Wild Justice doesn’t care about the chaos it causes to rural lives
Earlier this year, I was chatting to Chris Packham. It was almost a month since his legal challenge had resulted in a ban on shooting pigeons and corvids. Across the country, shepherds had only been able to watch as lambs’ eyes were pecked out, and gamekeepers found themselves powerless to intervene as crows preyed on curlew.
In a bid to find common ground, I asked Mr Packham if he would ever be able to work with gamekeepers to achieve conservation goals. Bafflingly, he said he had been trying for 30 years, “but what would you do if someone killed a member of your family?” I’m still not sure what he meant, but the outburst meant I wasn’t surprised, this week, when he launched an attack on pheasant shooting.
A statement issued by Mr Packham’s campaigning group, Wild Justice, claimed an excessive release of pheasants and partridges for shooting is “damaging UK wildlife”, and that it plans to sue the Government for failing to assess the impact.
Mr Packham is late to the party because for years, people within the shooting world have urged restraint when it comes to the number of birds being put down. The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust promotes measures such as releasing birds at times of the year that cause minimal conflict with other wildlife, while the UK’S official game marketing board is clear it will only work with estates after an environmental impact assessment has been carried out by an independent adviser.
In other words, if Mr Packham wanted to join forces with people who know about pheasant ecology, he wouldn’t have to look hard.
Yesterday on Radio 4’s Farming Today programme, Mr Packham’s right-hand man at Wild Justice, Mark Avery, concluded if Defra looked at pheasant shooting and “decided it was unsustainable, they would have to stop it”. It is impossible to imagine he is hoping for any other outcome.
It is interesting to note that Mr Avery published a blog post two years ago promising that when he had succeeded in banning grouse shooting he wouldn’t campaign against pheasant or partridge shooting. He was roundly defeated in that first endeavour. Is he breaking his word in pursuit of a consolation prize?
Earlier this week, Wild Justice tweeted Shooting Times, asking if we were “running scared”. I would like to remind them this is not a game. Shooting is the lifeblood of many rural communities, adding £2billion to our economy and providing 76,000 jobs. However, given Wild Justice’s cavalier attitude to the havoc its last challenge caused in agricultural England, it seems reasonable to assume the prospect of job losses in the countryside do not keep Mr Packham up at night.