He’s no fool and he may be getting better advice these days too: Michael Gove is moving to plug some gaping holes in the Tory wildlife policies. And he’s starting with the animal cruelty issues. It should come as no surprise that a clever politician is doing some of the things that are relatively painless for government, cheap and will be popular. The surprising thing is that his predecessors didn’t see these easy wins. Imagine an in-form Harry Kane and that’s Michael Gove on the political pitch.
Sentences for animal cruelty, plastic use and ivory sales – all neat little announcements that give the (correct) impression that there is a new broom sweeping the dusty corridors of Defra.
I was asked at the Bucks Bird Club last night what I thought of Michael Gove and I was, I think, quite nice about him, as I was in my last Birdwatch column, but I also said that we’ll have to judge him by his actions and not just his words – which we will.
But there is enough already to show that the government realises that it has to do much better on wildlife issues and the elephant in the countryside is, of course, the badger cull – an anti-science, anti-farming and deeply unpopular policy.
It will be good when the Opposition gets motoring on wildlife issues – we are still waiting.
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I’m prepared to wait a couple of years before I’d praise him to see if the words turn into significant action, always assuming this government lasts that long, of course.
“[Gove]’s no fool”
[citation needed]
Look, he’s a tory so that either means he is a fool or deliberately chosen to be evil.
I agree he’s no fool and therefore I think he’s saying and doing a few good (but easy) things to lull us into false sense of security whilst he plans something really nasty
The important thing to watch is what happens to the EU Nature Directives (Birds and Habitats Directives) after Brexit. We need the regulations to be kept and for there to be a built-in safeguard to ensure that future governments can’t just ignore them when convenient
I would dearly love to be wrong….
Please read: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/06/britains-wildlife-needs-urgent-new-protections-ahead-of-brexit-say-mps
What an awful pillock talking about saving the Elephant while Hen Harriers getting slaughtered on his patch more or less.
Dennis, the situation that the Hen Harrier finds itself in in this country is a serious one and should unquestionably be high on the Secretary of State’s list of priorities but it is frankly ludicrous to suggest that he should disregard other serious environmental problems including those that are happening elsewhere in the word – he has the potential to make a difference for better or worse on more than one thing at a time. The fact that elephants do not occur in the UK may be reason enough for you to not care about them being slaughtered in their thousands in order to make trinkets from their tusks but I certainly do care and I believe many other reasonable people do too. As I understand it, the UK has played a significant part in the ivory trade and it is a relatively simple thing for the Government to make the trade illegal here and thus help reduce the demand that drives the slaughter. To use your terminology, previous Secretaries of State have been awful pillocks for not taking this action sooner to help the elephant.
Jonathon,where did I say I did not care about Elephants.
Your take that he should be capable of two species is no better than what I said.
In fact he should be capable of mentioning several cases of persecution.
Surprised that you could think I only had the will to campaign on behalf of Hen Harriers.
I have also said in the past that William should put the cause of Hen Harriers in the limelight but that did not mean either that he should ignore Elephants.
Really can you quote anytime I have said I do not care about Elephants.
I certainly think Gove could do far more for Hen Harriers than he has done and even doubt his sincerity in doing much in the future.Lets face it if the Government of which he is part of wanted to they could cut the persecution down dramatically.
Maybe you think Gove is great but his history would not prove he is a good ally.
Very difficult for a Leopard to change their spots.
I better say he ought to campaign for them as well or you might think I do not care about their well being.
Delighted to hear how much you care about elephants Denis. I drew my conclusion from the fact that you called Gove an awful pillock for taking steps to protect elephants.
I have neither said nor implied that I think Gove is great but I don’t see any sense in kicking politicians when they do something that we actually want them to do – such as protecting elephants.
Not sure that bit about Badger cull being anti-science surely the Government have said many times their scientists made this plan.
Although I am not in favour of this type of cull I cannot agree that it disperses Badgers any different to what always happens in nature with all animals and birds which is that as the young get to maturity they get moved on to find a territory away from where they were reared which is natures way I would have thought of stopping in-breeding.
You need to read this, Dennis…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2279223/
Coop,thank you,well it does seem that it says this culling increases movement but by how much is really the question is it minor or major.
The fact does remain however that movement must occur when there is no cull because older animals will always move on the youngsters it is nature.
I do take your point of course.
Nobody’s denying that dispersal occurs, Dennis, but that’s not the same thing as movement caused by peturbation.
More essential reading..
http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/ft/ext/tr/TR_Process_2003.pdf
As to older animals moving youngsters on? From the above paper…
“Previous studies of dispersal in badgers, based largely on capture-mark-recapture data, have shown that dispersal is relatively rare in high-density populations; is more frequent in males than in females; involves animals of all age classes; usually entails movement to a neighbouring territory; and does not appear to involve the disperser being forcibly driven from its original social group (Cheeseman et al., 1988; Woodroffe, Macdonald & da Silva, 1993;Christian, 1994; Rogers et al., 1998). Our results are consistent with all of these findings.”
Hope this helps. 😉
Coop,thank you,of course anything in a positive way always helps.
I think my point was that it is inevitable that movement happened without a cull as that is nature and usually it is in just about all species the young who get moved on.
Afraid I still think that would be the cause of most movements although should a top boar get killed or die for another reason would expect a boar from neighbouring sett to try and move in.
So all these scientists and naturalists who’ve studying Badger behaviour in depth were wasting their time because you don’t agree with them? Are you really trying to tell us that all animals and birds have the same evolved behaviour and ecological strategies?
We know what the government says. The problem is that the scientists who were actually on the ISG, wrote the Final Report, and who were behind this research, strenuously insist that the government are not following their research at all. Who do you think has the most insight into this research, the scientists who wrote it, or the none scientifically trained politicians?
You have misread what I said putting in your idea of what I said.
Government scientists approved the cull as I understand.If you say that is incorrect then say so.
All people anything to do with nature know that mature animals move younger ones after rearing on to different areas.Are you disputing that.
SteB,we had Badgers on the farm for 40 years and do not think they were any different in their actions to other animals and birds.For sure when grown big enough youngsters were moved on,it is the way it happens in probably all species.There may be exceptions but they would be rare cases and certainly a Badger Sett would soon become overcrowded if it did not happen and food become scarce due to increased numbers in that area.
We need a joined up approach to the conservation of our biodiversity, and other environmental matters. The reason the Tories are so bad when it comes to conservation and environmental protection is because the Conservative Party is essentially represent various vested interests who find that conservation laws and environmental protection regulation gets in their way. Michael Gove is not going to be immune to the lobbying of the vested interests who back and finance the Conservative Party.
Any Environment Secretary could virtually end illegal raptor persecution very quick if they were so minded and had the support of their party. All that would be necessary is severe punishments for illegal persecution of raptors. Say with an automatic and substantial prison sentenced, reduced in severity if the person cooperates with the authorities in naming others involved. Secondly order the police to take it seriously and provide resources for them to investigate it. Thirdly licence all managed shoots, and make it a stipulation of licensing that shoots have to cooperate with the monitoring of protected raptors and other protected wildlife.
After all this is the approach the Tories take when it comes to dealing with other matters like illegal recreational drugs, and other anti-social behaviour.
This would be far more effective concerning the illegal persecution of raptors. This isn’t being perpetrated by people with drug addiction, who live on the edge of society, and who would take great risks to carry on with their crime. If they thought they were under constant investigation, monitoring, and there were serious consequences for engaging in it, illegal raptor persecution would soon become a rarity.
Michael Gove could easily do it. However, he wouldn’t do this, because senior figures in the Conservative Party would be enraged by such effective measures and start demanding that Gove be removed from his position, or that he desist from following this path.