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I didn’t say they offered no benefit to wildlife. Releasing millions of birds into the wild does, they are predatory birds. All those twee little cover strips house very few nesting birds. All small mammals, reptiles, amphibians and larger invertebrates are potential pheasant food.
The impact of predation by the birds added to the disturbance by shooters, the annihilation of potential pheasant predators, and the shooting of non target species all have a negative impact that is under researched and under regulated.
In addition the birds have a significant negative impact on the flora, especially in woodland, further eroding the ecosystem. Add in the cultural impact that leads to an assumption even on cycling fora that they must be a good thing, and you begin to realise that releasing up to 60 million pheasants into our countryside isn’t really doing any good.
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adroit
“And of course pheasants utterly devastate the fauna of the land where they’re released.”
so all the habitat changes (set aside strips cover retention (brambles/thicker woodland but with rides cut through for new growth and crops planted specifically for ground cover) etc offer no benefit for wildlife?
would rather see that than all the hedges ripped out to look like lincolnshire.
the countryside is a business, if making some of it a playground for game shooting helps retain some semblance of bucolic countryside rather than a featureless agribusiness then i’m all for it.
i would imagine sheep and overgrazing have done far more environmental damage than pheasant shooting.