17/10/2022

RSPB letter on their new gamebird releasing policy position and the GWCT response

Below is a letter we received from the RSPB last week regarding their new policy position in relation to released game management. Our response is published underneath.


Dear Teresa and Jim,

I hope this finds you both well.

I’m just writing to bring you up to speed on an announcement we will be making at our AGM later this week.

As you know, in 2020 the RSPB set out that in the current nature crisis, it is imperative to reduce the negative impacts of the release of non-native gamebirds . And, given the urgency of the crisis, we said we would call for stronger regulation if there was no significant progress, initially within 18 months, and latterly by October 2022.

Having now completed this assessment, we have seen little progress (albeit that gamebird numbers released this year have gone down due to avian flu and resultant problems importing birds from France).  There is a high degree of agreement between shooting and conservation organisations on what would constitute sustainable practices, but overall, there is a lack of evidence to show that this guidance is being followed and hence a lack of evidence for a reduction in negative impacts from gamebird releases.

Our concern is about large-scale shoots, and not small-scale farm shoots, where there is often a net benefit for native wildlife.

Given this lack of progress towards a more sustainable gamebird shooting industry over decades and minimal signs of positive change for the future, we have concluded that further regulation and better enforcement of existing rules will be required to deliver the changes necessary in the face of a nature and climate crisis. 

This view is reinforced by evidence from other sectors on the widespread failure of voluntary approaches to deliver positive environmental change and is in line with the recommendations of a recent UN report, which recommended enhanced powers for authorities to use revokable licences for gamebird shooting where raptor persecution occurs. While there is still work to do on the detail of how additional regulation and enforcement can be used most effectively to deliver the changes we need to see, the direction of travel is clear.

This change in our policy will be announced at our 2022 AGM this Saturday, but we wanted to ensure you had advance sight of the announcement.

With best wishes,

Beccy

Beccy Speight
Chief Executive

On receipt of this letter, our GWCT Chief Executive, Teresa Dent, penned the following response highlighting the science and initiatives to the contrary of the above statements from the RSPB:

Dear Beccy,

Thank you for providing me with RSPB’s new policy position in relation to released game management. I am deeply concerned that your main message continues to be that gamebird releasing has negative impacts. This is despite having my letter to you dated 25th November 2020, Roger Draycott’s several meetings with your senior research and policy team since, and your own statement that shooting can deliver “a net benefit for native wildlife”.

Additionally, you and Kevin Cox kindly visited GWCT’s Allerton Project (our research and demonstration farm) only a few months ago and we showed you that we had scientifically proved that game management associated with released pheasants on this ordinary farm resulted in a doubling of farmland bird numbers. We now have some additional data below that compares the trend in species numbers of some farmland birds at Allerton with regional averages:

BPT Graph RSPB

[NB: BAP species for which data are available. Loddington – 1992 baseline compared with 2021 territory mapping data. East Midlands – 1995 – 2018 BTO Breeding Bird Survey data]

We are also surprised that you have an issue with large-scale, but not small-scale shoots. The science shows that size of shoot is not a critical factor in terms of biodiversity delivery. All shoots, large or small can deliver significant biodiversity gains when they follow best practice guidelines. Roger will have shared with your team the evidence that large-scale shoots in the south-west of England hold much higher densities of farmland birds than neighbouring farms with no game shoots.

Contrary to the claim that “there is a lack of evidence to show that this guidance is being followed” there are no indications of widespread flouting of releasing guidelines. Furthermore, it would be helpful to understand how you expect to measure progress to sustainability. As far as I am aware you have no basis to measure whether it is improving or otherwise apart from GWCT data on numbers of gamebirds released and, as you say, those have gone down in recent years due to a combination of covid and Avian influenza.

Roger also briefed your team on the wide range of initiatives that the game management sector has in place to deliver best practice and net biodiversity gain. These include an online shoot biodiversity calculator launched by GWCT this summer to help shoots assess levels of biodiversity delivery. Early indications highlight that the majority are delivering a net biodiversity gain and complying with sustainable releasing guidelines.

The GWCT acknowledges there is always room for improvement. We continue to help raise standards within the game management community.  In our view, it would be preferable if the RSPB were to promote such initiatives and GWCT’s Principles of Sustainable Game Management rather than reach for the heavy and expensive hand of regulation.

The RSPB’s refusal to acknowledge the weight of evidence showing that sustainable game management has significant positive impact on wildlife and the wider countryside, coupled with your continuing focus on potential negative rather than the proven positive impacts on biodiversity is not, we feel, in the interests of conservation. Moreover, I fear that this position will further alienate working conservationists from the RSPB.

Yours sincerely,

TD Signature

Mrs. Teresa Dent CBE, GWCT Chief Executive

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Comments

RSPB letter on their new gamebird releasing policy position

at 19:42 on 18/10/2022 by Colin Cook

It's good to see that the GWCT is at last getting the message that it is a waste of time talking to the RSPB. These bigoted people are not interested in wildlife only their own political agendas, one of which is anti-fieldsports. And they will grasp any opportunity to do us down. The RSPB's arguments are easily demolished with real science. It's no use trying to work with them. If they don't get their own way, they go off and do what they wanted to do anyway. Remember the Langholm Moor Study. Or they try to use the knowledge that you supplied to them against you. Leave them to work by themselves and fire a well-aimed salvo at them when the opportunity arises.

RSPB v GWCT

at 15:59 on 18/10/2022 by Trevor Macdonald

An excellent response to a belligerent "charity" hell bent on forcing their ideology. The almost sinister way the RSPB tries to influence their members as if they are the only organisation (I use the term loosely) with any knowledge on birds and habitat in the UK. They even infer in their periodical releases that they have been responsible for the improvement in curlew numbers! Clearly a combined effort by both the GWCT and the BTO we're the main reason curlew are doing better - the RSPB only seem capable of stealing others success. I remember the Langholm report - who did least and shouted loudest ? Yes RSPB

RSPB

at 15:40 on 18/10/2022 by Stephen O'Neil

I am a member of RSPB and not GWCT but I have many friends in the shooting community and walk every day on game bird land in Hampshire. Predator persecution sickens me but I see and hear of no evidence of it on my patch. Wildlife crime relates mainly to poaching with its negative implications for all creatures and rural livelihoods. I am getting fed up of the RSPB using the usual simplistic left wing narrative that everything is a "crisis". It does little for their arguments, some of which are sound.

RSPB

at 15:30 on 18/10/2022 by Jeff

Agree wholeheartedly with your comments but this is a message we need to get out to the general public and ahead of anything from the RSPB. Let's stop being polite and move first and make our position clear tgst shooting provides massive positive impacts

RSVP vs GWCT

at 15:28 on 18/10/2022 by John Hickman

As a member of both the RSBP and GWCT for a few decades, I am both a keen bird-watcher and an enthusiastic shot. I hope I am able to view the discussion with an even hand. It seems to me that both sides need to view the unbiased science without prejudice, and try to agree on the best way forward in the interest of our alarmingly diminishing wildlife. My impression is that corvids, especially magpies, squirrels and foxes are on the increase and enjoy the eggs of our wild birds and should be shot. As to whether game birds overcrowd the territory of wild birds, I have no idea. What does the science indicate?

RSPB Letter

at 15:25 on 18/10/2022 by Jan Roosenburg

The RSPB stance is no surprise. No birds released means no gamekeepers which means no songbirds. That is not to say that rules should not be set for releasing game birds. As with anything, bad apples pay no attention to voluntary standards and will lie about their practices. Releasing 80,000 to 120,000 birds over 3,500 acres is not sustainable. In order to keep their birds, these will effectively be released over 800 acres. It is better that the shooting community comes with such rules and not the RSPB, although I fear that the move towards non lead cartridges will put an end to driven shooting and make the entire discussion about releasing birds moot.

RSPB

at 15:15 on 18/10/2022 by Mick Hathaway

The RSPB will just continue to twist the facts or indeed leave them facts out altogether, to make its own bigoted views and agendas look acceptable to the donating section of the public, their own record of looking after some of its reserves is abysmal, shooting interests have been looking after wild places well before the RSPB came into existence. Our whole country side has been shaped by shooting not by the RSPB or any other wildlife organisation. If the RSPB was in the building trade it would be considered a rogue trader.

Rspb

at 13:41 on 18/10/2022 by Syd M

It’s a shame that they ignore the conservation efforts on shoots, be it commercial or small shoots , and continue to berate the shooting community and yet they fail to mention the failings on so many of their “managed” reserves. They need to take a long hard look in their own house before attacking others with misinformation.

RSPB letter

at 11:57 on 18/10/2022 by Simon Garnham

An excellent response to a lamentable "policy" from the RSPB. It's a shame because on the ground there are examples of shoots and RSPB staff who understand the reality working well together (regardless of the size of the shoot).

RSPB stance on Game management

at 10:13 on 18/10/2022 by John Trotter

This should come as no surprise to anyone given the RSPB's blinkered approach to the catastrophic predation of our wildlife by avian predators in many parts of the countryside. Surely yet another attempt to deflect criticism from their own policy failures.

Rspb

at 20:40 on 17/10/2022 by Ian Coghill

It is both shocking and tragic that th RSPB behave in such a way. It is as though they are intent on alienating as many people as possible. They are now so full of their own rather ridiculous self importance that they appear to expect small shoots (whatever their current definition of small may be) to be somehow grateful for being, temporarily at least, excluded from their fatwa. We are not. They know perfectly well the massive contribution game management makes to conservation. For years they ran an annual award for the farmer who made the greatest contribution to conservation. It ended when I foolishly pointed out that every winner was a member of GWCT and ran a shoot on their farm. They suddenly discovered that, despite making several million pounds profit every year, they could no longer afford to run the competition.

Letter to RSPB 17 10 22

at 9:55 on 17/10/2022 by Malcolm Hay

Could not agree more with the last paragraph of the CEO's letter. Future generations will look back in despair at the RSPB's behaviour.

Rspb

at 8:53 on 17/10/2022 by Simon kibble

Again yet another anti shooting stance by the rspb focused on large scale shoots which are clearly an easy target . And as such drum up strong opposition from the masses of ill informed. Clearly this needs to be met with the science that terresa has so rightly pointed too. We the informed know that if we draw comparison with actively shot grouse moors with those that are not shot in ownership of the likes of the rspb and wildlife trusts it is clear of the levels of benefit in particular to bird life. This certainly applies to our small farm shoots, just that I'm not convinced how it sits on the commercial set up. Again I myself would like to know what the science makes of this as I counter anti shooting views all the time and have difficulty defending that point . Nice work as always from the team and teressa for the letter. We just need to bang the drum a bit louder..

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