A ‘mass trespass’ through a restricted estate used for pheasant shooting in South Devon today has kicked off a nationwide series of protests for a greater right to roam.
Right to Roam, a protest group that wants to see more private land made accessible to walkers, has picnicked and paraded through the Duke of Somerset’s South Hams estate today in what marks the beginning of a month-long nationwide campaign.
One member of the mass trespass reported on Twitter that he had found ‘a mass grave of scores of discarded pheasants, wire mesh fencing, and fly-tipped rubbish’ on the Duke’s private estate.
Guy Shrubsole, the Totnes-based campaigner who posted the picture of piled rubbish in the woods, complained that large amounts of private woodlands exclude ramblers and are used ‘instead for releasing and shooting pheasants, a non-native species of game bird’.
Mr Shrubsole said: ‘Isn’t it time big landowners made a little less room for pheasants, and a bit more room for us peasants?’
Referring to the pile of detritus and fly-tipped rubbish allegedly uncovered during the mass trespass, Mr Shrubsole wrote on Twitter: ‘We’re here to draw back the veil of secrecy that hides how landowners – not ramblers – trash nature.’
The walk saw as many as 200 protesters meet at 1pm before parading through and picnicking in Berry Pomeroy Castle woodlands, owned by the Duke of Somerset John Seymour, whose name is on the title deeds of around 2,800 acres of land in Devon and 3,400 in Wiltshire, according to Totnes Times.
The Duke received close to £30,000 of taxpayer subsidies in 2020 alone for ‘forest, environmental and climate services and forest conservation’ on his Totnes estate, according to an analysis of public data conducted by The Big Issue.
The Duke of Somerset has been approached by MailOnline for comment.
It comes after the government shelved a review into the right to roam last month, with the Treasury saying the English countryside is a ‘place of business’, which already provides ramblers with ‘hundreds of thousands of miles of public footpaths’.
The move to double down on right to roam delineations laid out in existing legislation came in spite of the shelved report, conducted by Lord Agnew, having promised to create ‘a quantum shift in how our society supports people to access and engage with the outdoors’.
‘Nature should be accessible for all’, Right to Roam’s website reads.
‘Our rights of access should be extended to woodlands, all downland…and the Green Belt land that could give so many more people in towns and cities easy access to nature.’
Totnes-based campaigner Guy Shrubsole told The Big Issue: ‘Regular access to nature is vital to people’s physical and mental health, yet so much of England’s countryside is shut off behind fences and intimidating signs.