Private Eye and unpleasant Pheasant facts.

This, you might remember, was the advertisement we placed in Private Eye recently. We were surprised to be told by Private Eye that they wouldn’t publish the next two adverts we had planned – they wouldn’t tell us why.

Maybe  Private Eye was leant on and gave in to pressure – we don’t know, but the fact that Private Eye didn’t explain their decision was a bit odd.

In the most recent edition there were three letters about our advert. Maybe they give some clues.

One was this anonymous attack:

Another was a poor attempt at humour from BASC:

BASC did not even attempt to justify their slur of ‘woefully ignorant’. Hmmm.

The third letter was from a Mr Payne who claims to have done some research on the matter of Pheasant releases:

Let’s look at these things very quickly to put Payne out of his misery:

• Pheasants, as he admits are non-native species
• ‘They are farmed intensively’ – millions of eggs and day-old chicks are imported into the UK each year and they, and Pheasants kept captive over the winter, are reared in facilities like those that house chickens. Large numbers in small spaces = intensive. Here’s a rearing facility that has been in the news – click here.
• 50 million are released – that sounds a lot! Can it possibly be true or has Wild Justice made up the figure? No, the figure comes from another bunch of lefty, townie anti-shooting zealots, namely the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) – in a published scientific paper – click here. Also, note that estimates of Pheasant release numbers increased after the publication of that paper (see here) but may well have fallen in recent years because of bird flu restrictions, Brexit import complications etc. 50 million is right – the shooters’ favourite NGO says so.
• Pheasants are shot for fun – people pay to carry out what is laughably called a field ‘sport’. Sounds like a hobby to us – no one is forced to do it. So, Pheasants are shot for fun.
• 37 million survive – 13 million-ish are shot and the rest survive until they are eaten by foxes (and other predators), run over by cars, die of bird flu or other diseases or starve to death. That figure comes from the same paper by the shooters’ favourite NGO, the GWCT.
• The total biomass of released Pheasants is ‘around double that of all native UK birds combined’. Gosh, that sounds a lot – can it be true? Yes it can, according to the shooters’ favourite NGO, the GWCT (again) – see here where the Pheasant releases are 1.6 – 1.7 times the spring biomass of wild UK birds. ‘1.6 – 1.7 times’ is difficult to fit into a cartoon so ‘around double’ seemed a perfectly fair simplification to us.
• Does such a massive release of non-native birds cause an ecological imbalance – yes it does and that’s why Defra caved in to a Wild Justice’s legal challenge in 2020 (see here) and introduced new (albeit weak) measures to control gamebird releases. GWCT, the shooters’ favourite NGO, has published papers on damage done by large numbers of Pheasants to woodland where the birds are released, experts on snakes have blamed Pheasants for gobbling up young adders and causing declines in numbers and all that Pheasant meat in the countryside has been blamed for increasing densities of carrion-feeders and predators. That’s ecological imbalance brought about by the hobby of shooting non-native birds for fun.

We cannot comment on the size or lustiness of Mr Payne’s organ or anything else but he shows no sign of having checked his facts, and Private Eye knew no better than to let him get away with it. At least we assume that Private Eye published these misguided remarks in good faith – what other explanation is there? But Private Eye was clearly happy enough to take Wild Justice’s money without checking, and then happy to print these letters without checking. Hmmm. Private Eye was right to rely on Wild Justice to know what it was talking about and wrong to think that BASC and others had any real answer. We’re grateful for every opportunity to put the record straight on gamebird shooting.

If you’d like to tell Private Eye what you think then here are some contact details https://www.private-eye.co.uk/contact