Dear Mark
Thanks for your email regarding our work on lead.
We agree that there is clear and compelling evidence of the impact of lead ammunition on wildlife, as well as on human health, which is why our organisations support a ban. As you know and acknowledged in your blog, both our organisations (along with others) have invested considerable time in providing and evaluating evidence and trying to develop consensus with a broad range of interest groups about the way forward.
While we recognise that e-petitions can be a great way to shed light on an issue, as ever, our engagement needs to be guided by the actions we think will achieve the best possible resolution of this issue in the most efficient way.
We would be happy if you post this email on your blog.
Best wishes,
Martin and Mike
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This must be a winnable campaign. How anyone can justify continued spraying of large amounts of lead into the envoronment absolutely beats me. Surely even the shooting fraternity don’t want their birds filling their gizzards with bits of lead.
Weak, weak, weak. Nothing more to say.
So would the honourable gentlemen care to outline the actions which they feel will achieve the best possible resolution to this issue, bearing in mind the recent catalogue of environmental issues which this Government is avoiding or denying?
Of course many will have had the experience of trying to tell an organisation that something needs doing only to receive the same sort of response – nobody tells us what to do, we decide that ourselves. Unfortunately in this case that seems to be to just sit by and twiddle thumbs.
They should drop the royal from RSPB and get on with it.
Lead work is touching on the periphery of the main issue that needs to be dealt with, this continues to be the illegal persecution and shooting of Raptors particularly the Hen Harrier by Grouse shoot interests.
As an RSPB member I struggle to understand the lack of asking their membership for support with this issue, particularly Mark’s petition. Serious questions should be asked of the RSPB’s continuing position.
regards Andy
Yup, I got that same reply about the use of Diclofenac in Europe.
Maybe nows the time to take ‘Protection’ out of the title!
“Maybe now’s the time to take ‘Protection’ out of the title!”
That is the position taken by ‘You Forgot the the Birds’ too. Personally, I think you are both wrong. The RSPB clearly does a vast amount of work to protect birds – see for example today’s blog by Chris Bowden. As regards shooting, it is not for nothing that many in the shooting community hate the RSPB. On the specific issue of lead ammunition I would point out that the work of the Lead Ammunition Group – working with stakeholders from all sides and building up the evidence case to support a recommendation for a complete ban on lead shot – provides us with our best chance yet of achieving a ban and that both RSPB and WWT have quietly and boringly contributed enormously to this work.
Whether or not the RSPB chooses to lose its ‘Royal’ status, it will never be able to be as outspoken and uncompromising as Mark or people like him, simply by virtue of the scale and nature of the organisation it is, the work it does do and its need to work with other people including government, the representatives of farming, shooting, industry, etc as well as the need to maintain funding. Does that mean it should pack up and go away? Evidently not; the RSPB by virtue of its scale, status and wide-ranging professional expertise can achieve things that are completely beyond the possibilities of independent activists such as Mark, whether it be acquisition and management of nature reserves, the protection of rare bird nesting sites and investigation of persecution, species rescue projects such as that described by Chris Bowden, researching the causes of bird population declines and so on. Does that mean that Mark should shut up and go away? Equally obviously not! As an independent activist, accountable to no board of directors or funder, he is free to speak his mind as frankly and forthrightly as he wishes and nimble enough to react quickly and decisively to any issue of concern to him. He can rattle cages in a way that a relatively staid, corporate organisation can never do. We surely need both approaches in the continuing struggle to ensure that wildlife is not pushed ever further into the margins.
Of course, this does not mean that the RSPB should be immune from criticism. Where it is perceived to be insufficiently effective or otherwise getting things wrong it is quite right that this should be pointed out. I do think, though, that a lot of the criticism that gets heaped upon it by people who are essentially on the same side is not constructive and goes well over the top.
With respect to on-line petitions, I believe that it would be helpful for the RSPB to publicly back the petition to ban grouse shooting. If it could mobilise a relatively small proportion of its members it could push the number of signatures up to the threshold for a Parliamentary debate which would be of immense value. However, we should not believe that petitions are some kind of magic bullet that will solve any problem. Those that point out that the RSPB’s approach to Hen Harrier persecution over the years has failed to solve the problem are right to seek new approaches but we would do well to bear in mind that so far NO approach has solved the problem. I very much doubt that a solution to either hen harrier persecution or lead ammunition will be found that does not involve a substantial role for the RSPB. So, by all means constructively criticize the RSPB but lets leave the slagging off to the likes of YFTB who really are on the other side.