Reclaim our Moors from Snares, Subsidies and Scroungers

On Sunday, August 16th, over 150 campaigners joined the Reclaim our Moors march on Moscar Moor near Sheffield. Diverse groups came together from Reclaim Our Moors, Hunt Saboteurs, Earth First, Wild Justice, Green Party, Protect the Wild, Extinction Rebellion, Right to Roam, and Raptor Persecution UK to demand an end to the cruelty of blood sports and the end of Government subsidies to rich landowners to artificially maintain the moor for Grouse Shooting. There were speeches, singing, and excellent company.

A speaker from Moorland Monitors talked about the 3 S’s. Snares, Subsidies and Scroungers. 

Snares

Snares are banned in Wales and Scotland, but are still used to trap mammals on the moor. Last year there was a meeting at Olivia Blake MP’s constituency office, after South Yorkshire Badger Group activists had discovered a badger, sadly already dead (after an obviously long struggle) in a snare on a lowland shooting estate in South Yorkshire. This cruelty must stop, and Labour MP’s have the power to do this. 

Subsidies

The owner of Moscar Estate, David Manners, the 11th Duke of Rutland, was not popular at the rally. To help prevent flooding downstream and to bring back the many species that would usually inhabit this moorland, the area needs re-wetting. But instead, the Duke collects big subsidies, paid for out of our taxes, to continue to drain the land, burn the heather, and create ideal conditions for his rich friends to come grouse shooting. 

“Grouse shooting is simply killing for kicks” he explained. “A few, invariably very wealthy, inadequate individuals blasting birds (driven by beaters towards their guns) out of the sky for “fun”! Yet, it’s just one more, albeit now very high-profile, example of how humans treat other sentient life with callous contempt. The fact that so many humans so cynically exploit other species is perhaps the best “clue” as to why this planet is now in such a precarious predicament.”

Scroungers

“The billionaire press hypocritically talks about ‘scroungers’. Such divisive insults levelled at ordinary folk struggling to exist on various, often extremely difficult to qualify for, benefits such as P.I.P. really annoy me. Doubly so when I know who the real scroungers are – so often the tax-dodging elite who actually take our money to enable, via subsidies, the continuation of their bird-shooting bloodsport estates.”

Bob Berzins from Moorland Monitors said: “As wildfires rage across the country, Sheffield Moors are blighted by the legacy of 200 years of grouse shooting, where continuous rotational burning and drainage have dried the uplands. And gamekeepers want to burn even more. We need to listen to Moors for the Future – rewet and restore our uplands with sphagnum moss that stores carbon and does not burn.” 

See the video report from last year’s March here. 

Please write to your MP and demand an end to subsidies for maintaining moors for grouse shooting.