IS SHOOTING DOOMED?

With the RSPB abandoning its neutrality on shooting and the sport’s opponents increasingly emboldened, is shooting in Scotland on borrowed time, asks

Will we still be shooting in ten years' time? SF editor Richard Bath investigates

Many years ago I used to belong to a small shoot on the West Coast. This roughest of shoots had been established for the best part of a hundred years, yet it foundered after a handful of people with homes near one of the drives – most of them recent newcomers to the area – began to vehemently object to the sound of shotguns and the idea of birds dying within earshot. Where once ‘live and let live’ had been the attitude to shooting, now there was active antipathy from a small but vocal group. With several of the older members about ready to hang up their shotguns, the shoot folded and the gamekeeper retired.

There is a complex network of reasons for the change in attitudes towards shooting, yet the shift in the perception of field sports in general, and shooting in particular, among an increasingly urbanised and intolerant public is unmistakable. The shift in attitudes has been crystallised in the decision by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to effectively sidestep the neutrality enshrined in their royal charter and lobby for shooting to be licensed, with a widespread suspicion that curtailment and then a ban is the ultimate goal.

So have we reached a tipping point? Is shooting really on the road to being banned in Scotland?

No-one with an interest in the subject is in any doubt that the RSPB’s recent change of policy is a seminal moment in the debate. The charity’s royal charter says that ‘The Society shall take no part in the question of the killing of game birds and legitimate sport of that character’, but then adds a crucial caveat ‘except when such practices have an impact on the Objects’. These ‘objects’ include promoting ‘the conservation of biological diversity and the natural environment by conserving wild birds and other wildlife, and the environment on which they depend’.

It is a crucial loophole which allowed the RSPB to adopt at its recent AGM a policy of restricting

“The RSPB’s recent change of policy is a seminal moment

shooting on the basis that the release of millions of non-native pheasants and partridge has an adverse effect on native birds in general and wading birds in particular, especially the endangered curlew. Thus the final piece of the antishooting jigsaw fell into place – the others being the toxicity of lead shot, the carbon release that accompanies muirburn, and the pinning of wildlife crime on shooting in general and grouse moors keepers in particular.

The perception of shooting groups that the licensing of shoots is just the thin end of the wedge is almost certainly true. There is no doubt that many shoots would be forced out of existence, while the laudable aim of senior anti-shooting activists such as Patrick Stirling-Aird for shoots to ‘shoot less and charge more’ would mean many shoots simply fading away. The high-profile activist Chris Packham has explicitly said that he wants to see an end to large-scale shoots and driven grouse in particular, but that he has no problem with what he sees as small-scale, sustainable shoots. But it’s fair to say that many of those who follow him have a more fundamentalist agenda that will not brook the continuation of shooting in any form.

The shooting world – some of whose advocates have done little to advance the perception of their cause in the past – is frantically trying to get its collective act together. Lead has already been banned for wildfowling and is being rapidly phased out across all shooting. A huge amount of academic work has been done by organisations such as the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust to demonstrate that, far from releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, muirburn can be environmentally advantageous.

Partly spurred by the principle of vicarious liability – which sees landowners held accountable for the action of their employees – organisations such as the Scottish Gamekeepers Association and Scottish Land & Estates have been energetic in investigating reports of raptor persecution, even though most of the infra-structure for investigating wildlife crime is in the hands of the RSPB’s investigations unit and Police Scotland.

There has also been a huge amount of time and money invested in putting in place a robust scientific justification to underpin shooting. Studies – including the Langholm Moor Demonstration Project, a joint venture between the GWCT and RSPB which concluded last year after 25 years – was just one of the many statistically sophisticated, evidence-based studies whose purpose was to provide some clarity into the economic,

social and environmental costs and benefits of shooting.

‘The clear message from this final report [on Langholm],’ said GWCT chief executive Teresa Dent, ‘is not one of a binary choice of red grouse or birds of prey.’ And there is significant evidence – such as record numbers of hen harrier chicks – that gamebird management aids rather than suppresses raptor numbers. Yet there is no doubt that the increase in the numbers of gamebirds being released (pheasant releases have doubled in the last 25 years; partridge have increased ten-fold) has an impact upon the eco-system.

But then no-one on either side believes this is simply about a dispassionate assessment of environmental best practice. The debate is largely emotional, not scientific.

‘There is a weight of evidence which shows that shoot management provides a net environmental gain if done to best practice standards,’ says Adam Smith, policy director of the GWCT. ‘The RSPB’s new position is that shooting provides insufficient net environmental benefits so they can no longer support it as an activity. Sadly this now seems to apply even where shoot management is demonstrably a force for conservation good.’

The shooting community believes that having lost the data-based argument, the RSPB’s approach has changed to an emotional one – that the death of an animal for pleasure should never be justifiable. It is, runs the argument, all about the optics rather than the environmental issues. The shooting side is arguing for a version of the status quo, and is employing nuanced, sophisticated ideas that are backed up by statistics which take time and effort to get your head around. But it’s much easier to simply ban something – which also represents change, which is what most Scottish politicians want to deliver.

There is, believe many on the pro-shooting side, a coalescence between the aims of the RSPB and an SNP government supported by the Greens, whose fundamental belief structure is based around social justice issues which stem back to the land, who owns it, how it’s used, and who benefits. It’s a political context which has already had huge ramifications for deer management and salmon fishing, but which also impacts profoundly on industries such as fish farming and forestry.

This is why grouse shooting, which with a brace starting at £100 is reserved for the very rich, and the relatively recent phenomenon of large-scale shoots which exist primarily to produce profits, are in the crosshairs of organisations like the RSPB but also of the government. It is also why figures like Packham have been at pains to point out that small-scale farmers’ and family shoots will remain unaffected, even if their supporters offer no such prospect.

The shooting industry believes that talk of a total ban is just the RSPB’s opening negotiating gambit but that they are digging in for a protracted erosion of the sport. Either way, it all adds up to an ongoing culture war in which Scotland’s birds – whether raptors, waders or gamebirds – are merely interested onlookers.

“Banning shooting represents change, which is what all politicians want

Clockwise from top left: Opposition to driven grouse is at the forefront of the campaign against shooting; working gundogs is at the heart of the sport’s appeal for many; around four million pheasants are released across the UK each year.