The shooting industry in Scotland just applied for UNESCO heritage status.
Yes, UNESCO, that thing you associate with the wonders of the world, humanity’s greatest cultural and natural treasures. Not shooting, trapping and poisoning wildlife for fun.
The British Association of Shooting and Conservation (BASC) Scotland has submitted both wildfowling (hunting of wild ducks, geese, and waders) and gamekeeping (the intensive management of land and wildlife to maximise populations of “game” species for shooting) for inclusion in Scotland’s new Living Heritage Inventory. If that meant putting it in the past, in a museum, for people to scorn and shake their heads at, then I’d be all for it. But that’s not the case.
BASC want to “recognise and celebrate the positive role that shooting plays in sustaining Scotland’s identity and heritage.”
The scheme was established following the UK’s adoption of UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The convention is designed to help countries identify and preserve cultural traditions, skills and practices that communities value and want to pass on to future generations. BASC believes shooting ducks and geese, and the profession dedicated largely to producing animals to be shot, deserve a place alongside them.
A disgusting and delusional take, but I’d expect nothing less.
A Heritage of Destruction
BASC’s submission claims that shooting and gamekeeping have made a “unique contribution” to Scotland’s landscapes and wildlife.
On that point, they are absolutely right.
Few activities have done more to destroy Scotland’s natural environment and wage war on the animals who live there.
Vast areas of land have been transformed into ecological deserts: native woodlands suppressed, peatlands burned, natural processes deliberately interrupted – all to maintain artificially high numbers of animals to be shot. Into this already degraded landscape, the industry releases tens of millions of non-native pheasants and partridges every year, bred in factory farms and released into habitats where they do not belong, only to be shot for entertainment a few months later.
Meanwhile, “wildfowlers” head to Scotland’s wetlands and estuaries – some of the most internationally important sites for migratory birds – and put bullets in them. Birds that have flown thousands of kilometres to reach Scotland are met with a shotgun. Lead pellets discharged into these same wetland environments poison waterbirds and contaminate ecosystems for years.
Gamekeepers systematically eradicate predators from shooting estates in order to maximise the number of animals available to be shot. Foxes, badgers, crows, birds of prey and other animals are routinely trapped and killed in case they interfere with “game” species before paying customers get the chance to. In other words, wildlife is killed to ensure there is more wildlife available to be killed by humans for entertainment.
The result is not a wild landscape, but a heavily engineered one. A landscape stripped of complexity, missing many of its natural predators, poorer in biodiversity, and managed according to the demands of a small sporting elite rather than the needs of nature.
It is one of the most truly vile and sustained assaults on the natural world that has ever been permitted. The only thing worth preserving here is the memory of what we must never allow again.
Who Exactly Is This Heritage For?
Perhaps the most extraordinary claim is that “shooting is at the heart of Scotland’s culture, identity and heritage.”
Whose identity? Whose culture? Whose heritage?
The overwhelming majority of Scots do not participate in shooting. That includes the majority of those living rurally. In fact, three quarters of the country are against grouse moor land management practices.
The reality is that Scotland’s shooting culture revolves around a small number of wealthy landowners, sporting estates and elite paying clients. To dress it up as shared national heritage is nothing more than a lobbying strategy, designed to protect the interests of those who profit from this disgusting industry (such as BASC, which turned over almost £14million last year).
To present this as the beating heart of Scottish culture is absurd.
Shooting and gamekeeping are not a national tradition. They are a national embarrassment. Maybe UNESCO could give them a plaque for that instead.