GWCT have a blog which is usually asking you for money but this one is trying to rewrite history in order to curry favour with DEFRA too.
Phrases such as;
These sites are designated for rare and vulnerable birds (and for regularly occurring migratory species) by the EU under the Birds Directive.
Your SSSI may not be designated by the EU at all.
Whilst many SSSIs are also EU protected sites…
… all perpetuate the idea that these nature designations were imposed upon a reluctant UK by an aggressively bureacratic EU.
Well it wasn’t like that, as even GWCT should know.
First, we were part of the EU decision-making process. The Habitats Directive was largely drafted by a Brit after all, one Stanley Johnson, sire of the current PM, and the list of sites that have been designated are ones that the UK government, and devolved governments more recently, have put forward to the EU to form part of an EU-wide network. the Habs Directive came into existence 17 years after the UK joined the EEC – we were part of its birth, at the time a large and proud part, but GWCT wants to portray it differently it seems.
Even the Birds Directive, the first piece of anvironmental legislation agreed by member states, only came into being in 1979 – four years after we joined up! If we didn’t like it, and at the time we most definitely did like it, then we should have done something about it then.
Nobody in Brussells said ‘Oi! Tommy! Deignate the Wash, the Cairngorms and make sure you include these bits otherwise we’ll have you!’.
There will be a lot of re-writing, or reframing, of history over the next few years. The GWCT has a rather wonky frame.
And those with an unclear view of the past may well have a suspect view of the present too.
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Just a wee point…. The Spa’s are classified to prorect the habitats that support the bird populations. The birds are protected under different parts of the legislation.
And other bits (which existed before the EU legislation) were included into EU legislation and parts of (or the whole of) internationally agreements get included. RAMSAR convention of 1971 (and the associated locations/sites) for example. Another set of COPs, not overseen by the EU nor the UN. TLAs are universally ambiguous.
A bit like the two letters appended to “GW”.
This is where the English language shifts. “A bit like” becomes “WTF”.
So a wildlife conservation trust just released a blog telling people how to release livestock that harms wildlife near to wildlife conservation areas without getting into trouble for harming the protected wildlife? And they want me to donate money to help them continue this ‘vital work’?
This idea of trying to rewrite history to place a different spin on it is unfortunately increasingly common these days and is appalling. It seems to be essentially a feature of very right wing people and organisations. Trump in the USA just before he was voted out of office had a committee in the White House called the 1776 Committee whose brief was to redraft the history of the slave trade in the USA to make it sound a lot less cruel and offensive than it actually was.
So we are starting to see it rearing it’s head in this country too. The Government needs to clamp down on this insidious and very nasty practice but I very much doubt they will as they have to an extent already indulged in it themselves with all their false promises about the benefits of U.K. leaving the EU.
They’ve also effectively declared war on the beaver https://anglingtrust.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/COWX-Review-Beavers-Fish-and-Fisheries-06Jan2021-2.pdf The conservation movement will never have any common ground with these people, it needs to take off the kid gloves at long last.
Yes, I saw that too Les. Very depressing isn’t it? You really have to wonder how they think beavers and salmon co-existed before we came along and wiped the beavers out.
This is why I bang on incessantly about getting beavers into the uplands, maximum flood reduction benefits, minimum conflict with genuine economic activity. The economic savings and reduced human misery that would result would dwarf all the really quite pathetic whinges coming from the GWCT and pals. I’ve just glanced at this report from this fisheries guru apparently, but it’s got everything from beavers attacking dogs and people to them potentially creating niches for the expansion of non native, invasive plants. Well they certainly help native plants thrive, and it’s a bit rich this coming from the GWCT when they’re doing nothing about plants like cherry laurel and snowberry still being used in 2021 as game cover.
Depressing ignorant opportunism to attract the Luddites and nay sayers in fishing. The comments on their blog about this are even worse. We have almost nothing in common anymore with this lot of tweedies, although they are inevitably involved in Curlew, probably as an excuse to continue supporting intensive grouse management. In my experience Curlew preferred the older style of grouse management, but there you go what do I know. I’m discounted anyway as one who would like to see a complete end to released birds for mass canned hunting.
Exactly Paul. There’s been a slight improvement in the way they ‘manage’ parts of some salmon rivers, but only because they literally couldn’t get any worse. The anglers that are genuinely nature lovers, and ecologically literate are a miniscule proportion of the total. The ones I know that are, are far closer and friendlier with us than the rest of their ‘fraternity’. As an ex angler I still watch angling videos occasionally and what I’m seeing/hearing horrifies me. Yes I’ve heard a few people say that curlew and other wader numbers drop off as grouse moor ‘management’ becomes more intensive, something that tweedies are keeping quiet on. I desperately want to see beavers on the floodplain at RSPB Insh Marshes so they help keep scrub back for waders, if we can prove beavers help curlew conservation certain people would be apoplectic.
Les I still fish here in the Severn for Trout and Grayling, almost all go back, I do not understand fishermen or to a lesser extent shooters that have no wider ecological view or real empathy with all of nature not just selective bits. My experience with waders in Nidderdale and to a lesser extent other parts of the Dales is that as intensification grew, waders declined especially Redshank, Lapwing and Golden Plover yet it is the opposite of what you might expect. Beavers in the wider countryside would be a huge asset as would Lynx be in the right areas of woodland but the nay sayers have very loud voices. Here in Wales they are shouting loudly about Beavers yet there are virtually none and they will be in pens anyway. Anything to do with “rewilding” here is vigorously opposed by the “mutton mafia.”
The situation in Wales is dire – when the Vincent Wildlife Trust did some video interviews with sheep farmers about the pine marten reintroduction it was quite shocking how many of them were negative about that. Absolutely anything that’s extraneous to having sheep (and thereby subsidy) and it’s not wanted. Even beavers and they don’t have the feeble excuse of being arable farmers. Not good news for the folks over in Gloucestershire getting flooded out thanks to treeless hills and the absence of beavers. The minute that a vested interest, especially one that gets itself portrayed as traditional, under appreciated, hard working, impoverished, down trodden and hard done by complains then it becomes a ‘political’ issue and the conservation organisations clam up.
The NFU in Scotland is doing its best to use claimed losses of sheep to predation in Norway as the prime reason why lynx must not ever be brought back to here. This conveniently ignores that not only a) in Norway sheep are very unusually grazed within woodlands where lynx are far more likely to kill them, but also b) the compensation scheme in Norway is notoriously lax (97% of carcasses from claimed predator kills are NEVER examined) and it’s believed from research that as few as one in nine livestock deaths attributed to lynx actually are. I even remember hearing of a massive scandal about Norwegian farmers being caught making fraudulent claims for compensation for predator kills (who would have thought!!) in pre internet days.
So the use of the Norwegian situation to decry lynx being brought back to Scotland is to put it extremely kindly very disingenuous at best. And how many conservation organisations are going to the public and politicians pointing out the NFU is spouting crap with the same energy that the NFU is spouting it…..0. At a presentation I went to last year about reintroducing lynx here the ‘professional’ conservationist giving it mentioned the situation in Norway in the way NFU Scotland does. At the very end I rather pissed offishly mentioned the fraud inherent in the Norwegian situation. He knew about it, but had either forgotten it or decided it wasn’t relevant – it was, but politically embarrassing for the other side, why does ours have to feel awkward about that?
We really need a sister organisation to Wild Justice, that just deals objectively with spurious claims whether it’s crofters claiming their lambs are all being taken by sea eagles or raises points nobody else does such as that hill sheep farming wouldn’t exist at all without public subsidy and in many cases that’s raising flood risk for the homes of people whose taxes are keeping sheep farmers in theirs. So who really is not being cared about, being hard done by? At the end of the day we are allowing ourselves to be blackmailed into keeping our mouths shut, our representative organisations are imposing self censorship. Not what a democracy is supposed to be and it’s killing conservation.
Firstly, most EU designated sites were SSSIs before their EU designation. Secondly, EU Directives have no direct legal impact – they have to be implemented through domestic legislation, which in the UK is SSSIs.
The big advantage of Eu designation has been political rather than legislative – breaking one EU Directive was liable to spill over into other, potentially bigger issues making our politicians far more reluctant to breach EU rules than domestic SSSIs which, sadly, in the past they have been rather too ready to do and it is certainly hard to view the present Government’s likely actions with anything other than trepidation.