{"id":275674,"date":"2025-11-21T15:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/275674\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T15:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:57:08","slug":"new-report-on-gamebird-releases-in-cairngorms-national-park-doesnt-tell-even-half-the-story-raptor-persecution-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/275674\/","title":{"rendered":"New report on gamebird releases in Cairngorms National Park doesn\u2019t tell even half the story \u2013 Raptor Persecution UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

In spring 2025, news emerged that the GWCT (Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust) was going to be conducting a pilot study to look at the number of non-native gamebirds (Pheasants & Red-legged Partridges) being released into the Cairngorms National Park (see here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Unhealthy-looking Pheasant poults being transported to a release site. Photo by Ruth Tingay<\/p>\n

This research represents the first step of a commitment made by the Cairngorms National Park Authority in its 2022-2027 Partnership Plan<\/a> to assess the impact of these non-native species on habitats and native wildlife (see here<\/a> for an hilarious video of a 2021 Park Board meeting where certain members tried to block the idea).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the relevant information page from the CNP\u2019s current Partnership Plan:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The GWCT\u2019s report was published in August 2025 but to be perfectly honest, it\u2019s somewhat underwhelming (report available for downloading at foot of this blog).<\/p>\n

The most significant limitation, in my view, is that the report only includes data from ten of at least 22 sporting estates known to be rearing and releasing gamebirds for shooting within the Park\u2019s boundary. That\u2019s only 45%, not even half of the estates involved in gamebird releases, and there is no indication of how representative those ten estates are.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a criticism of the study\u2019s authors \u2013 they are upfront about this significant constraint and they had tried to include information from the 22 estates that they had been told were rearing and releasing gamebirds within the Park, but three shoots were in the process of changing management so were unable to answer questions, two shoots were \u2018too busy\u2019 at the time the interviews were scheduled, and seven shoots refused to participate.<\/p>\n

I do have a criticism of the study design. To identify the estates rearing and releasing gamebirds in the CNP, the authors used their existing contacts as well as a \u2018snowball sampling\u2019 strategy, where participants suggest other potential participants. However, since 2006 it has been compulsory to register with the Animal Plant & Health Agency\u2019s (APHA) Poultry Register when more than 50 gamebirds are released. It is entirely feasible to submit FoIs to APHA to access those data based on postcodes or council areas, just as Guy Shrubsole did in England<\/a>. I wonder why the GWCT didn\u2019t use this approach? Perhaps they suspected that compliance with the Register might be low and they didn\u2019t want to draw attention to it?<\/p>\n

Going forward, as more work is most definitely needed, researchers can access the Government\u2019s Scottish Kept Bird Register<\/a>, which replaced the Poulty Register in Scotland in 2024 and also requires mandatory reporting. There\u2019s no reason that staff at the Cairngorms National Park Authority, or indeed anybody reading this blog, couldn\u2019t request data covering the National Park.<\/p>\n

Due to the limited number of estates available\/willing to participate in the study, the authors relied on data from the National Gamebag Census (a voluntary reporting scheme used by some shoots to record the number of birds killed during a shoot season) to compare the number of gamebirds they\u2019d been told were being released on ten shoots in the CNP with release densities in the wider Scottish countryside and also in England.<\/p>\n

One of the study\u2019s headline claims was that across \u2018all\u2019 shoots in the CNP (meaning just the ten participating estates), the total number of birds released in seasons 2022\/3, 2023\/4 and 2024\/5 were 50,900, 61,200 and 49,800 Pheasants and 8,000, 36,000 and 29,240 Red-legged Partridges. The report states that the release densities \u201care lower than those reported from Scotland as a whole\u201c.<\/p>\n

The problem with this headline claim is that the results will be, and have already been, either genuinely misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented, without reference to the pretty big constraints in data sampling as discussed above. <\/p>\n

I heard an MSP reference this report several times during a Parliamentary debate earlier this week (more on that shortly because it was really interesting) and it was inferred that the report\u2019s findings related to gamebird releases in the whole of the Cairngorms National Park, not just the small number of estates that actually participated in the study, representing less than half of the known shoots and whose representative value is unknown.<\/p>\n

I would like to see the briefing notes given to that MSP by the gamebird shooting industry to see whether they have deliberately misrepresented the study\u2019s findings or whether the MSP has just genuinely failed to grasp the details. I will return to this topic.<\/p>\n

Of wider importance, the question now is, what will the Cairngorms National Park Authority do with the findings of this report it commissioned? <\/p>\n

One of the \u2018Actions by 2027\u2019 outlined in the Park\u2019s 2022-2027 Partnership Plan is to \u2018Establish a baseline for the number of gamebirds released in the National Park and assess their impact on native biodiversity\u2018.<\/p>\n

Given that it\u2019s now the end of 2025 and it\u2019s still not known how many non-native gamebirds are released within the National Park boundary, let alone what their impact may be on native species, I\u2019d say meeting this deadline looks unlikely.<\/p>\n

You can read \/download the GWCT report here:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In spring 2025, news emerged that the GWCT (Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust) was going to be conducting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-275674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}