I spoke to an audience of 160 folk in a church in Preston on Monday evening. I enjoyed it.
There were some familiar faces in the audience (some raptor workers, some RSPB staff, some birders, some regular readers of and commenters on this blog and some BASC staff). It made the evening more interesting to have about a dozen people from a shooting background present. They were very welcome, and mostly well-behaved.
Here is one report of the evening which seems to miss out quite a lot…
Preston’s a long way for me to travel but it would be a comedy evening to hear this event if it included such gems as came from the shooting community on Monday night, such as…
The RSPB is a major cause of Hen Harrier deaths not gamekeepers
Walkers and ramblers bring nothing to the rural economy
It’s a lie that there is a lot of lead in the meat of Red Grouse shot with lead pellets
It raises a question that often pops into my mind – do the authors of these remarks believe them? I think they do, which is a bit sad but I think that these thoughts are put into the heads of the susceptible by people who know perfectly well that these arguments are false.
I don’t doubt that the woman who was slightly inarticulately blaming the RSPB for the lack of Hen Harriers in England believes that to be the case – but I wonder where she got that idea? Some BASC staff, who I have heard use the same argument, cannot possibly believe that. They really aren’t that stupid.
But no matter, my aim is not to persuade the shooting community to admit their errors but to mobilise our supporters and the neutral public to realise that driven grouse shooting is an anachronism and one which is underpinned by wildlife crime and unsustainable land management which harms us all.
And slowly, slowly, we are winning that battle. When Countryfile talks sense about moorland burning then we know that things are changing. And remember that this year is going to be another bad year for driven grouse shooting.
And on the way back from Preston, via Bowland and Walshaw Moor yesterday I remembered those words of Gandhi, that I first heard from the mouth of Chris Packham on the first Hen Harrier Day in 2014, ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win’. We will win!
[registration_form]
Walker and ramblers bring nothing to the rural economy?
This was always the narrative, the countryside economy was farming and country pursuits – hunting etc.
Then the foot and mouth outbreak came along and the country folk quickly shut all the footpaths. Great keep them troublesome townies ooarf ooour laaaand. Hang on the pub looks like it’s going bust, the nice cafe has gone under, all the shops in the village are shutting, the local town has lost most of its outlets. Eh What all those people were keeping the local economy going.
It’s a great ‘quote’ Mark, but there’s little to no evidence that Gandhi ever said it. Trump got some bad press when he used it.
No doubt the Bowland keepers will be keen to explain why there used to be Hen Harriers on Bowland and aren’t any now.
I was thinking that Roderick, especially as they disappeared from the private estates first where RSPB holds no sway. They also managed to disappear in the Yorkshire Dales and Peak District too where there was no RSPB involvement but still lots of tweed clad keepers.
Then they seem to promulgate this ridiculous myth/lie that harriers need keepers to survive! I’ve always found quite the reverse is true, the last thing nesting harriers need is a standard gamekeeper.
It was a fascinating evening, I’m glad I attended.
There were several things which became apparent during the evening but try as I might I couldn’t catch the eye of the young lady with the microphone to bring them to your attention. I hope you don’t mind if I do that now.
My first observation, and it is in no way a criticism- you’re not the greatest public speaker. If you’re on a book tour that’s fair enough but perhaps billing it as such might have been the more honest course of action, rather than shoe-horning in the many references (including the price) to it.
If you’re going to bring up facts and figures, try consigning them all to memory. Or make some notes. A friendly gentleman asked specifically about EMBER and lead in water. You couldn’t recall whether the EMBER report had drawn any conclusions about the increase in traces of lead in the water of moorland managed for grouse but you could recall the parts of the report which benefitted your cause. It does open you up to the criticism of “cherry-picking”, which is a shame.
You mentioned the flooding in Hebden Bridge on numerous occasions. I did want to ask you why the first reported incident of flooding in Hebden Bridge happened 105 years before the first recorded driven grouse shoot took place (and not at Hebden Bridge) but unfortunately the gentleman behind me raised the subject of Winter Hill; at which time I learnt that you were far happier to subject moorland to a catastrophic deep burn and the devastation that causes to wildlife than a periodic cool burn of small areas which does not affect wildlife, or the carbon deposits below.
I’m not sure how a vulture shot with a bulleted rifle round proved your point about lead deposits in game meat from shotgun pellets, but was interested to learn that you’d gone to the trouble of testing red grouse shot in Scandinavia for the same. You will no doubt have tested red grouse sold by Waitrose for similar, given that this is a pet subject of yours, but you didn’t mention it at all. If you haven’t done this it does seem a little remiss. If you have, and it didn’t prove the point you were hoping for, well that’s just cherry picking.
The refusal to discuss Langholm 2 also possibly smacks of cherry picking but I did find your involvement in Langholm 1 fascinating and thank you for your involvement in a process which undoubtedly proved that the work of gamekeepers directly resulted in the success of breeding hen harriers and without the vermin control the hen harriers would not, and did not survive. We are both aware that Langholm 2 reiterates that point and I’m sure Simon Lester would be only too happy to provide you with sufficient quotable information to bring to further audiences on your book tour, providing you quote them in full.
You alluded to roads driven in to Scottish grouse moors as a bad thing. I’m sure you’re aware that the majority are access roads for wind farms but perhaps your audience were not. Sharing that information enables people to have a more fully rounded view on what is actually going on in the uplands.
I was relieved to hear you’ve finally got around to having a plan for the uplands should you achieve your aim in banning DGS. I did ask you way back during your first petition what you would do and unfortunately the glib response you offered was “open a bottle of champagne”. When you were asked a similar question in 2015 during the Westminster House submissions you fumbled for an answer so it was great to hear that 4 years later you’ve finally come up with a plan to convert our national parks into huge ‘Center Parc” styled theme parks. Unfortunately everyone I’ve since spoken to near my home in the Yorkshire Dales National Park thinks this is possibly the most ridiculous thing they’ve ever heard so you may have to do a bit more work in winning over the locals. Perhaps a fully costed plan rather than a starry-eyed wish might alleviate their fears that whole rural communities would be driven from their homes to make way for clusters of wooden chalets scattered about a natural tinder box, whilst those that remain would be forced to wear a vacant smile, a brightly coloured uniform and a name badge professing they are “happy to help”.
Don’t worry about responding. You very rarely do. And my patience is wearing a bit thin on the glib responses. I’ve heard enough of those already.
Paul Dale – thanks for your second comment here (under that name and email address anyway).
I do apologise for being such an awful public speaker – it must have been my shortcomings that meant that you stopped listening at the beginning of the talk given that you have misremembered so badly.
If you had bought a copy of Inglorious then you could check some facts for yourself. The book is part of the campaign to ban driven grouse shooting and the more people who have it, read it, understand it the better. That is probably why it irritates you so much.
The friendly gentleman did not ask specifically about EMBER – he asked specifically about lead concentrations. I said that I didn’t know of any studies that had looked at that and I don’t (although there may be some). If you look at the EMBER study full report then it doesn’t appear to me, because I have checked here https://water.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2017/06/EMBER_full-report.pdf that it looked at Pb concentrations. I cannot now remember whether it was while responding to that gentleman’s question, or whether talking to him afterwards (when he bought a copy of Inglorious by the way) that I said to him and several others that I would be a bit surprised if the lead levels were higher in water draining off grouse moors – although there is a lot of lead, there is an awful lot of land and an awful lot of water. And I said that if there were higher lead levels then I would have expected water companies to know about them and I hadn’t heard tell of this. To recap, for it seems you find these things difficult to assimilate; I said I was unaware of any evidence but that I’d be surprised if any evidence that exists shows much of a problem. That seems perfectly reasonable to me, and rather kind to grouse shooting when you come to think about it. Do think about it please.
Flooding in Hebden Bridge. The first occasion of flooding might have been in biblical times but the evidence suggests and local people are convinced (rightly or wrongly) that the incidence of flooding has increased in recent years. And the science shows that the type of intensification of moorland management including putting in more drains, would be expected to increase the severity of floods. Have a look at the EMBER report and the subsequent studies.
Your next point is very funny amnd completely wrong! You were only half listening. There was no vulture shot with a bullet – it was a deer. And the grouse I purchased were not from Scandinavia but were from the frozen food store Iceland – how funny. So they were perfectly relevant to the issue in hand (lead levels in game meat shot with lead shot or bullets). There is loads of science, indisputable science on this subject. That’s why M&S have been persuaded – several times – not to sell grouse meat in their stores and why Waitrose have been persuaded to change the labelling of their game meat at some point in the future. All of this has been covered in detail on this blog. Have a look at the results of lead analysis of grouse meat bought in Iceland (the store not the country) here but there are lots of other similar studies that got similar results. https://markavery.info/2016/01/27/lead-week-pb10/ And as I said on Monday, NHS England recommend that pregant women do not eat game meat shot with lead.
I did not refuse to discuss Langholm 2 – I said quite a lot about it in questions. Most of it is not agreed and not published (as I said) so it is difficult to know what the consortium make of it let alone what the rest of us should do. But I did point out that the results of late summer grouse counts indicated that there were enough grouse in some years to have a perfectly decent grouse shoot similar to those in prevuious years at Langholm. I said more too – hardly refusing to discuss it. Were you really listening?
Langholm 1 is the key study though (see Chapter 3 of Inglorious). It showed, contrary to some expectations, as I said on Monday (and as I always say in such talks) that raptors (HH and Pergrines in this case) eat enough Red Grouse to make driven grouse shooting unviable. This is the nub of the conflict when it comes to HH – they make a difference to how many grouse can be shot, a big difference. So, you have to choose what you want (and the law has chosen, and killing birds of prey is illegal). Do you remember that bit?
Roads are not all to windfarms – many are to grouse butts. There are plenty of examples in the Peak District, covered on this blog, where the lansdscape has been damaged because people don’t want to walk to a grouse butt they want to be deliverd there by vehicle.
I’ve always had a plan for the uplands – or several plans. Read Chapter 6 of Inglorious (published 2015). You can also read about my thoughts in the People’s Manifesto for Wildlife or in this blog here https://markavery.info/2018/10/01/41100/
But thanks for your comment. Maybe you should come to another of my talks then you could get it right, and take some reading home with you so that you could check a few things.
Iceland? Really? I must have nodded off.
Even in your response you’re picking out only those facts which suit your agenda. Is four years really such a long time that you’ve forgotten that at some point you’ll be called to account for the things you’ve said and found to be woefully wanting? You may be able to dance around a room full of twitchers with a smattering of gamekeepers thrown in, dodging the facts and ignoring the insults, but when it really counted, when you had a real opportunity, you fell on your face spectacularly.
Don’t put up links for me to read, you’re not schooling me. I can see through you. I spent £4 to get in to hear what you had to say as a self-appointed expert. I could have bought a pint in my local for that money and asked the old boy at the end of the bar what he thought of EMBER and got a don’t know in response. The fact that you didn’t think of a suitable answer until your book signing tells me more than I needed to know about what a fake and a fraud you are.
Fortunately if it came to it again, and the future of the uplands depended on what you know and what you believe, you’d be found out again. We both know that.
Paul – well you certainly weren’t paying much attention, that is clear.
You can be as rude as you like here – it shows those who weren’t in the audience on Monday how rattled you are by those who stand up to your bluster. And those in the room will have made up their own minds (and being called twitchers won’t have helped your case with many of them either).
I’m not schooling you – you might be in detention if I were – but you tried to win an argument on the science and now we can all see that you have simply switched to insults.
Tell us more about yourself. Gamekeeper? Landowner? Shooter? From where?
There is no substance at all in your pathetic bluster. You make lots of accusations against Mark, but none of them are backed up by reason and evidence. It’s funny because the whole style of dishonest argument is incredibly familiar to me. Yet it’s utter waffle and bluster. Not one single clear cut example of Mark being wrong about anything in two long verbose rants. Mark seems to have caught you out blatantly making things up, and you have no answer to his responses, just personal abuse. I bet your computer screen was covered in spittle after these rants.
I was proud to have been in the audience with several members of the NWRG. In the years to come I will remember the moment, hoping by then our precious raptors will be allowed to breed in safety on all of our country’s uplands where persecution has become an activity of the past.
A complete joke if it wasant for gamekeepers managing the uplands moorland it would be desert… Rspb is a complete joke… Stoats has anyone read about the Orkney stoat project
Jw – thank you for your comment.
JW, you obviously need a lesson in eco systems and how they function.
If gamekeepers where needed to keep the uplands alive then then what was going on before they arrived?
Do you seriously believe that all life was wiped out by stoats and other such predators? That gamekeepers came along and all of a sudden the hills are awash with wildlife?
I am fully aware of the proposal to remove stoats from Orkney.
The Orkney Isles have always been devoid of such a predator and thats why it is such an important place for sea bird colonies. It is a rare and important sanctuary.
No one is trying to eradicate stoats from the cliffs of Cornwall, are they? But sea birds and all sorts of wildlife live and breed there just the same.
Think about why and go study eco systems and evolution while your at it!
Well, there’s all your arguments demolished in one brief and barely lucid post by Jw. You might as well pack-up and go home, Mr Avery!
innocent – I’ll pack my bags…
Quite right paul. The question to ask is why when a harrier breeds in bowland it is always on united utilities land but never on one of the private estates, it is only a fence that separates these estates from each other but it might as well be a universe such is the difference for all birds of prey