Richard Benyon MP is the second in this series of blogs introducing you to the trustees, chairs and patrons of wildlife and environmental charities etc. The idea is to let you know who is running or has a senior, perhaps albeit largely honorary, position in your favourite, or least favourite, charity.
The trustees in this series won’t all be grouse moor owners by any means, but this one is, as was the first in the series Lord Peel.
The family grouse moor is Glenmazeran and I’d love to tell you how its raptors are doing, as I believe there are good things to be said on this subject, but the estate has ticked the box for ‘no publicity’. In the olden days raptors apparently had a less friendly welcome. Richard Benyon is a trustee of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust but rather more interestingly, of a proper conservation organisation, Plantlife.
Mr Benyon and I agree on many things; we both supported ‘Remain’, we both support Plantlife, we both have a love of the natural world, and he is, at heart, quite pleasant company.
As a former junior Defra minister, a PUS in fact, in the first months of the coalition government Mr Benyon featured in this blog quite a few times and you’ll find him in the index of Inglorious too. Richard told me once, at an event, that he’d looked himself up in the index of Inglorious (in the House of Commons Library) and thought that most of it was nonsense – I think he was already walking away when I told my slightly surprised companion that he was probably right, most of the entries in the book featuring My Benyon were simply quotes. Sorry – I said I wouldn’t tease him.
But Richard Benyon is exactly the sort of trustee that many small conservation organisations would like in their number: handsome (I’m told, and I tend to agree), well-connected, charming, rich (for sure, see here and here) and genuinely interested in wildlife. Let’s hope he gives an increasing amount of time and tenderness to Plantlife at the expense of the GWCT.
[registration_form]
So Richard Benyon is a trustee of Plantlife. This would be the same Richard Benyon who in 2011 featured himself on his Facebook page pulling up Ragwort and stated:
“I hate ragwort. It may not be the issue of the moment but I am on the warpath for those who let this vile weed spread. Chief target at the moment is the Highways Agency,”
Check out Buglife’s page on Ragwort, which tells you how important this species is for insect life.
I’d highly recommend reading the excellent ragwortfacts.com site to see how the hysteria about this important for pollinators native plant is not based on solid science, but made up factoids.
Whilst on the subject of Richard Benyon. Remember his £350,000 project to “control” Common Buzzards on pheasant shoots, paid for with taxpayers money, when he was an environment minister. If I remember rightly it involved destroying their nests. By no coincidence Benyon owns a large pheasant shoot, and George Monbiot uncovered a video interview with one of Benyon’s gamekeepers several years previous from his attempt to control Common Buzzards on pheasant shoots, using his position as an environment minister, taxpayers money etc – where the gamekeeper was ranting about the adverse effects of Common Buzzards on pheasant shoots.
Surprised you don’t mention his opposition to banning carbofuran.
This from Wikipedia:
In 2012, while Wildlife Minister he refused a request from other MPs that possession of carbofuran, a deadly poison used to kill raptors that is banned in Canada and the European Union, should be made a criminal offence. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas was quoted as saying: “The minister’s shocking refusal to outlaw the possession of a poison used only by rogue gamekeepers to illegally kill birds of prey would be inexplicable were it not for his own cosy links to the shooting lobby”.
I felt Plantlife abandoned their conservation integrity by remaining so silent over driven grouse shooting. I expected them to be far more conserned about our upland species. Can’t they envision anything better for these huge areas of of our countryside that are being managed so disasterously and leaving species vulnerable with nowhere to go in our climate change. What is going on with them?
Hearing that Richard Benton is a trustee does not fill me with confidence.
What an interesting feature ,Mark. I look forward to future articles on trustees. I am particularly keen to see information on the National Trust.
Good idea this, generally speaking it is always interesting to see how decisions taken could have possibly been influenced by vested interests that aren’t immediate to others.
On a very pedantic and tree related note…
“Liz is planting English Elms and other native trees at her home in Kent.” is a quote from the Plantlife Trustees page. English Elm, or to be more correct, a cultivar of the Field Elm known as Atinian Elm, is not native to the UK. Yep, I know I am being picky, but it is another great example of tree-blindness in people and organisations that really should know better.