Shooting ban would be ‘catastrophic for nature’
If shooting is banned, it is “a nailed-on certainty” that nature recovery across an expanse of Yorkshire’s farmland and moorland will be catastrophically damaged, a charity dedicated to enhancing the British countryside has claimed.
Speaking at the conclusion of Defra’s call for evidence over the positive and negative impacts of gamebird release and shooting and welfare during rearing, Nick von Westenholz, chief executive of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, highlighted how over 70 per cent of the UK land mass is farmed.
“Positive nature recovery results can only be achieved in conjunction with farmers and landowners”, he told Country Post.
Campaign groups, including Friends of the Dales, are pressing the government to introduce regulation and licensing of the gamebird-shooting industry.
Its petition, which has attracted 7,600 signatures, calls for “robust oversight” in areas such as the Yorkshire Dales “where most confirmed persecution cases occur”.
Tensions are running high on both sides of the debate. Shooting organisations condemn persecution and insist it is carried out by a minority.
Earlier this year the Moorland Association lodged a formal complaint with the Charity Commission over Friends of the Dales’ campaign. In a statement the association said: “Gamekeepers and other rural workers are people doing lawful jobs within communities where they and their families live.
"There is an existing background of occupational abuse. Professor Simon Denny’s 2025 report, drawing on information from gamekeepers on 58 English grouse moors, recorded more than 1,000 threats, more than 1,500 insults and 30 keepers physically assaulted during one year.”
Nevertheless, the RSPB has consistently voiced concerns over animal welfare on “intensively managed driven grouse moors”, identifying the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors national parks as protected bird crime hotspots.
Earlier this year, Mark Thomas, head of the RSPB's investigations unit, said the killings were finacially-driven, with birds of prey targeted to stop them taking young pheasants, partridges or grouse, leaving more birds to be shot by paying customers.
However, Mr von Westenholz said the potential regulations would also impact on farmland elsewhere and pointed towards the government’s own agenda and targets on nature recovery being described as as off-track by the Office of Environmental Protection earlier this year.
He added: “It explicity said if the government is to get back on track it is going to have to work with farmers, private landowners and other land managers such as gamekeepers to get the right outcomes.
"If shooting becomes more burdensome, more difficult, less people are doing it, then they [shoots] won’t be doing all the things our evidence says - like habitat provision, provision of food, predator control - are actually positive for nature recovery. There’s no way the government can step in in their place to do that. The cost would be astronomical at a time they are cutting budgets.”