Biodiversity means the variety of life. It includes everything from animals, plants and fungi to habitats such as woodland, heathland or saltmarsh. It is a collective term for all life.
The argument that shooting is good for conservation is the key to its defence. Green Shoots was set up to prove this. In this introduction to Green Shoots, the team explains how these aims are being realised and what is being done to secure the future of shooting for conservation.
Like the road to hell, the road to Rio was paved with good intentions. But how many of them survived for long after the ink had dried on the final Earth Summit declaration is another matter.
Nevertheless the UK did sign up to some serious biodiversity targets. In fact some people felt the targets were too serious and could never be attained. And one thing was clear. Without the support of the shooting community that pessimism might easily be justified.
But this was shooting’s big chance. For many years we had claimed our sport was a vital force for conservation in the countryside. Now we could prove it, and BASC seized the chance. Biodiversity was the new buzz word, and biodiversity is what shooting is all about.
After Rio the government put in place the UK Biodiversity Action Plan, a conservation strategy lasting until 2020. It is the principal conservation plan in the UK and of extreme importance to the government. This plan is supported by over 150 local biodiversity action plans (LBAPs), usually covering a county or national park, which deliver the parts of the national plan relevant to their areas.
These LBAPs are the main contributors for delivering the targets set in the national plan, and BASC immediately recognised that they offered a unique opportunity for the shooting community to provide irrefutable evidence of its contribution to biodiversity.
So BASC’s Green Shoots programme was launched to ensure that the value of shooting for conservation is recognised by politicians, the media and the general public. It also aims to build upon the existing work and co-ordinate the effort that shooters put into conservation. By demonstrating our contribution to these LBAPs and the national plan, we can undeniably prove that shooting = conservation.
You may still be asking why we are putting so much effort into doing this. The argument that shooting is good for conservation is the key to people accepting our sport and recognising its value. If the misconception prevails that shooting just ‘takes’, then we would be in a very dangerous place when it comes to gaining the public’s support or influencing policy and legislation in our favour.
That is the principle behind Green Shoots which we launched in July 2000 with an event in the House of Commons. A great number of politicians and conservation partners attended and heard how shooting is the key to a healthy countryside and the wildlife in it. It also coincided with the publication of our Green Shoots action plan document.
Unlike some documents which are shelved, Green Shoots has developed into a programme of local projects where we are establishing the value of shooting for the local biodiversity action plan. The first of these was in Cheshire and the most recent is in Dorset.
So far we have five projects in operation in three of the home countries. All are generating political support for shooting and providing news items that are reported in the press, and thereby informing the public about our sport.
