New footage shows the ‘untold suffering’ of legal traps on a notorious grouse shooting estate
Moorland Monitors has captured footage of a crow caught up and unnaturally twisted in a ‘clam trap’ on open access land in the Peak District. And it shows what one person can do with just a phone. Moorland Monitors shared phone-filmed footage showing two crows in two separate cages set next to each other. It […]
Scotland: Gamekeeper guilty of shooting Sparrowhawk on grouse moor
On 31 March 2023 Rory Parker (24), pleaded guilty to shooting a Sparrowhawk whilst employed as a gamekeeper on the notorious Moy Estate, Inverness – becoming the 56th gamekeeper to be convicted of raptor persecution offences in Scotland since 1990. As their name suggests, Sparrowhawks are one of the UK’s smallest birds of prey and […]
Join protests against a shooting estate where snares have trapped dogs
National Anti-Snaring Campaign (NASC) is launching a series of protests to highlight the ubiquity of snaring on a West Sussex shooting estate. NASC announced that it is planning to hold a series of protests at Arundel Castle, West Sussex, beginning on 1 April. The group will hold further protests on 7, 15, 22 and 28 […]
National Trust bans grouse shooting from a Peak District estate
The National Trust has announced it’s banning grouse shooting from 1,600 acres of its land in the Peak District. And it comes after the charity voiced concerns over the shooting industry’s “management techniques”. On 3 March, Sheffield paper The Star reported that the National Trust had chosen not to renew its relationship with the shooting […]
Woodcock petition debate: through the looking glass with the shooting lobby
On the 27th of February, Parliament debated petition 619615 ‘Limit the shooting season of Woodcock‘, which was launched by Wild Justice and signed by 107, 916 members of the public. The petition asked that the (so-called) shooting season for Woodcock, a species in serious decline here, should be moved back from 01 October (it starts […]
New review shows pheasants are still riddled with lead despite industry promises
A new study reveals that the shooting industry has done almost nothing to reduce lead in shotgun pellets. The finding comes half-way through an industry pledge to voluntarily reduce lead by 2025. The Conservation Evidence Journal published a review on 27 February led by Rhys Green of the Environmental Research Institute and Cambridge University. The […]
Can I stop shooting taking place near me?
Can I stop shooting taking place near me? If you’re disturbed by (or simply don’t like) shooting talking place near where you live, what can you do about it? It’s far more difficult than it should be to stop shooting taking place near you, because shooting is currently legal and legislation is weighted very heavily […]
Pheasant shooting ‘season’ ends today
The vast majority of birds that breed in or regularly visit the UK are rightly protected by law and can not be harmed or killed at any time of the year. For those unfortunate species that were long ago declared as ‘game’ or ‘quarry’ though (and there are no biological reasons for the choices that […]
DARTMOOR: camping ban and pheasant shooting
On Saturday 21 January, Protect the Wild joined more than 3,000 people marching in protest on Dartmoor after a pheasant-shooting millionaire took action to prevent wild camping. Hedge fund manager Alexander Darwall, who owns the 4,000-acre Blachford Estate on Dartmoor, brought the case against Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA). The high court ruled in his […]
Raptor persecution: if we think ‘shooting’ first who can blame us?
The recent discovery of the bodies of five dead young Goshawks dumped in a wood in Suffolk drew an instant response that shooting estates and their gamekeeper employees were likely to be involved. That feeling was compounded by x-rays that showed shotgun pellets in all five birds. Shooting lobbyists like BASC (the British Association of […]
Is it true that without shooting there’d be no pheasants here?
Is it true that without shooting there’d be no pheasants here? The short answer is, that’s probably true, yes. Pheasants are absolutely beautiful birds, so does that mean we should be grateful to shooting for ensuring there are pheasants for us to look at? Not at all. And that’s because we really ought to look […]
Where is shooting vulnerable
Where is shooting vulnerable? While many of us have come together to ‘protect the wild’ bird shooting is purely selfish and serves no common good. We will work to counter the ‘conservation’ greenwashing the industry employs. It uses birds as live targets. That shouldn’t be allowed. Non-animal shooting is now available, replicating the so-called ‘thrill’ […]
Ending Bird Shooting – let’s talk about foxes
How do you persuade an audience that is primarily interested in fighting foxhunting to become as concerned about the bird shooting industry? Oddly enough (and as a lifelong birder I’m writing this through slightly gritted teeth as it were), it’s probably not by talking about birds… Last year Keep the Ban, which was built […]
Is bird shooting ethical?
Is bird shooting ethical? Of course not. It is simply unethical and immoral to raise and sell huge numbers of birds as live targets for consumers (the clients of shooting estates and shooting syndicates) to maim or kill. It is unethical to kill protected birds of prey and a countless number of foxes to ‘protect’ […]
Why are there bird shooting ‘seasons’
Why are there bird shooting ‘seasons’? The vast majority of birds that breed in or regularly visit the UK are rightly protected by law and can not be harmed or killed at any time of the year. For those unfortunate species that were long ago declared as ‘game’ or ‘quarry’ though (and there are no […]
Why will you never be neutral on bird shooting?
Why won’t Protect the Wild ever be neutral on bird shooting? If we don’t speak out against the shooting industry, then no matter how much we might try to convince ourselves otherwise: we are supporting the killing of millions and millions of birds for ‘fun’, supporting the trapping and snaring of countless foxes and other […]
Is bird shooting a ‘sport’?
Is bird shooting a ‘sport’? Whether bird shooting is a ‘sport’ or not depends on how you define ‘sport’: a contest between equals, perhaps(in which case definitely not), or an activity that involves physical activity and skill (in which case ‘barely’). Looking at the origin of the word ‘sport’ doesn’t really help either: ‘sport’ comes […]
Birds and the fishing industry
Birds and the fishing industry Compared with the billions of fish that are killed every year, the impact on birds of the commercial and recreational fishing industries might not seem to be important. The reality though is that huge numbers of birds die as ‘bycatch’ caught on hooks or in nets or discarded fishing gear; […]
Birds and the agriculture industry
Birds and the Agriculture Industry Unlike the shooting industry, intensive farming doesn’t specifically target birds but the enormous land use changes that have taken place since the 1950s have caused many bird populations to crash. The UK has lost an estimated 19 million breeding pairs since widespread monitoring began in the late 1960s, and many […]
Shooting Estates to publish a register of all mammals they trap and snare
Shooting Estates must keep a public register of all mammals they trap and snare. Go straight to sign Every day tens of thousands of traps and snares are laid by gamekeepers on shooting estates. Countless foxes and other animals are being killed every day to protect shooting’s profits – yet there is no legal requirement […]
Protect the Wild End Shooting
A few weeks ago Keep the Ban became Protect the Wild. Our change is far more than just a re-brand. While foxes and enforcing the ban on foxhunting will always remain a key focus, with Protect the Wild we are expanding what we do. Part of that will see us bringing our drive, our commitment […]
Bird Shooting FAQ
Bird Shooting FAQs Why does Protect the Wild call bird shooting an industry? Why does Protect the Wild call bird shooting an industry? Learn More Is bird shooting ethical? Is bird shooting ethical? Learn More Is bird shooting a ‘sport’? Is bird shooting a ‘sport’? Learn More Why will Protect the Wild never be ‘neutral’ […]
End Shooting
End Bird Shooting Protect the Wild wants to end bird shooting Bird shooting is: Catastrophic for animals – not just for the millions of birds killed by ‘sportsmen’ each year of course but also for the mammals that are snared and trapped in huge numbers on shooting estates. Terrible for us – because of the […]
Highlow Estate Shooting Investigation
Highlow Estate Shoot Investigation Who cares? Not the shooting industry. The shooting industry is all about selling birds to shooters to use as live targets on ‘days out’. It supports a cruel hobby that masquerades as a ‘sport’. Shooting profits by rearing flocks of near-tame birds to kill, promising its clients huge ‘bags’ (the disrespectful […]
RSPB’s review of lowland ‘gamebird’ shooting: “Bleak picture”
Has the RSPB finally run out of patience with the shooting industry? The country’s largest bird charity speaks out – but in an oddly low-key way. Tied for over a century to a Constitution enshrined in 1904 which insists it should be ‘neutral’ on shooting, the RSPB (by far the most important and most effective […]
Shocking footage released of pheasant shooting estate in Lancashire
Shocking footage of dead and dying birds filmed on shooting estate in Lancashire. In September 2022 investigators from the Hunt Investigation Team, in collaboration with Protect the Wild, captured undercover footage from pheasant pens at the Leighton Hall shooting estate in Carnforth, Lancashire. Seasoned investigators were shocked at what they found. Many young pheasants were […]
Woodock shooting: MPs say Defra didn’t respond to government petition
Woodock shooting: MPs say Defra didn’t respond to government petition. Back in early July, the campaigning group Wild Justice (set up by Dr Mark Avery, Dr Ruth Tingay, and Chris Packham) launched a petition asking Defra (the government department responsible for the environment) to look at shortening the so-called’ season’ in which shooters are allowed […]
Nothing glorious about the ‘Inglorious 12th’
The 12th of August (the ‘Inglorious 12th’) marks the start of a key ‘season’ for the shooting industry. Over the next 121 days that industry will aim to sell hundreds of thousands of Red Grouse to shooters to kill.
“Like Tipping Potatoes Onto a Shop Floor”
A few weeks ago we published footage from inside a pheasant hatchery, showing workers ‘sorting’ very young chicks and dropping them onto a moving conveyor belt – treated, as we put it, as “just one more item to be sorted, moved, processed.” Readers probably hoped that was the worst of it. It wasn’t. What follows […]
Tiny, Terrified and Treated Like Products: Inside a Pheasant Hatchery
Over the past few months we have been publishing analysis of undercover footage obtained on so-called ‘game farms’ across England. We began by looking at the sheer scale of the shooting industry, then how adult birds (not every bird, but far too many) are sometimes treated, and the enormous numbers of eggs collected and washed […]
Thrown Away Alive: What our investigator found in a skip full of pheasant eggs
Over the past few months we have been publishing analysis of undercover footage obtained on so-called ‘game farms’ across England. We began by looking at the sheer scale of the shooting industry, and how the adult birds (not every bird, but far too many) are sometimes treated. We’ve also looked briefly at how enormous numbers […]
Which org wants to shoot Ring-necked Parakeets for ‘sport’ (that would be BASC)…
Yes, we’ve mocked up the header image, but back in March, BASC’s head of policy and campaigns urged members to flood a government consultation on amending the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 with calls for a long list of birds to be added to the so-called ‘quarry list’: a list of wild birds that can […]
“I’d rather be in a cage on a pheasant farm than a chicken in a cage on a factory farm.”
We will be shifting the focus of our ‘Investigations’ articles from the adult birds in their horrible cages to looking at WHY these birds are farmed so intensively. The answer of course is for EGGS. The shooting industry needs eggs so the whole vile cycle can be repeated year after year…if they simply blasted to […]
‘Fix the Bird Not The Conditions’: the logic of the factory farm
Many of our readers have been in touch to ask about the strange plastic devices visible on the beaks of birds in some of the images we’ve used with previous articles. Many of us won’t have seen these things before, but what you are seeing are called beak guards and in the next few articles […]
“We’ll Try It, See What Happens”: Shocking ‘Treatment’ of Caged Pheasant
Heart of England is one of the UK’s largest breeders of birds for the gun. On its website, the company boasts that its birds are “produced without any shortcuts” and that it is “justly proud of the way it is produced.” What our undercover investigator filmed inside its sheds tells you exactly what “no shortcuts” […]
King Charles’ new ‘Finding Harmony’ documentary is deeply hypocritical. Here’s why
‘Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision’ is a glossy vanity project aimed at establishing King Charles’ legacy as a supposed defender of the natural world. Charles’ puff-piece, which didn’t even make it onto the BBC, has been consigned to fester on billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Prime platform next to the dismal ‘documentary’ Melania, about Melania Trump. […]
Adopt an Animal
ADOPT AN ANIMAL Protect the Wild exists to defend British wildlife from cruelty, persecution and exploitation wherever it occurs. From illegal hunting and the badger cull to the industrial killing of birds for sport, we work tirelessly to expose abuse, challenge those responsible, and push for lasting change. By adopting an animal with Protect the […]
What we achieved together for wildlife in 2025
It’s been a massive year for Protect the Wild and for the fight for British wildlife. Honestly, it would take me hours to list everything we’ve done in 2025. So instead, I want to share some of the highlights. The moments that mattered, the progress we made, and what you helped make possible. This was […]
Become a Game Changer
BECOME A GAME CHANGER Bird shooting in the UK is out of control. Every year, more than 60 million pheasants, partridges, and ducks are intensively bred, factory farmed, and released into the countryside so they can be shot for entertainment. Behind the polished PR of the shooting industry lies a hidden world of suffering: overcrowded […]
Eyes on the Skies: raising awareness of raptor persecution in the Yorkshire Dales National Park
A Yorkshire Dales charity is launching a new campaign to tackle the national park’s appalling reputation as a ‘blackspot for raptor persecution’. The Yorkshire Dales, a national park dominated by grouse shooting, is well-known for shocking levels of raptor persecution – the illegal killing of birds of prey. Data suggests that twenty-nine satellite-tagged Hen Harriers […]
Epidemic of Gun Violence Engulfs 50 Million Victims Each Year
October 1st: “The UK is facing what campaigners describe as an epidemic of gun violence, with over 50 million victims involved annually. Individuals who step in to disrupt or expose the violence risk prosecution under legislation on aggravated trespass. This legal framework, campaigners argue, is designed less to protect public safety than to maintain the […]
North York Moors National Park – NOT a safe place for wildlife
As we enter another shooting ‘season’, Protect the Wild is publishing a series of articles about the key regions of the UK that attract both tourists who want to enjoy the wildlife and landscape, and hunters and shooters who have an altogether less healthy relationship with the countryside around them. The cubbing season began in […]
500 pheasants a day: billionaire’s Wiltshire shoot raises all sorts of questions
As both pro-shoot and pro-wildlife sides know, the pheasant shooting ‘season’ begins again in less than two weeks (see Protect the Wild’s Cruelty Timeline for details of ‘seasons’ for birds and mammals across the UK). Between October 1st and February 1st, around 50 million pheasants, ten million Red-legged Partridges, and around a million Mallards, almost […]
Hen Harrier Southern Reintroduction project dumped
“Following a thorough review, it has become clear that Natural England is no longer in a position to provide the long-term funding and resource needed to continue delivering the Hen Harrier Southern Reintroduction project, despite the progress to date. The difficult decision has therefore been made to conclude this project.” With this pitiable ‘poverty-pleading’ disclaimer […]
Dartmoor: one of England’s most hunted and shot-over pieces of real estate.
As the cubbing and hunting ‘season’ starts again in earnest, we are also getting ever closer to the beginning of another few months of gunning down pheasants and partridges. Protect the Wild is looking at key regions of the UK that attract both tourists who want to enjoy the wildlife and landscape and hunters and […]
BASC raffling ducks and geese on National Nature Reserve
If anything sums up the disgraceful ‘normalisation’ of killing birds in England, it’s surely the ‘raffle’ that shooting lobbyists BASC (the British Association of Shooting and Conservation) are holding to “win two days’ guided wildfowling for you and a friend at Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve.” BASC notes in its sickening promotion that “Lindisfarne is renowned […]
Yet another ‘partnership’ to protect birds of prey collapses
In April 2023, the Peak District National Park Authority issued a statement that the Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative was to close as persecution cases continued (see Sun sets on failed Peak District Bird of Prey Initiative). Set up in 2011 by the National Park Authority, the ‘initiative’ was intended to restore populations of […]
Moorland Association says ‘Predators rising, Birds disappearing’…but they would, wouldn’t they
The ‘Inglorious 12th’, the start of the grouse shooting season, is just days away. It’s absolutely no coincidence at all, then, that the Moorland Association (MA), the lobby group for grouse shooting estate owners, has published an article which essentially claims that everything they do (in terms of ‘predator control’) is good, and everything the […]
Hen Harrier chicks fledge “against the odds”
Five Hen Harrier chicks from two different nests have fledged “against the odds”, the RSPB has announced in a press-release. What makes this ‘good news’ report so notable is that the odds stacked up against the chicks were not poor weather, lack of prey items, or Avian Flu, but the deliberate killing of the adult […]
Lead shot to be phased out by 2029
Emma Hardy, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) has announced “significant new restrictions on lead ammunition”, aiming to “safeguard British wildlife and waterways” from its harmful effects (a disingenuous statement we discuss below). The measures will prohibit shots with over 1% lead and bullets exceeding 3% lead content, and ammunition […]
RSPB: Number of Hen Harriers killed or missing reaches new high
A new RSPB report – titled unambiguously Hen Harriers in the firing line – shows record numbers of Hen Harriers being illegally killed or going missing in suspicious circumstances over the past five years, and that the majority of the 102 incidents occurred on or near grouse moors. Hen Harriers are a rare, protected bird […]
The Star: Duke of Rutland urged to sell ‘trashed’ grouse moor ‘to people of Sheffield’
“Conservation campaigners are set to bid for a “trashed” grouse moor near Sheffield to “restore it to its former glory.” So starts an article in Sheffield’s The Star, a local paper which Wikipedia says has a very respectable total average issue readership of 105,498. Titled “Sheffield moors: Duke of Rutland urged to sell ‘trashed’ grouse […]