As I am currently near Chatsworth, I listened with interest to the news of the passing of the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire yesterday.
Although I never met her, I did have a letter from her on my office wall for several years. The RSPB had done a huge recruitment mailing, and my name was at the foot of the letter. The Dowager Duchess had received one of our letters inviting her to joint the RSPB.
I don’t have the letter to hand, but these are pretty much the exact words with which the Dowager Duchess was moved to respond ‘There is nothing that would persuade me to join your organisation which has done so much harm to the countryside through your protection of, and releases of, birds of prey‘.
In May, the RSPB offered a reward for information leading to a prosecution when a female Goshawk was found dead with two broken legs on the Chatsworth Estate.
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I saw that she had died on the news, and was wondering who she was and why I should care.
And dinosaur thinking about birds of prey dies with her…
No it doesn’t.
It will not die until people are better educated. And you will not make people willing to understand and change while you treat them as enemies.
People can change. Look at Peter Scott. He started off with a gun.
D Devonshire was a very old lady, brought up in a different world, with different values. Her life was not unmixed privilege. I have heard many good things about her and one bad. She has just died.
If she was my mum I wouldn’t like to be reading this blog right now.
There have been obituaries in most of the newspapers focusing on her glamorous life and all the famous people she knew as well as praising her efforts in restoring the fortunes of Chatsworth. If a person’s life is going to be publicly described in this way it is not unreasonable that the coverage should include negative as well as positive comment.
I am sure the Duchess had many fine attributes but her belief that birds of prey are somehow harmful to nature rather than part of it is probably shared by many others with a similar background. If we wish to stop birds of prey being persecuted on shooting estates it is important that such attitudes are highlighted so that they can be addressed and hopefully, one day, changed.
I am not being be disrespectful to the Dowager Duchess. She didn’t have the happiest life (very few aristocrats do in my experience) and I admired her strength of character. Neither I am saying that archaic attitudes to birds of prey will change with her passing.
My point is that her old-fashioned views on raptors have gone with her and will continue to do so with others of the same thinking.
Maybe the death of someone dear to many people should be above sniping! The Duchess championed many things I am sure you agree with. Much ignorance on Birds of Prey is just that….ignorance.
I am shocked. I live near by. I met her once, and she was immediately likeable. Her local reputation is of a kind, hardworking person.
Did you contact her again? Was that it?
She called her son Peregrine you know, she couldn’t have hated them.
Skydancer. Their youth projects need to be most where I suspect they will never be invited. In the public schools.
Rubbish. I went to public school and I used to shoot. It doesn’t mean we all blast raptors out of the sky.
Oh good.
I am glad you stopped shooting things. My father also stopped when he realised 1. the things he killed were beautiful. 2. He wasn’t hungry.
I was just pointing out that there are possibly more raptors blasted out of the sky ON BEHALF OF those landowners who are ex-public school, than those in the state system.
And that therefore education of the next generation into the iniquity of this behaviour might very profitably be carried into the public schools.
Perhaps with your public school contacts you could liase with the Skydancer project?
I think the message should be broadcast in all schools. Shoot owners and landowners don’t all hail from public schools. It’s no longer solely the plaything of the rich.
For the record, Sir Peter Scott and I went to the same school.
That is really great news, it gives you an excellent opening position to suggest that they invite the Skydancer project.
Just to let you know that 17 young goshawk were fledged on the estate this year.
Great work Jamie, and with the Hen Harrier!
I’m not shocked. I’ve talked to at least two ennobled people who laid the blame for most of nature’s ills at the RSPB’s desire to conserve raptors. It’s a groupthink that is deeply lodged within our ‘ruling classes’ and their representatives.
The fact that a cursory glance at any piece of countryside at this time of year – neatly trimmed hedges and verges; bare seedbeds soaked in pre-emergence herbicides; pastures grazed to a few mm to get the last of the forage before winter sets in, exposes the poverty of resources available to wildlife. At the same time, vast numbers of recently released pheasants strut about between the feeder in one wood or coppice and the one in the next, one way or another sustaining elevated populations of all sorts of undesirables. But what would I know, although I’ve lived in the countryside all my life, I don’t think I’d be counted as a countryman.
Mark
Jamie Horner sets the facts out on Chatsworth’s record on birds of prey which is exemplary. The dead Gos found earlier this year was unusual in many ways and was a bird that originated from a next well away from Chatsworth. In addition the estate has a good record protecting its SSSI deer park, woodland and moorland. There are bad guys out there but the people at Chatsworth aren’t amongst them. I’d be interested to know how many Gos were raised in Northamptonshire this year.
Jim – given your in-depth knowledge of the good guys and bad guys in the National Park of which you are the outgoing Chief Executive, maybe you could tell us all who are the bad guys, and what progress has been made to root them out?
Different to Welbeck where I was brought up. The dowager duchess was a if not the founder of the RSPB and invited us to see her budgie eggs when we were children. The honey buzzards were a protected secret as far as I know.
I must commend the Cavendish’s on their opening up of their Bolton Abbey Estate up here in Yorkshire ( it must be lovely to have multiple estates) They generously open up their parking at 7 quid a head, and thoughtfully close off the moors ( for our safety) when they’re shooting the wildlife.
An old lady has died and all you do is slag her off?! No mention of the 18 goshawks reared at Chatsworth this year ??
You disgust me
Well done to the duchess on her letter to you, she was clearly right! Your all a bunch of hypocrites
Claire – thank you for your comment.
You are a model of politeness for us all to follow.
Unlike your comment, I slagged off nobody.