findhorn Bay, they are planning a protest at a council meeting on Tuesday.

Findhorn Bay was made a local nature reserve by Moray Council in 1998. The area is also an increasingly popular site for bird shooting, known as wildfowling, with the latest authorised shooting season opening on September 1.

More than 800 local residents signed a petition to the council urging a complete ban on the shooting of ducks and geese in the nature reserve. But shooters launched a counter petition.

The council proposed a voluntary agreement prohibiting shooting at certain times and places. But this fell apart when the British Association for Shooting and Conservation rejected it as “confusing and unnecessarily restrictive”.

Now in a report to a meeting of Moray Council’s economic development committee on Tuesday, officials have proposed to ban shooting on the land the council owns in the southeast of Findhorn Bay. “Whilst the council could not prevent access across its land with a licensed firearm, it could legitimately prohibit shooting,” the report says.

The report makes clear that the option favoured by some – the introduction of a bylaw to control shooting in the nature reserve – is too costly. The process could cost up to £35,000.

The proposed ban is unlikely to satisfy residents. “The ‘one for the pot’ tradition has turned into a free-for-all for shooters from all over Britain and the continent,” said Sibylle Rovier from Kinloss.

Others argued that bird watching could bring in more money to the local economy than shooting. “It is short-sighted for the council to focus only on the initial cost of a bylaw,” said Lisa Mead from Findhorn village.

“With a ban, or at least highly restricted shooting, Moray would benefit greatly from increased wildlife tourism.”

The British Association for Shooting and Conservation’s (BASC) director in Scotland, Dr Colin Shedden said: “BASC and the local wildfowling club have been urging the local authority for many years to introduce bylaws on the reserve that would allow the introduction of a permit system that would manage the numbers of wildfowlers using the reserve in a sustainable way.”

This was supported by conservation groups and the reserve’s management committee, Shedden stated.

Moray Council declined to comment in advance of its committee meeting.