Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Game bird releases ‘raise risk of avian flu’
The RSPB has come under fire for demanding a ban on game bird releases this year. Philip Bowern reports
THE RSPB is calling for an immediate moratorium on the release of game birds and wildfowl for shooting in the UK this summer and autumn.
The urgent call is aimed at government and game shooting interests for what the charity says would be “a fully precautionary approach to the release of potentially infected captive birds, to limit the further catastrophic spread of avian influenza in wild birds.”
But the RSPB admits that the spread of avian influenza from pheasants to wild birds has not yet been scientifically proven.
In a statement it says: “This route of transmission has not yet been fully investigated.”
But it goes on: “Given the current scale of the outbreak in wild birds, ongoing losses of wildlife from other human pressures and the context of the wider nature and climate emergency, it is necessary to employ a precautionary approach to all possible vectors of this deadly new virus to our wildlife populations.
“According to the UK Government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), transmission between pheasants and wild bird is possible: multiple other pathogens and diseases have been shown proven to pass to wild birds from pheasants, often at pheasant feeding stations.”
Britain’s biggest shooting organisation criticsed the call from the bird charity as ‘political grandstanding’ and said the RSPB had shown ignorance of the way bird flu is spread.
Glynn Evans, BASC head of game and gundogs, said: “For a national conservation charity, this political grandstanding campaign shows a fundamental lack of understanding of avian influenza, the Government’s strategies to combat it or how gamebird release is managed. The RSPB has failed to present a single piece of evidence to support their call and has chosen to ignore the substantial role shooting plays in the countryside.
“Shooting is worth £2 billion to the UK economy, providing the equivalent of 74,000 full-time jobs. It is a significant contributor to conservation, rural jobs and the local economy.
“This year’s outbreak of avian influenza is of serious concern and BASC and other representatives of the shooting sector have been working closely with Defra, the devolved administrations and a wide range of stakeholders to ensure all necessary actions to reduce the transmission of avian flu are taken. The RSPB would better serve their members by doing likewise.”
In a statement the RSPB said: “Every year around 55 million pheasants and red-legged partridges
and 2.6 million mallard ducks are specially reared in captivity and then released into the UK countryside to be shot for sport. Many of these birds are imported from across Europe then held in pens to mature prior to release. This volume of released birds represents more than the total biomass of all UK native birds.
“But pheasants in the UK have tested positive for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) – first in Lincolnshire in 2018 and a further thirteen times since, on three premises with commercial breeding game for release.”
The RSPB said it believes that to limit the catastrophic impacts of this outbreak on our wild birds, the deliberate release of captive birds into the countryside must be stopped for this year.
Although spread from pheasants to wild birds has not yet been confirmed scientifically, the charity said Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is currently having an unprecedented impact on wild birds in the UK. It is the longest and most severe outbreak ever seen and many tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of wild birds have already died.
Seabirds have been hit especially hard this summer, with both adult birds perishing and near total breeding failure of some of the UK’s globally important colonies. These pose population-level impacts for some already vulnerable seabird species, and possibly even a global extinction risk for the Great Skua. 60% of the world population of this species breeds in the UK.
In the winter of 21/22 wildfowl populations were similarly ravaged: on the Solway Firth, one third of the entire Svalbard barnacle goose population was lost to the virus – over 15,000 birds.
To date this outbreak has been primarily focussed in coastal areas, but the RSPB says that if transmission were to occur as a result of gamebird or wildfowl releases, cases could rapidly become much more widespread, especially across inland areas, amplifying what is already a catastrophe in our sea and coastal birds.
The potential severity of this risk is why the RSPB is calling for an immediate moratorium on releases.
Jeff Knott, RSPB’s Director of Policy, said: “This disease originated in poultry in Asia before passing into wild birds. It is another human pressure on beleaguered wildlife across the world and in the UK specifically.
“We must all now take responsibility and do everything we can to limit the impact in the immediate term.”
Political grandstanding by the RSPB shows a lack of understanding of bird flu GLYN EVANS, BASC