Charities call for lead ban

The RSPB and Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) have written an open letter calling on the major shooting organisations to back a “statutory end to the sale and use of lead shotgun ammunition”.

The calls comes at a time when UK REACH (the post-Brexit British equivalent to the EU’s chemicals usage evaluation and regulation agency) is advising and deciding on the future of lead. The Government announced in March last year plans to phase out lead. At the time, Rebecca Pow, the environment minister, said: “Addressing the impacts of lead ammunition will mark a significant step forward in helping to protect wildlife, people and the environment. This will help ensure a sustainable relationship between shooting and conservation.”

The major shooting organisations agreed in 2020 to a five-year voluntary phase-out of the use of lead ammunition. Both the RSPB and WWT said they recognised the “considerable efforts” made by the major shooting organisations and industry to phase out lead, but they had “not been enough”.

The Countryside Alliance said the letter failed to acknowledge the substantial challenges in moving away from lead shot and single-use plastics, and that the timing and delivery of the letter was “more about political grandstanding than trying to achieve anything useful to positively influence the five-year transition”.

BASC said the shooting organisations remained “wholly committed to our five-year voluntary transition”.