A good, clean kill

Published on Saturday 9 March 2002 00:00

It is an archetypal image, the wildfowler letting fly as a flurry of wings erupts across an estuarial sky. Last month saw the end of the season for shooting below the high-water mark, inland shooting of wild duck and geese having already closed on 31 January; but by the time the season reopens at the beginning of September, new regulations may mean the Scottish wildfowler will find his time-honoured pastime considerably more expensive than before.

What is costly to the shooter could, however, prove a bonus to the environment. The Scottish executive is considering more than 60 submissions on a possible ban on the use of lead shot on environmentally sensitive wetland habitats, bringing Scotland into line with England.

Among the submissions currently being considered is one from Scottish Natural Heritage, calling for either an overall ban on the use of lead shot on wetlands or, in the event of the executive failing to endorse a blanket ban, the kind of site and species-based ban adopted by England in late 1999.

While the executive has yet to make any recommendations to ministers on the strength of its findings, SNH hopes that restrictions on the use of lead shot may be in place by the opening of the shooting season in September. The agency’s recommendations for a total ban, which would affect the hunting of all wetland species, are based on the weight of evidence from research in the UK and abroad, particularly in the United States, showing that the ingested lead from shotgun pellets poses a significant cause of death among certain species of water birds. Many wildfowlers appreciate this, but may not appreciate the four- or five-fold increase in costs involved in using non-toxic alternatives, such as bismuth or tungsten matrix, to the traditional lead shot.

You may have missed it, but 2 February, that auspicious-sounding date of 02.02.02, was World Wetlands Day, an international celebration to promote awareness of the importance of wetland environments, their wildlife and communities, across the world. The annual celebration marks the anniversary of what has become known as the Ramsar Convention, signed at Ramsar, on Iran’s Caspian coast, in 1971, and which gives its name to protected "Ramsar sites" throughout the world - there are 35 in Scotland.

Since then, the United Kingdom was among the signatories to the African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird Agreement under the Bonn Convention, calling for a commitment to phase out the use of lead shot by the year 2000. Thus legislation restricting the use of lead shot on English wetlands, on a "site and species" basis, was implemented in 1999, while the Welsh Assembly agreed to follow a similar policy, still to be implemented. Scotland, meanwhile, appears to be dragging its webbed feet.

Many wildfowl, including swans and "dabbling ducks" such as mallard and teal, ingest lead shot either as food or along with the grit they habitually take into their gizzards as an aid to digestion. The lead gets ground down, and samples have shown that contamination rates occur in between a relatively modest-sounding 5 to 10 per cent of sampled birds; however, the fact that bird populations are frequently shifting means that as much as 40 per cent swallow at least one lead shot in the course of a year, enough to have significant, if non-lethal effects. Quite apart from the deaths of birds, secondary contamination through the food chain is thought to have a potentially fatal effect on birds of prey or scavenging mammals such as foxes.

Why is SNH plumping for an overall ban? Ultimately, the decision lies with the executive, says SNH’s species group manager, Andrew Douse, one of the authors of the paper, "and it’s not that we wouldn’t look at a site-by-site approach. But the difficulty is that if you focus purely on designated sites, you’ll get a large proportion of species which are vulnerable to lead shot poisoning but don’t necessarily occur on these sites, so you’re still exposing a sizeable proportion of the UK wildfowl population to lead shot. Another thing, of course, is that these birds aren’t static, they move from site to site.

"My suspicion is that a lot of the problem lies in the smaller flighting ponds and places like that, where there may not be nationally or internationally important numbers of birds, but where you get a very high throughput, so you’re exposing a much larger proportion of the population than you think."

Douse also expresses concern at anomalies that could arise from a species-based kind of approach; wildfowlers, for instance, unable to fire lead shot over a certain wetland area, while clay-pigeon shooters on the same site could pump in shot to their hearts’ content.

Already there seem to be some grey areas, with some Borders shooters apparently of the opinion that it is illegal to use lead shot in shooting pheasant along the (non-wetlands) banks of the Tweed, which is now a Special Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI) along its entire length. SNH insists that this is not the case, although there is a voluntary code for shooters in the area.

Douse is anxious, however, to work with the wildfowling fraternity as closely as possible: "In my experience, wildfowlers in general are incredibly responsible. We operate a non-lead policy on land where we control the shooting rights - on the Solway, for instance - and compliance there is very good."

For the shooters’ part, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, also with a submission before the executive, goes along with SNH to an extent, but believes that an overall ban on the use of lead shot on wetlands would be neither appropriate nor helpful. "We do accept that in certain situations lead shot can represent a hazard to feeding wildfowl," says the director of BASC Scotland, Dr Colin Shedden, "and, accordingly, we are looking at means of reducing that."

Favouring legislation on a site-by-site basis, he points to local and national nature reserves where bylaws prohibit the use of lead shot anyway - the Eden Estuary in Fife, for instance, or Caerlaverock on the Solway: "That’s a natural phasing in of non-toxic shot legislation, gradually introducing the whole concept to the shooting community, and we feel that it should be pursued in other situations where people are shooting on locally or nationally important wetland reserves where you can progressively phase in non-toxic shot. Our argument would be for basically extending that concept, rather than bringing in blanket legislation that’s liable to affect quite a large number of people all at once."

Many wildfowlers may well sympathise, to a greater or lesser degree, with the environmental aspects of SNH’s concern. But the extent of these sympathies may be governed by the depths of their wallets. Efficient alternatives to lead shot can be four of five times more expensive. At the Borders Gun Room in St Boswells, Iain Wilson, who is a seasoned shooter - although pheasant and partridge rather than wildfowl - believes the proposed ban on lead could "stir up a bit of a hornets’ nest".

Because the shop is relatively close to the Border with an at least partially lead-free England, they have had to stock up with steel and tungsten matrix shot. "To give you an idea of the difference, a box of 25 lead cartridges costs about 4.50, whereas a box of 25 tungsten matrix costs about 15. Steel is cheaper, but you will have to use guns that will take steel."

According to Colin Shedden, American shooters have been using steel shot for the past couple of decades. "There is," he agrees, "a view that it can be bad for gun barrels and doesn’t have the same density of lead, so the shot would have to be bigger to achieve the same impact."

Does the use of steel shot or other, less dense, alternatives increase the risk of wounding rather than killing clean? "That argument shouldn’t come into it," says Shedden, "because everyone should be shooting responsibly, within the range and capability of the ammunition they are using.

"If you’re looking for something that replicates, and in some cases is even better than, lead shot, you’re moving into bismuth and tungsten matrix, and that’s when you come into serious financial problems. In some situations that doesn’t matter so much because people wouldn’t really be using a lot of cartridges, but in a situation such as clay pigeon-shooting, or pest control, it would become incredibly problematic from a cost point of view."

Andrew Douse concedes the site-by-site approach "has some merit - it’s very precise and easy to define legally, and there are difficulties with other approaches. I’m not ruling out our working with BASC to come up with an optimum solution."

However, he argues that lead shot poses a very real and proven problem. "We’ve spent an enormous amount of time and money removing lead from paint, from petrol and from all sorts of other things. "

He points to the ban on lead fishing weights, implemented a few years ago. "That was despite protestations from the angling community, but as a result, in many areas that were heavily fished and which had seen a decline in the mute swan population, we immediately saw a reversal of this decline.

"This is another source of contamination, and something that needs to be addressed."