How shooting can help the Labour Party deliver

The Labour Party has just held its first party conference as the party of government since 2009, and whilst the focus in the media was around winter fuel allowances and the funding of the leadership’s wardrobe, some of us haven’t forgotten what was written in the manifesto on which they were elected. Labour pledged to “promote biodiversity and protect our landscapes and wildlife”, a laudable line, and one which can be brought about with game shooting and its associated land management practices. 

Earlier this year we saw research that elucidated the immense contribution that shooting makes to conservation, to the tune of half a billion pounds and equivalent to 26,000 full-time jobs and 14 million workdays each year. These are among the facts that the Countryside Alliance was sharing with Labour politicians and supporters in Liverpool last weekend at the party conference. 

The term ‘conservation’ is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘the protection of plants and animals and natural areas […] from the damaging effects of human activity.’ This definition aligns closely to the wording of the Labour manifesto, as does it align to the management practices associated with game shooting. In order to maintain a healthy and sustainable landscape that can support the culturally, socially and economically important practice of game shooting, gamekeepers and many other volunteers pour huge amounts of effort and private funding into conservation. 

When a wild flower game cover is planted, it is not only the pheasant and partridge that benefit, a great variety of flora and fauna benefit, for example, this cover provides the necessary habitat for many insect species that both pollinate rare flora and provide a valuable food source for threatened birds such as skylarks, which, as ground nesting birds, also benefit from the predator control undertaken by gamekeepers. 

The truth is that the British countryside would look very different without game shooting, there wouldn’t be the same level of woodland coverage, nor would we see the purple hues and flourishing populations of wading birds on grouse moors. It is through shooting that biodiversity and threatened landscapes and species are protected, and by safeguarding game shooting, this Labour government can deliver its manifesto pledge.