If the RSPB’s chief executive, Beccy Speight, and her hirsute lieutenants have their way, yesterday may have been the last Glorious Twelfth where shooting in England isn't a government-licensed activity. In recently revealed correspondence between the RSPB and the Defra minister who looks after - or rather deals with - shooting, it is clear that their role in lobbying the government is that of a pied piper whose magic pipe sings a false tune of biodiversity, nature recovery and, ironically, the protection of birds.

The correspondence that the Countryside Alliance has seen is the missing link in a three-month timeline that started with the publication of the government’s Animal Welfare Strategy in December last year, and concluded with the surprise inclusion in March’s Land Use Framework of a government desire to explore the licensing of all gamebird shooting and release.

Without going into the severe ignorance displayed by whomever wrote those paragraphs on game shoots in the Land Use Framework, we now have a good indication of how these deeply flawed notions came to be included: you guessed it, RSPB string-pulling.

This January, Beccy Speight penned a letter to the then Environment Secretary, Emma Reynolds MP, expressing consternation that the Animal Welfare Strategy had not included measures to licence shoots, inviting her to meet and discuss her suggestions. Her argument revolved around two points: the illegal killing of raptors and the risk of gamebirds catching and then spreading avian flu after their release.

A little over a month later the Defra minister, Baroness Hayman, wrote back, expressing gladness that the RSPB supports the government’s stance on banning “snare traps”, proposing to work closely with stakeholders [or at least certain ones], and accepting the opportunity to discuss options for shoot licensing.

The stage was then set for the Land Use Framework to give the shooting community a nasty surprise. And lo, it did, a week after that letter.

It is small relief that Beccy Speight is not herself the Environment Secretary as she would appear to be a puppeteer controlling Defra policy like a marionette. We have learned this policy has now reached the point that the Defra chief vet has referred gamebird shoot licensing to a ‘policy acceleration unit’ who are conducting an ‘evidence sprint’. 

What rankles most is not that the RSPB is able to influence government policy, of course not, that’s the whole point of lobbying and campaigning. It is that the case they have brought against shooting - which has been swallowed wholesale and seemingly without query by the ministerial team - is based on ignorance, misunderstanding and falsehoods.

We know that raptors breed and survive better on keepered grouse moors than on RSPB reserves - Natural England data shows that. We know that there is no robust evidence that wild migratory sea birds pass bird flu to pheasants which then pass it onto other, protected birds - currently that is pure conjecture. We know that shooting contributes half a billion pounds of private investment into conservation projects each year, a sum that would doubtlessly be diminished by the introduction of a government-administered licensing regime.

It is the duty and responsibility of the Countryside Alliance to ensure that policy is not made based on conjecture and untruths. Shooting as we know it will continue to benefit the countryside for this season, but the fight is on to ensure that the same is true in seasons to come.

A final thought: given their devastating impact on wild bird populations, how long will it be until Beccy Speight writes to the Environment Secretary to ask for pussycat ownership (and release) to be licensed? Pigs may yet fly.