I’m thinking of how to respond to the Defra call for evidence on gamebird shooting (as readers of my monthly newsblast will know).
Although BASC has told its members to ignore all that stuff about evidence and just send their thoughts to Defra (what a horrific image that brings up) we can do better than that.
Here are some words on post-release welfare issues that I doubt will find their way into many responses unless you join with me to put them in yours – Q22 is where they belong and you could add something to Qs 23 and 24 if you felt keen.
In recent years (see for example https://www.gwct.org.uk/research/scientific-publications/2010-19/2019/aebischer2019/ ) the number of Pheasants released into the wild for recreational shooting has been around 50 million birds/annum according to the shooting industry (I suspect numbers have fallen a bit from that peak but we are still talking about tens of millions of living creatures (released to be shot at)). These birds are released in late summer c2 months ahead of the shooting season opening in the autumn. Then there is a 4-month shooting season followed by 6 months until similar numbers of birds are released again.
Around 10 million released Pheasants die in the two months before the shooting season opens – that’s c160,000 Pheasants dying/day. Many are killed by Red Foxes (artificially raising the numbers of a generalist predator with knock-on impacts for native species). During the shooting season c15 million Pheasants are shot. The rest die from other causes (predation, disease, collisions with road vehicles). The breakdown of causes of death aren’t known in any detail but it is clear that they die because the whole thing starts again with huge numbers of reared birds being released at the same time each year.
It would be foolish to think that all 15 million shot birds are killed cleanly – some will be brought down injured. With these numbers, ‘some’ probably means millions. For every bird that is shot, another two die from other causes. But all 50 million are gone by the next summer – that’s why another 50 million are released each year.
The same considerations apply to the 10 million Red-legged Partridges released annually.
This is death and suffering on an industrial scale involving non-native, captive-reared sentient creatures.