‘New reports’ come along every year at this time from the grouse shooting industry. In 2016 Ian Botham was using a BTO report to bolster his claim that grouse moors are fantastically rich in birds (but there was no such report). Then in 2017 there was another report, also promoted by Ian Botham, and that study has never seen the light of day either – despite one of us (in the days before Wild Justice) having asked to see the paper when it is published. Last year there was a study that apparently showed that shooting birds makes you happy – but we’ve never seen that report either.
Today we’ve been asked, by a newspaper, to comment on the findings of ‘a report’ that we aren’t allowed to see, with an authorship we aren’t allowed to know and a title we aren’t allowed to be given.
Our response was:
Our answers to your questions are:
- your first question is so unspecific that we can’t really answer it
- yes we recognise that grouse shooting brings some economic benefits but these are wiped out by the costs it imposes through increased flooding, damage to protected habitats, water treatment costs, greenhouse gas emissions and, of course, the illegal persecution of protected wildlife especially birds of prey.
(Hint, it wasn’t a journalist from The Guardian).
