A chain of thought regarding Transatlantic differences, Duck Stamps and the RSPB.

 In the American Meme group I have now left, there was a lot of talk of hunting funds for conservation, through levies such as the so-called 'Duck Stamps.' Duck stamps are a type of hunting licence issued in the USA, the money raised being used to fund the National Wildlife Refuges scheme. Doubtless it is a very important stream of revenue for wetland conservation in the USA. On the meme group, there was an assertion that this money from hunting is the only, or the primary way to fund conservation, and as such the whole 'Hunting is conservation' argument came about. It was a collision of many ideas, with the pro-hunt side, which was most of the Americans, using the mantra 'Hunting is conservation,' and explaining how 'Duck stamps' funded the national refuge system and how wildfowling was fundamental to wetland conservation. So determined were the American conservationists to defend this system, that their enthusiasm for it seemed to trump concerns raised by European group members about hunting in this region and in North Africa, which were angrily dismissed as outliers.

Now I am about to compare hunting in the USA to Hunting in the UK or in Europe, not right at the moment at least. But another thought occurred to me shortly afterwards. Soon there were more posts in the Meme group, referring to how birders never invest any money in wetland conservation, refuse to pay to access reserves, that only hunting has the clout, and the public participation, to raise money for conservation to be carried out effectively. And, thought I, that is where we differ.

Water Rail at RSPB Rainham Marshes

In Britain, while for sure there are wildfowl hunters, and for sure they look after some coastal wetlands, much of it fairly well, such that it provides good breeding habitat for waders, raptors and invertebrates outside the shooting season, but the way we look after Wetland 'refuges' for conservation is thus: The RSPB, and the local Wildlife Trusts.

Stonechat at RSPB Rainham Marshes

Conservationists in the UK, by which I mean non-professionals who care about and support nature conservation, do not generally buy hunting licences. Instead, they join the RSPB, investing sums comparable with those spent on 'Duck Stamps' in the USA. We do spend money on nature, and on nature for nature's sake. And we have achieved remarkable results through this. Minsmere in Suffolk, owned by the RSPB, is a former MOD range, and it was the stepping stone Avocets and Marsh Harriers used to recolonise the UK. Now Marsh Harriers, and Bearded Tits, breed at Rainham Marshes, another former military range within Greater London. Spoonbills and Bitterns have bred at Fairburn Ings, a former coal mining site near Leeds. At Old Moor near Doncaster, Slavonian Grebes breed annually, and Lakenheath Fen, a former carrot farm in the Brecks, Bittern, Bearded Tit and Common Crane breed, a species which was extinct in Britain a century ago. All without money from hunting, with management largely built on monthly and annual donations from a million members. The RSPB is our model of conservation and it works.

Lapwing at RSPB Frampton Marsh, Lincolnshire

It coexists with free markets, taking from the state only money available to any landowners who manage their land sympathetically for nature, and heritage money from the National Lottery. It has brought back species to these islands, and become a global expert in wetland creation and restoration without shots being fired in sport at all. Its predator control is not above criticism, of course and some regard it as unduly friendly with shooting organisations, as illustrated by the debacle at RSPB Strumpshaw Fen a few years ago, where gamekeepers were allowed onto the site to kill some much photographed foxes. However it walks a tightrope here of course and deserves, in my view, some slack. There are people in the shooting community, unnerved by the RSPB's excellent work in raptor protection, who love to stir the pot and set their opponents, in mainstream conservation and largely urban hippy 'animal rights' proponents, against each other, despite their common cause at least where it comes to threatened wildlife and habitats.

View from RSPB Wallasea Island, Essex

But its achievements at a national level are remarkable. Incredible. It is our model of conservation, Britain's proof that hunting and conservation are not inextricably linked, and I think that is bloody awesome. They go beyond land management of course, into campaigning, recently becoming involved in the discussion surrounding the draconian restrictions on environmental protest being discussed in parliament, and campaigning against particularly damaging developments threatening important wildlife sites. Their membership is huge and diverse.

Goldfinch at RSPB Frampton Marsh, Lincolnshire

Compared to what they have in other parts of the world, we are extraordinarily fortunate to have the RSPB, and can be justifiably proud of it, alongside the county Wildlife Trusts and the WWT of course.

Open Letter #2 Open letter to the RSPB regarding the campaign to ban driven shooting and save the threatened Hen Harrier.

I am writing firstly to express my thanks and gratitude for your wonderful feature in this season’s edition of Nature’s Home, in which you address the plight of the Hen Harrier (Circus cyaneus) at the hands of criminals within the grouse shooting industry. However, while I support the RSPB’s campaign to see grouse shooting properly licenced, I felt compelled to express my disagreement with the implication that those who want to see driven grouse shooting consigned to the dustbin of history are not “pragmatic,” and the curious efforts to defend the ‘sport’ on subsequent pages, which included quotes from the Moorland Association, a front group for the grouse shooting industry.

The campaign to criminalise Grouse shooting is a grassroots one, and at Derwent Water this August I was among many people, protesting the Hen Harriers’ plight, who largely agreed that radical change is needed. The petition, started by Mark Avery, has attracted over 18,500 signatures, and even cosmetics chain Lush has taken up the cause. Moved by the illegal killing of Bowland Betty, a Hen Harrier who was raised not far from my alma mater at Lancaster,  in countryside so beautiful yet so tragically devoid of sky dancing harriers, a truly grass roots movement to save the species has begun and is gaining momentum. Statements like those in the article seem designed to take away that momentum.  Remember that popular movements have led to the criminalisation of Fox Hunting, and prevented the sale of the Forests. It seems very strange indeed that the RSPB would, in one line, seek to so undermine just such a movement, designed to save the Hen Harrier, and also destroy an industry which, by the RSPB’s own admission, probably has a net negative impact on upland conservation.  

It is worth noting that a great range of approaches have failed to address the problem of Hen Harrier persecution, as gamekeepers and their landed masters continue to prove pathologically incapable of leaving Hen Harriers and other raptors alone, in spite of criminal penalties for raptor persecution, endless photocalls in such unsavoury company as the Countryside Alliance,  and sympathetic spots on the Really Wild Show, emphasising the role of keepering in sustaining the habitat of certain upland waders on their Southern and Western range margins.  Co-operation does not work, and it is too late for another attempt. The RSPB has gently suggested to estates that they may wish to shift to walked up shooting, a form of grouse shooting which may be better equipped to co-exist with natural raptor populations, and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust threw the suggestions back in our faces, and then no more was heard.  Perhaps cold, hard legislation, casting these landlords and their servants as the criminals they are, will finally represent a language of approach which they will understand.

I suspect the RSPB fears criminalisation will alienate some of their supporters in the uplands, but I wonder if this will be the case if the other issues surrounding grouse shooting are fully explained to them. Exaggerated claims of the value of shooting, which is heavily subsidised from the public purse, are made by its supporters, but one wonders what these can be. Surely if a profit was forthcoming, public subsidies would not be required, and how can an industry which excludes ordinary tourists from the uplands when the heather is in bloom and the moors at the height of their expansive purple beautiful, be beneficial to rural economies? Something in their claims does not add up. Aside from the economic damage, and damage to rural peoples’ quality of life, caused by grouse shooting, the overuse of burning reduces floristic diversity, damages peat bogs and peaty moorland soils, contributing to the problem of climate change.

With this in mind, I return to the question of why the RSPB appears to be brushing off the popular movement for criminalising grouse shooting.  I worry that the commitment to non-interference in field sports, as the bloody slaughter of wildlife in our countryside is so euphemistically called, which stems from the heroic ladies from Didsbury’s fear of their husbands, is causing the RSPB to fight the battle to save raptors with one hand behind its back.  Clearly this would need to be abandoned if the RSPB was to offer its full support to the campaign for a ban. I do not ask the RSPB to become an opponent of shooting, merely to take a “pragmatic” approach, giving full attention to the needs of threatened wildlife like the Hen Harrier.   Do you perhaps also fear losing the “Royal” prefix? Perhaps you may, but for what gains in the grassroots conservation movement?

The Hen Harrier needs saving, and the campaign to ban driven grouse shooting may the best hope it has, especially given its broad public support, unlike the Moorland Association, whose PR team you allow column space in Nature’s Home. The Moorland association wants to translocate Hen Harrier chicks away from grouse moors under threat of criminal prosecution, in a classic display of the gangster tactics we have come to expect from such front groups and the criminals they represent.  Why are you giving them the oxygen of publicity while dismissing a popular campaign?

 The criminals stalking our uplands seem understand no negotiation, if the last couple of centuries of persecution are any indication, and as long as they can hide their crimes in the vastness of the open moorland, will continue to kill Hen Harriers and escape prosecution. It is far harder to conceal a grouse shoot than conceal a trap, or the destruction of a nest, and hard to grasp public subsidy, or widely advertise an illicit one.  Monitors from the RSPCA and the League Against Cruel Sports already help the law enforcement agencies crack down on illegal hunting with dogs, and I have no doubt that such or similar organisations will eagerly keep an eye on walked up shoots to ensure no grouse are driven from cover by beaters.   The campaign to criminalise driven shooting can occur alongside the campaign to licence it, but please do not undermine the former by implying it is not pragmatic, or by giving column inches to its vocal opponents.  It is the most exciting conservation campaign in the UK to gain public support for decades.

Many thanks again for helping to spread the word about the Hen Harrier, and I remain a loyal supporter of the RSPB, and hope to remain so for years to come.

Some thoughts on the Badger Cull.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the Badger cull. It is not supported by scientific evidence, and even if it were, it would only be in support of a little cost cutting for the dairy industry, which produces unnecessary luxury products for mass consumption. Farmers and their allies claim that the wholesale slaughter with rifles of one of our best loved wild animals will reduce the incidence of TB in cattle by a mere 16%, and will not reduce the incidence of infertility, mastitis, exhaustion, foot problems, being male, or any of the other factors which cause vast numbers of Dairy cows to be slaughtered and discarded on a daily basis. Indeed, the incidence of mastitis, a crippling disease of cows’ udders caused by industrial milking practices, and preventable simply by milking the cows slightly less often, makes any claim that dairy farmers feel some form of concern for their animals welfare  seem rather absurd.

The Tories do a good line in cutting their support for industry, and if the subsidies paid to dairy farmers were indeed of any concern to them, I have no doubt our ruling party would treat the farmers in an even handed way, in accordance with the way they have treated industries in the past which have cost them too much. They would simply cut the subsidies and abandon the industry, and its employees to their fate, like the miners, the steel workers or the railway conductors.  Even the cost of Bovine TB to central government and the taxpayer does not add up to a coherent, pro-cull argument, especially as they receive compensation when their cows come down with any number of diseases, and 16% of those with bovine TB is a miniscule fraction of the current dead cow kitty.  No, expense makes no argument for the culling of badgers.

Scientific evidence on the subject has been somewhat dubious, but the Krebs trial revealed culling badgers as a strategy to reduce the incidence of bovine TB is likely to be extremely problematic and may indeed lead to an increase in bTB as the badgers flee their home ranges, taking the disease with them.   Science makes no argument for the culling of badgers.

The only conceivable reason I can think of that one might support the badger cull is straightforward, but strikes me as a little daft. It is the will of the dairy farmers and dairy farmers are cute.  We see them on adverts, with their cloth caps and gruff, rural accents, their purported love of good beer, their charming cloth caps and cheque shirts, their eye smiles and grass chewing. They are in our children’s books, helping deliver baby lambs and growing turnips, standing over a spade with a charming smile and a piece of grass hanging out of their mouths. Their supposed heroism defined in wartime “dig for victory” posters, again with the spade, bright eyes turned to the sky. Farming is part of our history and our culture, and townies have formed quite a sentimental attachment to their image of the “poor beleaguered British farmer.”  Walking through his field in the dawn light, he cuts a romantic figure, lonely, badly dressed, out there in the elements.  He is, townies like to image, a pleasant character, who cares for his animals and frequents the local pub, where he sits with his dog by the fireplace, keeping the real ale industry alive.   Ignorant of the countryside, the townies want to do what he says for sentimental reasons.  His care for his livestock is embodied by mastitis and bovine TB and cramped conditions, in which malformed cows drag their udders along the concrete floor of their sheds.  He has sprayed our wild flower meadows and replanted them with imported rye grass for no reason other than rye grass can be turned into milk quicker, and because the government gave him taxpayers money to do so.  Farming rakes in public money from central government and the EU, and the ‘beleaguered’ farmer is laughing all the way to the bank with his dead badger, cloth cap and massive subsidy, even as the injured coal miner has to reapply for his disability living allowance.  

The cuteness of the dairy farmer is the only explanation of why we would consider doing something like this for him. Imagine if the oil industry asked us to cull Puffins because they give them a bad image when they end up covered in oil?  Or whales because there is a theoretical risk of ship collision? They would be ridiculed, and rightly so, although our society is far more dependent on oil than it is on milk.  Imagine if the glass making industry called for a cull on Birds of Prey because they sometimes damage windows on collision with them? Or the forestry industry culled blue tits because of some hitherto unknown side effect of their tree-nesting habits? That’d be ridiculous, because none of these industries have as cute a figurehead as the dairy industry does.

Townies need to wake up to the reality of the countryside and abandon their preconceptions, our wildlife is at stake!