End Bird Shooting Petition - Protect the Wild

Ban Bird Shooting for Sport

Millions of birds are bred, released and killed for entertainment.

Pheasants and partridges are intensively produced before being transported and released into the countryside for commercial shoots. Grouse moors are managed to produce large numbers of birds that can be driven towards waiting guns.

During shoots, some are killed outright while others are wounded and left to suffer.

Native animals regarded as a threat to profits are trapped and killed.

Peatlands are damaged through burning, and toxic ammunition is deposited into the environment.

This is not conservation. It is an industry built around turning living animals into targets.

If somebody proposed this system from scratch today, it would never be allowed.

Banning cages is not enough. Licensing releases is not enough. Changing the ammunition is not enough. The fundamental purpose remains the same: killing birds for ‘fun’.

We call on the Government to make shooting birds for ‘sport’ illegal.

There is no place for bird shooting in modern Britain.

Add your name and help build the movement to end it.

(IF YOUR EMAIL CLIENT WON’T OPEN please copy and paste the message and address to correspondence.section@defra.gov.uk and clearly mark the subject line and opening line as: “For the attention of Mary Creagh MP, Minister for Nature”.)

Ban Bird Shooting for Sport

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FOR THE ATTENTION OF Mary Creagh MP, Minister for Nature

Every year, millions of birds are killed in the name of 'entertainment'.

Pheasants and partridges are intensively farmed in huge numbers, transported around the country and released into the British countryside to be shot. Grouse moors are managed so that unnaturally high numbers of birds can be driven towards waiting guns. Wildfowlers shoot ducks and geese as they come into land. Shooters still kill declining shorebirds including snipe and woodcock.

This is not conservation. It is not necessary. It is a commercial pastime built around making living animals into targets.

On so-called 'game farms' the suffering begins long before a gun is fired.

Pheasants and partridges may be confined within intensive breeding systems and subjected to devices intended to prevent injuries caused by stress and overcrowding. The Government’s own animal-welfare advisers have previously raised concerns about confinement, barren environments, management devices and the increasingly intensive production of birds for shooting.

When shooting begins, birds are deliberately frightened into flight and driven over lines of waiting guns. Some are killed immediately. Others are wounded, fall away from the shoot and may suffer before they are found, killed or die from their injuries.

The cruelty is not limited to the birds being shot.

Animals perceived as a threat to profits are trapped and killed. Native wildlife is treated as an obstacle to producing more birds for the guns. On grouse moors, land may be managed through burning and intensive predator control to maintain artificially high numbers of red grouse. The Government acknowledges that rotational burning has contributed to the degradation of England’s peatlands, with consequences for carbon storage, biodiversity and wildlife habitats.

Shooting also dumps lead ammunition into the environment. Lead is toxic, has no agreed safe level of exposure and can contaminate the wider food chain and the countryside. The Government has already accepted the need to restrict lead ammunition because of the risks it presents.

The industry may point to habitat management carried out on shooting estates, but that does not justify breeding or manipulating wildlife populations so that animals can be killed for amusement. We should protect habitats because wildlife has an inherent right to live there, not because animals can be converted into live targets.

If a proposal for a shooting industry was pitched today, no reasonable government would allow it.

Imagine a proposal to:
intensively breed millions of birds;
release non-native species across the countryside;
reshape entire landscapes around producing more animals to shoot;
kill native predators to protect shooting interests;
leave wounded birds suffering;
and describe the entire process as “sport”.
It would be recognised for what it is: an outdated and destructive industry built on extreme animal suffering.

Small reforms are not enough.

Banning certain cages while allowing the birds to be bred, released and shot does not solve the fundamental problem. Regulating release densities does not make shooting compassionate. Changing ammunition does not make killing animals for entertainment acceptable.

A less intensive version of cruelty is still cruelty.

No code of practice, licence or voluntary assurance scheme can change that central fact that the purpose of this industry is to place birds in front of guns so that people can kill them for recreation.

Bird shooting belongs to a past in which animals and the countryside were treated as possessions for the enjoyment of a privileged few.

There is no place for it in modern Britain.

We call on the Government to end the intensive production and mass release of birds for shooting, prohibit driven grouse shooting and make shooting any and all birds for sport unlawful.

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Ban Bird Shooting for Sport

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Ban Bird Shooting for Sport

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