Open Season for Woodcock

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for leading the debate, and for making such a comprehensive and well-balanced speech. This has been a very well-informed debate, with a wide range of views.

I have to admit that I have not had much time to prepare for the debate, as I just returned from Ukraine yesterday. The Eurasian woodcock can be found from Odesa to the Belarusian border, and from Lviv to the Donbas, which ties today’s debate to my journey last week. I led an aid convoy with the hon. Members for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin). We went from the UK to Ukraine via France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Poland. Members might wonder why I am saying this, but we may find woodcock migrating through the exact same route that my colleagues and I took last week, giving us a rare insight into the life of the Eurasian woodcock, its pattern of migration, the habitats it lives in, and the disruption that the war in Ukraine is causing for bird populations. BirdLife International states that:

“Aerial bombing, use of drones, artillery shelling and all other existing types of ground combat and mining destroy not only settlements with all the infrastructure, but also the natural environment. It is safe to assume that military actions will significantly affect the state of bird populations in Ukraine.”

Dame Caroline, I do not want to stretch your patience, so I will return to the subject of the petition: the open season for woodcock. The UK has two types of woodcock: resident and breeding woodcock breed in the British Isles and are largely sedentary, whereas migrant woodcock, which spend the winter in the UK, return to northern and eastern Europe to breed, on which I have expanded enough. I have spent the morning looking at woodcock, and they are striking birds. Their feathers are various shades of brown, including chocolatey brown and a striking chestnut brown, and they have long, thin, sharp beaks and unusually deep black eyes. They are night-time birds and eat worms, beetles, spiders, caterpillars, fly larvae and small snails. They breed in the spring and summer, and put on quite a display by flying in big circles at dusk, creaking and grunting as they go.

The reason we are here today is quite simple: the UK woodcock population is declining and has red list status from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A national survey, which is a collaboration between the Gaming & Wildlife Conservation Trust and the British Trust for Ornithology, is conducted every 10 years. The last survey, in 2013, found 55,000 males, and it is believed that the number has since declined. Migratory woodcock are much more numerous and arrive here in early December. They swell the population considerably, and data from the GWCT shows that around 8% of shot woodcock are resident, with the remaining 92% migratory.

The petition requests that the start of the shooting season be delayed from 1 October, or 1 September in Scotland, until 1 December. The data makes it clear that any woodcock shot in this early season will be resident woodcock, which are clearly threatened, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for excellently expanding on this point and on the reasons for the petition. There is generally agreement among everyone that early shooting should not happen, but the point of dissent is whether it should be voluntary or mandatory. It is clear that moving the shooting season would protect resident birds and ensure that they are protected through the all-important breeding season, and we can see what impact this would have on breeding and population figures. This year’s survey will provide invaluable data, as it has been 10 years since the last one.

The British Association for Shooting and Conservation said:

“The shooting community has placed a voluntary moratorium on shooting woodcock until the 1st of December to ensure the protection of resident woodcock and focus shooting on migrant visitors”.

The RSPB has stated:

“The RSPB supports the call for an alteration to the start of the woodcock hunting season (to 1 December) as an emergency precautionary measure to reduce the probability that a shot Woodcock originates from the threatened UK breeding population, now that the species is Red-listed in Britain and Ireland. We see this as a proportionate measure in the context of the wider climate and nature emergency and declines in the UK breeding woodcock population.”

Given that bird conservation and shooting groups seem to agree on the threat to the resident population and the need for a shorter season, does the Minister agree that there seems to be a lot of merit in the RSPB’s proposal of a temporary measure on those lines? Should it not be considered to allow the full impact of a later start to be properly studied and assessed? The temporary measure would have a positive impact on resident woodcock, and would satisfy all stakeholders, giving us a chance to pause and do what we can to protect those resident woodcock.