Ilkley Moor animal activists miss the target (From Ilkley Gazette)

Ilkley Moor animal activists miss the target

3:00pm Thursday 31st July 2008

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ANIMAL rights groups have hindered conservation on Ilkley Moor in a failed attempt to disrupt grouse shooting, it has been claimed.

Activists identifying themselves as members of the Animal Liberation Front and Grouse Liberation Front claimed on a website that they had wrecked grouse pens and traps on the moor.

But a spokesman for The Moorland Association says equipment destroyed was "nothing to do with grouse shooting" and that they had destroyed work that was for the benefit of local conservation.

She called the activists criminals and confirmed that police are now involved in the matter.

The incident comes in the wake of hunt saboteurs' threats to disrupt grouse shooting on Ilkley Moor. A ten-year contract for the right to run commercial shoots on the moor was recently handed to the Bingley Moor Partnership by landowner Bradford Council.

National animal welfare organisations condemned the contract move and an Ilkley animal welfare group recently lobbied Bradford Council to have a full council debate and vote on re-introducing shooting on the iconic moor.

Hunt saboteurs have since vowed to disrupt any shoots on the moor, although no shoots are expected to take place for around two years because of the low grouse population.

Anonymous posts on the website of Florida-based animal rights magazine Bite Back boasted that a large grouse pen had been "identified and trashed" and smaller pens and traps around High Moor and White Crag plantation had been "placed permanently out of commission".

But Moorland Association spokesman Amanda Anderson said the vandals had been "off target" because the majority of the equipment had nothing to do with grouse shooting.

She said: "The police are involved. These people are criminals and they are not very clever criminals. They have destroyed legitimate work for the benefit of conservation."

She said the pens were probably for rearing other birds, such as partidges, and the traps were for catching predators such as weasels, stoats and mink, which kill birds and eat their eggs.

Moorland Association chairman and a leading figure in the Bingley Moor Partnership, Edward Bromet, recently told the Gazette that legitimate means would be used to control predators that could keep the grouse population down.

The deal with Bradford Council means the Partner-ship will provide the council with the services of a gamekeeper to give practical help to the council's countryside officers who are trying to revive acres of the fire-damage moor. The work is said to include tasks such as restoring heather and tackling overgrown bracken.

A Friends of Ilkley Moor group was recently formed to help raise money via subscriptions for the management and improvement of the moor's landscape. The group will help the council maintain paths and possibly provide new facilities for the many visitors.

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