Here are three somewhat disguised but accurate quotes from RSPB local groups on the subject of driven grouse shooting:
I am Group Leader for the ******* Group.
I have been an RSPB member for [decades] and a volunteer for [decades]. However, I struggle to see how DGS as a licenced activity would enhance biodiversity, combat climate change or lessen the frequency of flooding.
Congratulations on getting the 100k signatures and I look forward to supporting you regarding the issue of pheasant releases.
Thanks for this. I have forwarded it to the ************ Local Group. I am hoping that most of our members will already have signed the petition and if not, they should have done! My personal thanks for everything you and your colleagues are doing to stop/regulate driven grouse shooting.
I will not be forwarding this email to anyone. This is not the RSPB policy which is licensing rather than a ban.
The grouse shooting industry seems to make a better job of preserving the habitat for the Hen Harrier than the RSPB does. The grouse shooting industry also provides jobs.
Time the RSPB stuck to birds rather than politics.
The first two are typical of the responses I have seen on this subject (though the number of responses to contacts has, so far, been fairly small) and the third sounds like someone who has as many problems with the RSPB as with the idea of banning driven grouse shooting.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, the hashtag #memberforaban is being used by some RSPB members who signed the e-ptition (there must be tens of thousands) and wish that the RSPB would take a stronger line.
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Interesting comments. I am not sure this shows the rspb has a problem over its position but more likely a problem over how it is publishing its position.
For a local group leader to think that the rspb is looking to licence driven grouse shooting rather than licence grouse shooting as a whole seems to indicate a communication problem.
Bob – well, that group leader wouldn’t be the only one who doesn’t know what the RSPB position is…
Please can the RSPB simply ask what their members wish for, either a ban or a licence. I don’t understand why the membership have not been asked what they wish for and why despite these questions, from members, Natures Voice remains silent on their lack of engagement. Please tell us why – surely it is not an unreasonable question to ask or to think could be answered. Kind regards Andy.
I think it is you who has misunderstood the RSPBs position.
I would welcome a discussion between Wild Justice and the RSPB on the detail of how you would actually achieve your goals i.e. what activities would be banned/licensed; how would this be monitored and who would pay for the monitoring. You may have already outlined this in ‘Inglorious’, if so point me to the chapter(s) and I will re-read.
I think the RSPB has had a problem for some considerable time over it’s position on driven grouse shooting.
Firstly, I can understand the position over supporting licensing over banning grouse shooting. I used to hold that position, albeit quite a long time ago. However, now I’m more than willing to admit I was wrong, and Mark was right about this. My position was simply because I thought it had more chance of succeeding, and that a call to ban driven grouse shooting would be seen as anti-shooting, and so was less likely to be supported by politicians.
However, the sell by date for that idea expired many years ago. Firstly, this government has shown no enthusiasm for any sort of control over driven grouse shooting and the widespread illegal persecution of raptors on grouse moors. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly multiple lines of evidence shows that the illegal killing of raptors on managed grouse moors is far more widespread than anyone imagined, and may in fact be universal. Thirdly, this persecution appears to be intensifying. Finally, the DGS industry, and indeed the whole shooting industry interprets any highlighting of the problem or any suggestion of control as anti-shooting, and not just anti-driven grouse shooting.
The whole shooting industry is completely out of control, and the woefully inadequate response of this government is tantamount to a corrupt cover-up of widespread organized and orchestrated wildlife crime. Illustrating that the shooting industry has such power within the system, that it would simply subvert any licensing system and it would not be enforced. Vicarious liability in Scotland has proven to be utterly toothless.
Therefore the only strategy likely to succeed is a wide scale campaign to engage the public behind a plan to completely ban driven grouse shooting. As pointed out by many people it is not at all clear how the RSPB think they could ever get a plan to licence driven grouse shooting implemented, and how they think they could get such a system enforced, when the clear problem is that the government is reluctant to enforce the law as it currently stands.
Hear hear. Spot on.
Well said Sir!!
Yes the shooting industry is definitely out of control! To me the very worst example of this is usually missed which is why I keep bringing it up – people are actually being seriously injured and killed because of the ludicrously high red deer population in Scotland required for open hill deer stalking. If anyone believes that statement is too strong I’d love them to provide a reason why – it’s pure rational deduction. Dr Duncan Halley an expatriate Scot who now lives and works in Norway has given some excellent overviews of the difference in land management between the two countries. It’s interesting that often the foremost reason given for Norway keeping a close tab and cap on its red deer numbers is the reduction in road accidents!! Compare to Scotland where supplementary winter feed is often put out – near roads – to help keep malnourished and shelter less deer alive over winter. If it’s OK for people to have a red deer come through their windscreen if that’s what having lots of deer and no trees for easy stalking requires then no surprise the shooting community largely doesn’t care if rural communities are losing jobs because of driven grouse shooting or people’s homes downstream are being flooded by it. No great surprise they don’t give a tinker’s cuss for real wildlife conservation either.
Why should the RSPB take a stronger line? When they don’t need to.
The charity has always sat on the fencepost, and as an ex-employee you where part of that mismanagement. It’s great now that you have your pension you can say anything and not feel the consequences.
The RSPB has always been top-heavy and at the moment is going through the process of reorganizational navel gazing, by rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
The RSPB can’t or won’t do anything to alienate its core supporters – those little old dears who just keep writing those cheques for their birds. There is no objective publishing of the mistakes and failures of the RSPB; instead we get this sanitized propaganda. It took the equivalent of root canel torture on Martin Harper for him to admit that “actually we do control predators on our reserves”, but, “we do it on conservation values” not because “we get a nice bit of funding”.
The RSPB objectives are of a fund-raising business, when more employees are in marketing than on the reserves you start to look through the accounts. It’s perpetual motion, as you need to employ more fund-raisers to pay for the ones you already got.
The RSPB and other charities need a serious revamp of personnel, and the self-motivation to raise income through their own means and not continually have their hand held out.
Six years ago, I had no opinion on any charity or government body, I thought they all did a good job, but since our farm’s rewilding project, I’m in despair at the amount of incompetence I see.
The position of the RSPB is clear – it wants to make money.
Thomas Bickerton – I don’t think your view would be widely shared because it would be difficult to back up with evidence.
The RSPB has becaome far less campaigning over the years and that is a common subject of conversation among past RSPB staff, long-standing current RSPB staff and the RSPB’s colleagues in other conservation organisations. I don’t think there is any doubt about it. It may be the right thing for the RSPB to do but it is a subject of regret for me (and I’m not alone). I regret it because I don’t know what the RSPB stands for these days and I also regret it because it opens the RSPB up to criticisms like yours. You mischaracterise the typical RSPB member but that’s probably because you may not know much about them. Things may have changed, they often do, but from memory the RSPB has a youth membership of over 150,000 – that’s equivalent to the total membership of BASC by the way. If the RSPB has concentrated on money raising then it hasn’t, it seems, done it that well since it is laying off c20% of its staff.
The RSPB publishes an annual review of the numbers of predators killed on its nature reserves. This has been going for many years – I know, I started it because I thought that we should put in the public domain the fact that the RSPB carried out limited predator control on its nature reserves (even though there was already information on that action scattered around all over the place). So that information must have been out there , annually, for around a dozen years, maybe more. So no-one needed to pressurise Martin to know about that stuff – he’s been publishing it on his blog for 8 or 9 years.
The RSPB has an R problem, not a positioning problem. It wants to be pro birds, and also keep on being the “Royal” Society for the Protection of Birds too. But since or bunch of R’s are keep on driven grouse shooting, it can’t be too strongly opposed to it without risking losing the R status.
Random22 – I really don’t know where this idea comes from. I don’t believe there is anything in it at all.
I don’t think that the RSPB has a problem. I think it recognises that with the end of driven grouse shooting (which will surely come) the uplands will change on a landscape scale that would be hard to manage. There will be a lot more trees and a lot less heather. You can see this already on some of the Derbyshire moors which are no longer managed for grouse shooting. In the long term there might not be as many Harriers as everyone thinks as well as Golden Plovers and Curlews etc. But obviously the present situation cannot continue.
Mark, there are many points contained within the Comments you’ve received which I feel like responding to, but I’ll restrict things to what I believe are the main ones !
In my opinion the RSPB is terribly out of touch with its current supporters but , also, has a poor level of communication with them anyway. Yes, it has cut back on campaigning, but it appears painfully unclear itself on where it really stands on many subjects. I have to say there sometimes appears to be more clarity forthcoming on various subjects north of the border than from “English HQ “. From many people I’ve spoken to the previously commonly held assumption of the Society having a firm grip on matters is no longer applicable. Supporters are still loyal as they recognize there is a need for a national organization to represent the objectives associated with species and habitat protection, but the opinions on performance are that things need to improve, particularly on public profiles being communicated.
Now, an admission ! When I registered the E-petition to introduce licencing all those years ago the RSPB didn’t offer any support . Their embracing the concept came much later. What I did was to contact all Members Group Leaders directly and ask for the petition to be promoted among their local membership ( the details of such groups are in the public domain ). I only had one dissenter and the vast majority of support came from that source based on feedback I received. This most active part of the membership were honest in revealing they desperately wanted something to get their teeth into that at least did something in attempting to improve things relating to the raptor persecution problem. At least the effort resulted in excess of 10,000 signatures being registered and a written response being put on record by the Government.
It begs the question of whether the Society is overlooking its most valuable resource and whether more benefits might be secured for wildlife through its direct mobilization. This , coupled with far more clarity of what the Society stands for might even benefit its “standing” and supporter base, far more than promoting hedgehog houses! Having said that, the new CEO might have fresh ideas, but however desperate and passionate our concerns might be, such initiatives should be given an opportunity and our support shouldn’t waver in the meantime.
John – thanks. I’ve found those same Local Groups to be very supportive of the ban driven grouse shooting e-petitions. things have moved on, the debate has moved on, and RSPB Local Group have moved on too. Time for the RSPB to move on?