BASC has asked Bradford City Council to provide financial details of its management of Baildon and Ilkley moors.
The UK’s largest shooting organisation has submitted Freedom of Information requests in an attempt to establish how much it has cost the council to manage Ilkley Moor since it cancelled the shooting lease in 2018.
BASC has also asked the council to reveal how much it has spent managing Baildon Moor.
BASC last week received a legal letter from the council following the association’s criticism of the management of Baildon Moor after film footage emerged of a tractor mowing at a critical time of the year for ground-nesting birds.
Conor O’Gorman, BASC’s head of policy and campaigns, said: “There is a suspicion that the figures just don’t stack up for the management of the moors in the absence of shooting.
“BASC has previously claimed that the council would be forced to spend tax-payers money after taking the disastrous decision to ban shooting on Ilkley Moor following a campaign by anti-shooting activists.
“We also believe that the management of Baildon Moor, which has been cast into stark relief by the highly-publicised incident with the tractor, has significant cost implications for the council and we would like to know the full extent of these.
“We have previously asked the council to give us answers to our wider questions around the management of the moors. They have failed to do so in any meaningful and significant manner, so now we are considering the other tools we can use to try and abstract that information for the benefit of those who care passionately about how the uplands are managed.”
