FROM PROTECT THE WILD—THE SHOOTING INDUSTRY DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE THIS

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more The shooting industry doesn't want you to see this PROTECT THE WILD OCT 19 READ IN APP The government is asking what shooting really does to birds, wildlife and the countryside. If just the shooting industry answers, nothing will change. For years, those of us who care about the birds bred and released for shooting have been told the same thing: this is a rural tradition, it is well regulated, and the people who know best are the people who do it. Blah, blah, blah. We don’t believe a word of it, of course, and for the first time in a generation, the government is asking all of us to tell them what is really going on in the countryside. On 4 September, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) opened a Call for Evidence on Gamebird Release, Shooting and Welfare during Rearing in England. It wants evidence on the environmental and animal health and welfare impacts of the whole industry: breeding and rearing, release into the countryside, and shooting. That covers the cage, the incubator, the release pen, the shoot day and everything that happens to the birds afterwards. Defra says the responses will help the government understand current practice and welfare problems in the ‘gamebird’ sector, as part of its Animal Welfare Strategy for England. It has also said that any future change in policy would begin with exactly this kind of evidence gathering. In other words, what Defra hears now will shape what it does next. The call for evidence is open to all of us. It closes at 11:59pm on Sunday 1 November, so please treat the end of this month as your deadline and do not leave it to the last day. Become a Game Changer Why it matters who responds A call for evidence is not a vote, but it is shaped by who turns up. The shooting industry knows this. Its organisations have staff, press officers, membership lists and years of practice at telling government what it wants to hear, and they are already lobbying their supporters to respond. If the only evidence Defra receives comes from people who make their living from shooting, the picture it builds will be a familiar one: well managed, good for conservation, good for the rural economy. Nothing to see here, in other words. That picture will then sit behind government policy for years to come. What will be left out is what many of us have seen with our own eyes. Millions of pheasants and partridges are bred and released into the English countryside every year to be shot for entertainment. Behind that number are breeding birds kept in cages, eggs and chicks dumped as waste, foxes, crows and other wildlife trapped and killed to protect the ‘stock’, birds of prey persecuted, injured birds left to die in hedgerows and on roads, pheasant carcasses dumped in pits, lead shot scattered across the land, and the very real risk of spreading disease, including bird flu. None of that will reach Defra unless we send it. What counts as evidence Defra says it welcomes many kinds of evidence, from published research and NGO reports to monitoring data and well-documented operational or experiential evidence. That last phrase opens the door to all of us. No matter who we are or what our job is, our experience counts. Defra will give more weight to evidence it can check. So the more specific we can be, the better: what we saw, where, and roughly when. A dated photograph of pheasants dumped in a ditch. A note of a trap found on a footpath and what was in it. A record of injured birds on local lanes in the days after a shoot. Problems we have had walking a public right of way through a shooting estate. Even a single, carefully described incident can be valuable. Please be accurate. We need to be precise about what we’ve experienced. Describe anything suspected as being illegal as a suspicion unless it has been established. Honest, careful evidence is far harder to dismiss. What we will submit We will be sending Defra our own evidence, drawn from the reports published in our Investigations series this summer. Those posts documented what goes on out of sight on ‘game farms’: birds in filthy breeding cages, the incubators and brooders where chicks begin their short lives, chicks handled like items on a conveyor belt, and the breeding birds discarded once they are ‘used up’. Become a Game Changer Our investigators found skips and trailers filled with dumped pheasant eggs, with live chicks among them, and wild birds scavenging from those dumps, raising serious questions about the spread of bird flu. We also documented what Larsen traps mean for the wildlife caught in them. We will present that evidence to Defra with its sources and context. But we cannot be everywhere, and we cannot tell your story for you. Our submission will be far stronger if it sits alongside hundreds or thousands of others. Protect the Wild has made it easy You do not have to work out Defra’s questionnaire on your own. Protect the Wild has published a simple guide and email tool here: protectthewild.org.uk/defra-call-for-evidence The page explains the kinds of things worth reporting, from wildlife persecution and predator control to injured or discarded birds, environmental damage, disease and welfare concerns, and the effect of shooting on local communities. It shows which of Defra’s questions each one relates to. Most usefully, it gives you a ready-made email to Defra: just add your own experience and any photos or documents, and send it. If you would rather complete Defra’s full online survey yourself, you can do that on the Defra consultation page, which also includes Defra’s own guidance documents. Please act now This is a genuinely rare chance to put the reality of bird shooting on the government’s record, in front of the officials who will advise on what happens next, and in a process it set up. If we stay silent, the shooting industry will be the only voice in the room. Go to Protect the Wild’s guide and use the email tool. Add what you have seen, with as much detail as you can. Send it before 11:59pm on Sunday 1 November, and ideally by the end of October. Share this post with anyone who walks, rides or lives near a shoot. The birds cannot give evidence. We can. Submit your evidence in seconds Join the movement. Become a Game Changer. We have been hard at work. Months of undercover work. Hundreds of hours of footage. Farms across the UK exposed. We are making a difference. But we are only just getting started. Many of you have already become a Game Changer, standing with us as we take this fight forward, week by week, piece by piece, until the public, the media and the politicians can no longer look away. We are extremely grateful. We are reaching a larger audience all the time, though, many who won’t know that Game Changers helps us fund investigations, take on staff, and make us more effective. So we are going to repeat the call here - this is just the beginning, please be a part of it. Become a Game Changer SHARE LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2026 Protect the Wild Protect the Wild, 71-75 Shelton Street Covent Garden, London, W2CH 9JQ Unsubscribe Start your Substack