Some stuff that caught my eye:
- e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting stands at 20,752 signatures. Thank you everyone. By the way, this is more than 10,000 more than GWCT, BASC etc could scrape together for their e-petition which tells you quite a lot.
- The Lodge Hill proposal has been ‘called in’
- Countryside Alliance Chair is working tirelessly on the science of lead!!
- Golden Eagles to be surveyed again – this will confirm that the best places for Golden Eagles, on the face of it, have the fewest Golden Eagles because they are killed on grouse moors.
- Ecotricity has given Labour £250,000 – some of that is my money as an Ecotricity customer. I see I can reduce my contribution to Labour rather than pay twice.
- Little Bustard shot
- How to tell a Spar from a Gos from the BTO
- I didn’t hear a Lesser Spot this morning – just thought you’d like to know
- #HaveYouSeenHenry
- a month today the Cheltenham racing festival will be over for another year and I will be rich!
- a month today, the BAWC conference will be a week tomorrow!
- Hawk and Owl Trust has gone very quiet on brood meddling – they’ll have to come clean some time so that we members know what’s happening.
The shot bustard is completely jaw dropping. Just shows that your average countryman shouldn’t be let within 100 yards of a trigger
Agreed. My impression (which may be wrong) is that in the States there is a better relationship between shooters and conservationists based in part on the shooters realizing that they need to conserve birds in order to shoot them. Well obviously I think shooting wild birds is a terrible thing, but simply shooting anything that flies is worse than trying not to shoot things that won’t be there next year because you shot them all. One reason, amongst many, to despair of shooters in this country. It’s just mindless killing. They should be parted from their guns.
“My impression (which may be wrong) is that in the States there is a better relationship between shooters and conservationists”
That is not my impression. I recently returned from the States where I encountered people who dismiss conservationists as “bunny huggers” and consider that predators such as wolves need to be shot. In relation to wolves I heard the expression “shoot, shovel and shut-up” describing the approach taken by at least some hunters to what they see as an intolerable threat to their deer shooting – pretty much the same attitude as that shown by some people here to hen harriers.
Other countries also harbour people with similar attitudes – in Germany I have heard the expression “kommt schnabel, Kommt finger” accompanied by the miming of a hooked predator bill followed by a finger crooked on a gun trigger – i.e. if a bird of prey appears, shoot it.
Of course one must be careless not to generalise and many shooters have much more enlightened attitudes but it would certainly be wrong to assume that the UK is uniquely backward in this respect compared to other countries.
I was thinking of Ducks Unlimited. But I dare say no generalisation to be made.
“given Labour £”
I sacked my former bank – the Cooperative – because they gave money to Ed Balls. They also dabbled in drugs and incompetence but that I can forgive
filbert – that is your funniest comment for quite a while (IMHO). Thank you.
So we know the shot Bustard was shot by a countryman do we and all townies are goodies.
Talk about tar everybody with the same brush.
Out of all the countrymen or women I know approx 5% own a gun.
That means 95% innocently tarred.
Yes, I have to agree Dennis. I am really not sure what or who ‘the average countryman’ is but I’m pretty sure that the majority of people who live or make their living in the countryside don’t go around shooting protected birds.
For my part I was agreeing that the shooting of the Little Bustard was ‘jaw dropping’. Because it is. My comments were about people with guns. Of course people without guns can’t be blamed for the shooting. But the Little Bustard was, ‘recently killed by a shotgun’. Well that would be by a ‘townie’ with a shotgun license who drove out to Norfolk, shot a Little Bustard and then beat a hasty retreat to the smoke. Obviously.
Just as an aside, ‘a few rotten apples’ is not just a dead metaphor but one that in dying has reversed its meaning. People now use it to mean ‘it’s only a few so don’t tar the others’ (mixing dead metaphors). But rotten apples in a barrel quickly cause all the others to go bad. And that’s the current issue: no one should need to defend law-abiding citizens, wherever they live. But people who break the law, especially those who think they are above the law, should not be protected by the good eggs, or good apples around them.
Alan, I entirely agree that the killing of the Little Bustard is a terrible and utterly inexcusable thing that someone has done. At the moment we have no idea who that was or where they lived. Your original comment was about “mindless shooters” and I certainly agree with your condemnation of that group and your use of the term “jaw-dropping”. John Stone on the other hand chose to blame “the average countryman” and I think it was that that Dennis first took exception to and certainly that that I had in mind when I agreed with Dennis. There are many people who live or work in the countryside who have nothing whatsoever to do with shooting whether legally practiced or not and it is entirely unhelpful, not to say unfair, to lump them all together and hold them collectively responsible for wildlife crime.
It is a favourite tactic of the shooting community to lump all of its critics together as townies who simply don’t understand the countryside and therefore (they imply) can hold no valid views on what happens in the countryside and why. That is an utterly false argument that we rightly reject for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that where you live does not affect your capacity to hold an informed opinion. Our rejection of that argument is seriously undermined, though, if we then go and make blanket assertions about the poor moral character of countrymen on the basis of crimes that most of them have absolutely no connection to.
The shooting community (which operates in the countryside but includes very many participants who live and work in the city) is certainly a fair target for criticism, however. Some of its practices such as the releasing of vast numbers of non-native pheasants into the countryside, the zealous suppression of predators, and the use of lead shot have potentially serious ecological consequences and then there is the issue of a dark vein of illegality running through it. We don’t know how many or few the bad apples are but they are certainly spoiling the barrel and the community as a whole and the organisations that represent it have been too feeble and mealy mouthed in rooting out the wrong doers from their midst. These are all reasons why we can condemn the shooting industry even if we may never know who actually shot the poor bustard.
So, we are right to be angry about this incident and others like it; we just need to be careful that we direct our anger in the right direction.
Alan well you certainly did not like my comment and that bit about more or less saying townies would not go out in countryside and kill then drive back.
Politest way I could put it is you are very naive.Almost all those who slaughter Red Grouse come out to the country kill hundreds of lovely birds and drive back or even catch plane back to town.
If I have made unwarranted generalisations, I accept the rebuke. But I hold to my point about defending the ‘bad apples’ by reference to a law-abiding majority. It misses the point – and in my view should not be run out in the case of the little bustard.
No, I have not missed the point. As far as I can see in the above posts no-one has defended the bad apples at all in any way. Let’s be clear, what they do is indefensible. Saying that not everyone who lives in the countryside – the beekeeper, the dairy maid, the country parson and Mrs Miggins the village shop-keeper – is responsible for the actions of these bad apples (and blaming the “average countryman” effectively says they are) is not in any way defending the people who actually are responsible.
If we insist on alienating everybody who lives in the countryside that won’t help us put an end to the bad things that are done to the wildlife we wish to see flourishing and could make things worse. As I suggested in my previous post the shooting community can legitimately be criticised for this kind of incident because, even if most of their members are perfectly law abiding, they and their representative organisations have done far too little to rid themselves of the criminals in their midst.
Re the shot bustard
This townie/countryman argument is pathetic. Have you any ideas how many young country lads have had to move more urban just to be able to afford a house and how many town dwellers when they have become more affluent have moved to the country?
Now back to the bustard. In the first photographs I saw of one (the same?) on the north east coast recently, the bird looked similar to a female pheasant.
I imagine (sadly) that this has been a case of mistaken identity by the shooter.
Should people who shoot have to take an id test for their license then and learn more about their quarry? Yes I think this would be a good idea. It would teach some of them more respect for what they are shooting.
Lets clear two things up.I made no comment that could in any way be described as defending bad apples.
I did not imply any townie/countryman as being better than the other or anything like that,I simply will not accept that countrymen are all trigger happy when majority do not even own guns.
In fact my own children have had to move into towns as village property in this area is not affordable for hardly any youngsters.
In fact it was not even a townie/countryman argument until Martin strangely saw it as that.
I’m with Dennis on this one. As a countryboy born, bread, working, and living, I find using the label “townie” or “country people” to dismiss the point of view of someone you disgree with about whatever the topic of conversation happens to be at the time is both rude and dumb. I’ve been on the receiving end too often.
I’d also make the point that, just as most farmers aren’t NFU members, I’d guess that most people who casually shoot small numbers of rabbits and the odd pheasant for personal consumption aren’t members of any of the organisations who like to deny there’s a issue with illegal persecution of BoP.
“The Shooting Industry” seems a better label for our opponents.
I suspect that Dennis, Jonathan and I are closer to heated agreement than disagreement. I carelessly appeared to agree with all of John Stone’s comment – which I don’t – and Martin amplified a dimension of the discussion in a way with which – again – I disagree. Leaving that aside, we are all agreed that shooting the little bustard was bad, but countrymen and women at large are not to be blamed for it. Where Dennis fairly criticises me is in that I appeared to criticise a country person with a gun for the shooting. I should not have done that, because the criticism applies to the person with the gun and we do not know who that was.
I think we are all agreed also that the discussion – not just ours but more widely – is over-polarised. No doubt I am as guilty as others. But the reason I reacted to Dennis’s first conmment was because – so it seemed to me – he appeared (that’s meant to be in italics) – and possibly unsurprisingly in view of John Stone’s initial comment – to be invoking an argument that I regard as both dead and deeply unhelpful – that just because most folk in the country don’t own guns and even fewer use them illegally, there is no issue to address. Surely the point is that there just is an issue to address and we all ought to do squarely, honestly and on equal terms.
Any more news from the Hawk and owl Trust? As a (former) member, I feel it is my right to know what was discussed at the Trustees’ meeting last week. Also, why has there been no press release from HOT about the sad resignation of Chris Packham as their president? He was very much loved by HOT members. Finally, why is a charity ‘dedicated to conserving owls and birds of prey in the wild’ now tweeting things such as ‘Plenty of Grouse in evidence on the High Moor today along with a Short-eared Owl.’ and ‘Another good day at the office with Grouse, Woodcock, Snipe, Jack Snipe and Golden Plover all seen on the High Moor today.’ … they seem to be very proud to be advocating brood management. Can they not see that the resignation of Chris Packham is a strong message that they are wrong in their proposed brood meddling stance? I thought charities had a legal obligation to be transparent?