‘Encouraging a response from those who defend the status quo is important too. A victory is scored when your opponents are forced to debate issues they would rather leave ignored…‘ from Owen Jones, The Establishment.
Well, there’s been a lot of that going on recently:
- Grouse shooting: half a million reasons why time’s up for this appalling Victorian ‘sport’ – the Observer
- Protest walk against Ilkley Moor grouse shooting – BBC
- Grouse shooting is truly glorious for Britain’s endangered wildlife – Robin Page in Telegraph
- After 150 years are the days of grouse shooting numbered? Financial Times
- Protesters call for end to grouse shooting on Glorious Twelfth – Guardian
- The Glorious Twelfth – in defence of grouse shooting – Ian Coghill of GWCT in the i
- The Glorious Twelfth – in the future we’ll look back disdainfully on grouse shooting – Philippa of LACS in the i
- Is the twelfth really ‘glorious’ or does it spell doom for wildlife on our Yorkshire moors? – Yorkshire Post includes a poll on whether grouse shooting should be banned
- Cute? No they’re verminous killers – by Ian Botham in the Mail on Sunday
- The Glorious Twelfth – what is it and why is it so controversial? Huffington Post
- The grouse shooting season has started but all is not well on the moors – The Canary
And the grouse shooters keep using the same tired old male faces, who write in the most unsympathetic way possible, to try to defend the questionable. Over and over again they attack those with different views rather than promote their own views. It’s almost as if they know they have a chronically poor case. If you want people to believe that grouse shooting is indefensible then just spread the words from the defenders of this ‘sport’.
A victory is scored when your opponents are forced to debate issues they would rather leave ignored – and a further victory is scored when they do it in an unpleasant and off-putting manner, and yet another victory is scored when it looks as though they don’t have anything convincing to say. We have changed the tone of the coverage of grouse shooting – even the papers that support grouse shooters really cannot ignore the issues surrounding it.
Yes, it’s been a really bad few days for the grouse shooters.
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That Yorkshire Post poll is still running – and it’s 50/50 at the moment for and against a ban. Link: http://bit.ly/2uA9D0A
Spot on Mark: the more the grouse shooters are forced to present their case, the more ludicrous sensible people think it is.
It’s like the distasteful things that go on under cover on the dark web. Get it out into the public’s gaze as much as possible, and opposition will gain an unstoppable momentum.
The classic no defense is when someone denigrates you personally because they have nothing left to argue with – the indefensible peddling the same old rhetoric – time to put the Victorian attitudes out to grass ….
A couple of absolute belters from facebook…
“Why does all this hey (sic) blamed on keepers because if hen harriers just eat voles and other small animals then they don’t get killed it’s just poachers who kill them for sport and they get away with it because it’s on keepers land”
“I suggest that you undertake a little research on the issue.”
“Then you’ll know that the vast majority of persecution incidents take place on or around DGS land. Why are these “poachers” not targeting Hen Harriers away from these areas.
https://www.cieem.net/…/Ian_Thomson_SCOT27012016.pdf”
“Because they have someone to set the blame on if poachers killed a harrier on an estate then when someone found it they would assume it was a keeper”
“Read the question again, please. And look at the pie chart titled “Occupations of those convicted for offences linked to raptor persecution in Scotland”. Simple denial, in the face of damning evidence, does nothing for the image of your hobby.”
“Don’t really care what you say because I know the truth firsthand and you just want to throw fake evidence in my face trying to back yourself up with data and charts nothing better than the knowledge in you’re mind by the way it’s a way of life not a hobby”
And…
“foxes and other predictors (sic) are attracted to grouse moors because of the abundance of food, they are shot if found maintaining a balance between predator and prey, benefitting both us and the prey (including hen harriers) the reason why harriers have better success if breeding on non grouse moors is because there is less food which causes less predators to be present!”
What gibberish – don’t eat lead-tainted food kids
In a sense Botham is the gift that keeps on giving, but sadly for those of us who laugh it off as the ramblings of an out-of-touch ignoramus, it is worrying that so many people take his words seriously. How can anyone fail to see the irony in his statement that “Everyone who lives in the countryside knows that nature left to its own devices is a brutal place”? Like so many of his ilk, this merely demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of nature (not to mention country dwellers!), where humans are afforded a god-given right to judge the “criminal intent” of predators. He seems to believe that we have some weird moral duty to teach wildlife to behave in a more civilised manner! Yet apparently his own moral code permits him to blast away with his shotguns at anything he pleases, purely for the fun of it. He’s a classic hypocrite. Having said that, I have some longstanding concerns about the philosophical status of the RSPB. Despite what Beefy says, they do kill foxes at selected reserves, as well as crows, which could equally be considered an unacceptable level of interference with nature. The RSPB may be happy internally with this policy, but it’s high time they made their own ethical policies subject to more open debate. Perhaps if they listened to others (or even many of their own staff who are uncomfortable with the policy), they might realise that the only effective way to reduce raptor persecution is to campaign for an end to blood sports, especially driven grouse shooting. Instead they choose to use their libertarian policy as a marketing tool.
An interesting and thoughtful comment, as always, Iain. I share your concerns about some aspects of the RSPB’s policy. I know some HH supporters will have had concerns about Sunday’s march alongside anti-foxhunting and anti-badger-cull groups, but my experience from this and other marches is that the concerns run the other way, too. Some rank-and-file activists and supporters of animal welfare groups are quite suspicious about birders in general and the RSPB in particular, largely due to their stance on culling. It’s also probably the most common remark thrown in my face when talking with shooters and gamekeepers: ‘The RSPB are nothing but total hypocrites – they cull the species they don’t like just as much as anyone!’
It puts the RSPB on shaky moral ground, particularly as in many cases they themselves are trying to produce very high densities of their target species on some nature reserves. This insecurity may account for some of what I regard as their bizarre attitudes towards shooting and raptor persecution.
The shooters will grab at any tiny piece of ammunition they can find, so it’s important not to offer them ready-made arguments on a plate.
AlanTwo – I am often asked about it too – usually by shooters who have a very strange idea of what the RSPB does (but I was in Boat of Garten 10 days ago too). It’s akin to the ‘If you eat meat then you have no right to criticise fieldsports’ argument. The RSPB used to (and I guess it still does) use predator control as a last resort rather than a standard management technique. Some reserve wardens (not many actually) used to complain if they were asked to get predator control done on ‘their’ nature reserves, whereas a higher number felt they were being held back by having to jump through hoops (red tape, bureaucracy) before permission would be given. I wrote about this issue in Fighting for Birds in the chapter entitled ‘Is it ever right to be nasty to birds?’ and the section on predator control is on pp74-76.
I’d argue that killing foxes has a tad more similarity to a certain well-known blood sport than simply buying sausages from the supermarket does! But I certainly agree that there is a world of difference between predator control on RSPB reserves and the routine, callous poisoning, snaring and shooting of wildlife by some in the shooting industry, and I’m reasonably familiar with the logic behind it.
However, it’s not me that needs persuading. I was thinking of normal people who don’t spend a ridiculous proportion of their waking hours reading blogs like this one and books like yours. If we are to achieve real changes in the shooting landscape we will need to engage large numbers of ordinary folk who do not have a sophisticated understanding of conservation ecology, but who may have a very strong instinctive sense of what is admirable and what is distasteful. Most people judge these matters on a mixture of emotion and broad concepts such as fair play and compassion rather than detailed scientific arguments.
If you were to ask me why I usually support the Labour Party, I’d say something very general like, ‘I think governments’ first priority should be to support and protect the weak and the disadvantaged,’ rather than launching into a detailed analysis of tax or housing policy. Most successful environmental campaigns have a strong ethical dimension and are based on simple, consistent principles. Making exceptions, even for the best of reasons, weakens the case.
Of course, there is a cost for most ethical actions. Not killing predators might mean having to spend more on fencing, or tolerating a lower density or population growth rate of some target species. But not occupying the moral high ground can lead to squirming around on a whole bunch of uncomfortable fences, and I fear the RSPB (and the NT, WTs, Hot) often find themselves doing just that.
Mark – I won’t spin this out much longer (honest), but I’ve just re-read the thread on the ‘gull cull’ and realised that I should have put NE at the top of my list of conservation bodies that have abandoned the moral high ground on particular issues and find themselves stumbling around in the resulting minefield.
AlanTwo – you’re always welcome!