I am thinking of adding the phrase ‘Expert campaigner – Charles Moore’ to my website given the plug that the former editor of the Daily Torygraph gave to my work a while back.
As pointed out earlier, Mr Moore forgot to mention that he is not just a neutral journalist but is a keen supporter of fieldsports including grouse shooting in his piece about the RSPB’s, the Wildlife Trusts’ and LACS’s attitudes to grouse shooting.
I see now that the apparently disaffected former RSPB employee whom he quoted, Alex Stoddart, is not ‘just’ a former apparently disaffected RSPB employee but now works for the Scottish Association for Country Sports – as their director, no less. from what Mr Stoddart says on the SACS website he now seems to think it his job to slag off nature conservation organisations, thus:
‘Some nature organisations talk about “Giving nature a home” as some form of commercial fundraising PR stunt; nature already has a home with the protection of the country sports community.
Collectively those who shoot and hunt in the UK do far more for real conservation than all the conservation charities lumped together. They know, but choose to hide this simple fact.
We will be hammering the message home: “restrict shooting, damage conservation, lose species”. They can ramp up all the drama they like about raptor ‘persecution’, but it us who do most for conservation of all species, not just those species with greatest fundraising potential.’
Considering that the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts are incredibly reluctant ever to criticise anyone, let alone the shooting industry, it is a bit of an eye-opener to see how eager the latter are to criticise conservation organisations. Just remember the quotes above the next time you are told, ‘We are all on the same side really’.
Well done Charles Moore, for finding an ex-RSPB employee to criticise the RSPB – but the best you could do was to find one who appears to be running a tiny pro-shooting, anti-conservation organisation with a stance on issues at the rabid end of things. That is very enlightening.
PS I am going to see the third Hobbit film later today. Will I enjoy it? Any anachronistic bird songs for which I should listen? What is the bird list of Middle Earth?
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The list is about the same size as ours would be if the shooters get their way.
Listen out for anachronistic UK songbirds – song thrush, blackbird, chaffinch, greenfinch, dunnock, goldfinch, redpoll, yellowhammer, house sparrow etc All introduced to NZ by european settlers in the late 19th century to make them feel more ‘at home’.
The real bird song for the NZ version of Middle Earth is the Bellbird (Anthornis melanura) and Tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae) – currently on holiday in South Island and enjoying them all.
Don’t think it will spoil the film if I tell you there is a good chance you will get raven plus some unfeasibly large eagles.
NZ used to have a giant eagle as well, Haast’s eagle if memory serves. But I don’t think it was quite the size of middle earth eagles.
Haast’s eagle indeed Donald – had 3 metre wingspan!!!! Largest eagle ever. Believed to have preyed upon Moas various until they were hunted to extinction by the Maori, and it’s dense jungle habitat was cleared by same.
Look out for ring necked duck, ring necked parakeet, ring ouzel, ring billed gull and ring necked plover obviously. Little auks are controlled by the common golden eye. You may see a merlin keeping the hooded merganser and smew at bay. Enjoy it!
David – I like it!
Mark, you write “Considering that the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts are incredibly reluctant ever to criticise anyone, let alone the shooting industry…….” Surely criticism is implicit in the RSPB call for the licensing of driven grouse shooting. If the RSPB thought moor owners were doing a good job there would be no call for licensing/regulation, but the RSPB think they are not (often rightly so). If I said you were not doing a good job on your blog, you could rightly take that as a criticism.
From Martin Harper’s blog…..”We need and expect the grouse shooting community to change: the industry must demonstrate they can operate in harmony with birds of prey and help to restore the environmental quality of our hills.”
Or to put it another way…the grouse shooting industry don’t operate in harmony with birds of prey and have damaged the environmental quality of our hills.
If that isn’t criticism please inform me what is.
Martin – that is criticism. But it isn’t voiced very often or very strongly. If that isn’t ‘incredibly reluctant’ than please inform me what is.
The criticism of the shooting industry is very mild compared with the invective poured out by that industry and its supporters against the RSPB and now the shooting industry is a bit worried that the Wildlife Trusts might just find their voice on this subject too.
Happy Christmas.
Mark. You are correct about the invective poured out by the shooters, it often happens when you are being slowly backed into a corner, and it is of no credit to them.
I still stand by my original assertion that to be against something you are implicitly critical of what you are against.
I would have let you off I think if you hadn’t prefaced with ‘incredibly’.
All the best for the festive season Mark and keep up the good work.
Martin – same to you.
Please don’t mention the giant Eagles on middle Earth we like to keep this quiet, if the national gamekeepers association or the Game and Wildlife conservation trust hears about them they’ll blame them for the demise of the Elephant and the Rhino,
Alex Stoddart claims
“Collectively those who shoot and hunt in the UK do far more for real conservation than all the conservation charities lumped together. They know, but choose to hide this simple fact.”
Sometimes its better to keep quiet and let people think your stupid than to come out with statements like this and remove all doubt!
“Anachronistic” didn’t seem quite right to me, as it refers to things being out of time. So I looked for an equivalent word referring to things being out of place and there was: anatopism. Very rare; my spell-checker doesn’t know it for one.
But anachronistic or anatopistic (let’s call the whole thing off), the introduced species in NZ are really more faithful to the original, as Middle Earth is Western Europe, give or take, and the flora and fauna are very much of it. Among trees you find oak, elm, beech, chestnut, birch, rowan and linden. Swans, kingfishers and finches are mentioned among others, to say nothing of the part played by the thrushes, ravens and eagles. Hearing Luthien sing, Aragorn’s ancestor Beren dubs her Tinuviel, or Nightingale, and her song has the power to entrance even Morgoth.
And there is this too from the Hobbit, when Bilbo reaches the canopy of Mirkwood: “… and there were everywhere hundreds of butterflies. I expect they were a kind of ‘purple emperor’, a butterfly that loves the top of oakwoods…” But like everything else in Mirkwood, these were black.
I don’t really get the concept of ‘shooting for conservation’. When I was an idealistic young student protesting against the Vietnam war we had a slogan: ‘Fighting for peace is like ****ing for virginity’ (asterisks to protect your sensibilities, Mark). Now that I am a cynical old environmental activist, I feel it’s time to dust off the slogan and reapply it to people with Alex Stoddart’s mind set.
Like the slogan by the way.
Shooting for conservation could be as simple as removing grey squirrels so our native reds can be conserved. However I think what you are getting at is how can blasting hundreds of pheasants out of the sky be shooting for conservation. The fact is (& it’s one a fair few ‘conservationists’ don’t know or admit to) is that a lot of woodland has been allowed to exist BECAUSE of sporting interests. Now you can argue about current management or condition but the fact remains that lots of bits of wood escaped the plough because the landowner liked his shooting.
Have a look round the countryside and you will see spinneys/copses and larger areas of trees that are on the same ground as adjacent fields. Up here in the North Pennines the only bits of (once extensive) woodland left are those on steep hillsides and rough ground. Grouse are the birds shot up here, not pheasant or partridge, and so all our woodland which is on cropable land has gone.
So that’s the reason that shooting can conserve, but sadly not as much as it could!
I had never though of the RSPB as an extreme bird protection group until reading the
SACS website.
From http://www.sacs.org.uk/folder-9-pigeons-vermin
‘So, if you are shooting pigeons, for example, and anyone asks you why you are doing it, you must say it’s for crop protection. Remember that the person asking could be a policeman, but any member of the public could be a member of the RSPB or one of the other extreme bird protection groups out to trap you into saying the wrong thing and have you charged with an offence.’
Are there large numbers of RSPB members out in the countryside trying to trap shooters?
Never thought of the RSPB as an extremist group! And I wonder who these other clandestine organisations are?
Interesting strap line to their website ‘Protecting Country Sports and ALL who take part in them’. Is that all people, regardless of their perhaps illegal actions??
Howard – welcome and thank you for your comment!
So we have a sporting group in effect advising people to break the law ‘don’t tell the policeman the truth just say its for crop protection’. In the same article they undermine the law even further when having quite properly explained the law they say ‘We think this is fairly stupid, of course..’
I don’t believe it! (well I do cos I read it). If you don’t believe it just phone SACS, they say they will advise you.
Bob – I notice that is your 300th comment here. Many thanks!
Alex Stoddart quote remarkably similar to the bilge on the ‘You Forgot We’re Absurd’ website – what an extraordinary coincidence.
If you’re lucky Mark – Southern Brown Kiwi, Fiordland and Yellow-eyed Penguins, Albatrosses, Weka, New Zealand Pigeon, New Zealand Kaka, Saddleback, Rifleman and Tui. Though, in the words of Professor Tim Birkhead, “New Zealand’s avifauna is buggered.”
I think that if the RSPB is provoking the wrath and spittle flecked vitriol of the likes of Moore and Stoddart, then they’re probably doing something right. A succession of weak responses to uninhibited attacks means they’re playing catch-up when it comes to stern messages- maybe vitriol, invective, harsh words, and personal insults come easier to folk who enjoy killing things, rather than folk who devote their time to protecting things.