The British Association for Shooting & Conservation (BASC) has called for raptor persecution – the poisoning, shooing, trapping, habitat destruction and nest destruction of birds of prey – to be stopped for good.
Executive director of conservation with the organisation Caroline Bedell explained that this criminal pursuit risks “terminal damage” to shooting, saying that grouse shooting makes positive environmental, social and economic contributions, while research shows that up to five times more threatened wading birds are supported on gamekeeper-managed moorland.
Peter Glenser, BASC chairman, went on to add: “We’ve said it before and we will say it again, this needs to stop. Full stop. We must all take personal responsibility for ensuring the criminal minority do not ruin it for the lawful, ethical majority.
“I want my grandchildren to be able to enjoy sustainable shooting but if this does not end, then the shooting available to them in the future will be unrecognisable from what we have now.”
Their comments come as a paper published by Nature Research in the Nature Communications journal revealed a pattern of hen harrier persecution over grouse moors, relating to satellite-tagged bird disappearances between 2007 and 2017.
The study indicated that the likelihood of hen harriers dying or disappearing was ten times higher in areas mostly covered by grouse moor, compared to those with no grouse moor.
And it was found that 72 per cent of tagged birds were either considered very likely or confirmed to have been illegally killed.
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