The leader of the Green Party has reiterated her support for a ban on grouse shooting after hearing about the negative environmental consequences of the practice on a visit to flood-hit communities in Yorkshire.
Writing for the website Business Green, Natalie Bennett said grouse shooting is “incompatible with 21st-century needs” of flood prevention and the protection of our natural environment. She’s also calling it a “conservation disaster”.
Bennett said: “Management of moors for intensive shooting is simply incompatible with 21st-century needs – which is why the Green Party is backing the call to ban driven grouse shooting in the UK. This is a campaign that’s gathering force, with 30,000 signatures on a petition started by campaigner Mark Avery.
“The owners of grouse moors are of course fighting their corner - but there are indications that, with the evidence staring them in the face, they may be coming to accept the importance of managing the moors to reduce flooding in the valleys – but we need that action to happen now. This is a question of acting for the common good, and not allowing the actions of the 1% to threaten the lives, the livelihoods and the homes of the rest of us.”
Bennett added: “Visiting the Moor, I saw signs that scavengers and predators had been cleared from the area – an assumption backed by a metal trap on a fallen tree crossing a stream. Foxes don’t have a chance up there, locals said. The grouse have even encountered the same kind of disease problems usually found with factory farming.
“That’s a threat to a communities further down the catchment and a conservation disaster, contributing to the loss of an extraordinarily rare and supposedly protected environment."
