Recreational shooting key to nature recovery

The previous government made legally binding commitments to address biodiversity loss. Key to this is the creation of more wildlife-rich places and one of the ways this is being supported by the Labour Government is through the creation of 48 local nature recovery strategies. 

The purpose is to identify locations to create or improve habitat most likely to provide the greatest benefit for nature and the wider environment. Since last year, local authorities have been running surveys and workshops to inform the development of county-level digital maps. Each map will consider priority species and habitats to show where the creation of woodlands, hedgerows, grasslands, wetlands and so on would have the most positive impact. These online maps will be searchable and accessible to the public. The Government has allocated £14 million to fund the production of all strategies by March 2025. 

Nature-rich 

So what does this have to do with shooting? Ian Danby, BASC’s head of biodiversity, explains: “As shooters we are already doing the species management and habitat work in many of the areas that the local nature recovery strategies are mapping out. One of the targets is creating 140,000 hectares of restored or new nature-rich habitat by 2028. People who shoot carry out habitat management and conservation on a massive 7.6m hectares. So clearly shooting should be key to the success of every local nature recovery strategy. 

“When these habitat maps go live next year there is a golden opportunity for us all as land managers to engage with the projects, so that everyone involved knows and understands that shooting is a solution and not a problem. 

“Nobody else is going to fly the conservation flag for us; we all need to get involved in these projects to evidence what we are doing and can do to hit the nature recovery targets.” 

BASC is reviewing all 48 local nature recovery strategies as they develop and making contact with project leads. Some of our regional teams have attended stakeholder meetings and workshops and we have completed various pre-consultation surveys. The final draft of each strategy must be subject to public consultation and BASC will be reviewing and responding to them. 

The first consultation recently closed for the draft Essex local nature recovery strategy. We outlined how BASC members manage species such as deer, woodpigeon, grey squirrel and mink, and manage habitats such as woodlands, hedgerows and wetlands. We explained that wildfowling is integral to the conservation of wetlands in Essex and this is recognised in estuary management plans, where sustainable use of biodiversity is underpinned by habitat retention, restoration and extension. 

The response also covered key findings from two recently published reports – The Value of Shooting and the Natural Capital Benefits of Shooting. On the former report, we quantified the time that people who shoot voluntarily put into habitat creation and maintenance alongside management of species that cause environmental problems. 

When discussing natural capital we covered the benefits of shooting for carbon capture, public health savings, recreation and food/forestry. We recommended that the final mapping system should be easily accessible to estates and farms because people must be able to see quickly and clearly what the areas of biodiversity importance are and the opportunities at the farm/estate scale. 

If you want to get involved in the development of your local nature recovery strategy, search online for LNRS together with the name of your local authority. Once the projects go live next year we will be contacting BASC members about habitat and species management opportunities and possible funding streams.