Campaigners head to moors to demand end to blood sports
Campaigners converged on moors near Sheffield at the weekend to demand an end to blood sports.
More than 150 campaigners joined the Reclaim our Moors march on Moscar Moor calling for an end to government subsidies allowing landowners to artificially maintain land for grouse shooting.
They included representatives from groups including Reclaim Our Moors, Hunt Saboteurs, Earth First, Wild Justice, Green Party, Protect the Wild, Extinction Rebellion, Right to Roam, and Raptor Persecution UK.
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 discovered a dead badger in a snare on a lowland shooting estate in South Yorkshire.
Campaigners also called for the moor to be re-wetted, to prevent flooding downstream and to bring back the many species that would usually inhabit this moorland, the area needs re-wetting.
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."
