BASC is asking DEFRA to take notice of them – that’s usually what BASC press releases are about.
This one has an inherent flaw in it though, although I expect that they will get away with it. What is that flaw? BASC asks DEFRA to take account of shooting’s conservation benefits when considering what to do about shooting. Tricky…
Is there a long line of real conservation organisations queuing up in support of BASC to say ‘Please Mr Eustice, we are real nature conservationists and despite the fact that BASC has been attacking us for years we really, really, really want to tell you that we, as real conservationists, are just desperate for shooting to get preferential treatment on nature conservation grounds’.
These are strange times, but they aren’t that strange.
Shooting is a recreational pastime and a commercial activity – get back in the queue!
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Just because they have conservation in their name hardly makes them true conservationists. Although they sometimes claim they are the “only” true conservationists, but that is depending on your point of view either just rhetoric or bullshit. They and their fellow shooting organisation GWCT get the word conservation a bad name, perhaps they really don’t understand its meaning has nothing to do with shooting.
They can keep their acronyms but perhaps more truthfully rename themselves “Bloody Awful Shooting Clowns (reminds me of one of their regional directors) and Game and Wildlife Culling Tossers.
We know who the real conservationists are and it is not them!
I would like to challenge the assertions made by BASC.
Shooting contributes not only to personal well-being (not mine or very many like-minded individuals who wish to contribute to challenging the shooting status quo) but also benefits and shapes the natural environment (unless you live in places like Hebden Bridge, wider Calderdale or even Goathland or are millions of Partridge or Pheasants imported into the UK to be shot, or are peat and heather moorlands in the UK waiting to be burned or have the temerity to be a raptor in our own countryside) and supports livelihoods and local communities across the UK ( many on minimum wages or furloughed and some of whom own licenced shotguns and still break the law by shooting protected birds).
Many people will need new careers after this pandemic. I suggest BASC’s cohort are treated no more or less favourably than ordinary citizens of the UK, many of whom were previously over looked NHS or care home workers who did not previously qualify for state subsidies unlike your UK shooting estates. It is going to be a long queue and you need to be much nearer the back of it rather than the front.
So is nature conservation.
What a nerve BASC have got. They are in reality just another group that enjoys killing our wildlife for fun. As far as I am aware they have undertaken no conservation work solely for wildlife. I am sure anything they have claimed to have done is in the end associated with giving them better shooting of our wildlife.
As you say Mark “get back in line” .
The only reason the word conservation is in the names of this organisation is an attempt at “greenwashing”, hoping that some will be dim enough to think that conservation is an objective of equal importance with shooting. Of course conserving wildlife so it can be shot later is an important objective!