RSPB Director

[markm]

There is a piece in the local free rag on raptors and it quotes Dr Avery as saying -

 

"The skies are owned by no one, but a callous few want to deprive the nation of some of out most charismatic wildlife. the charity blames people who shoot for sport for systematically wiping out the iconic species.

 

 

Later on the piece also states that thisemost at risk are eagles, peregrine falcons and hen harriers which nest in upland areas that are prime sites for grouse shooting.

 

 

Has he come out and said this / press release for RSPB or is it just an idiot putting his own spin on it?

 

Would like to know cos I would like to sent this guy an email.

[pavman]

send your e mail anyony who cant rant such rubbish needs all the spam he can get, whist your at it ask him about RSPB pricking Canada goose eggs and what they do about Charlies

Edited May 1, 2008 by pavman

[pin]

Just me who thinks having Avery as a surname and being an RSPB director is funny?

[petethegeek]

There is a piece in the local free rag on raptors...

Not just the freebies, the press releases obviously went out at the beginning of last week. See this article for example - which incidentally includes some nice pictures and also a response by the BASC - from The Times last Tuesday.

[dustyfox]

The bit about only 14 Hen harriers successfully bred last year. Alot of the reason why they didnt have a good year was not because of Gamekeepers shooting them but they were vulnerable to fox's.

 

Perhaps they should be focusing on the loss of habitat and to much disturbance (spelling) from man eg ever since this right to roam thing anyone can walk anywhere. Motor vehicles illegally trespassing.

 

Perigrine Falcons they get persecuted buy people who keep racing pigeons.

 

Golden Eagle they keep them so secret that I have not seen one yet.

 

Buzzards well there so many of them they dont really interest me.

 

RSPB do support gamekeepers but you will get some that will try and get more donators in.

 

DF

[Chard]

It's naive to spout that gamekeepers are always innocent of persecuting raptors. This ****hole gave me a lecture once about how there were too many Goshawks in this valley, and he eventually got done for disturbing them. He actually cleared them all out of the valley, they're hard to find there now. He got off light though, and is probably back there killing them again.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/3484908.stm

[harv]

It's naive to spout that gamekeepers are always innocent of persecuting raptors. This ****hole gave me a lecture once about how there were too many Goshawks in this valley, and he eventually got done for disturbing them. He actually cleared them all out of the valley, they're hard to find there now. He got off light though, and is probably back there killing them again.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/3484908.stm

 

based on your one experience with this guy

[anser2]

Markm ,

before you send emails to the RSPB make sure you are on firm ground. I work with raptors and am in close contact with many local gamekeepers some of whom I have been friends with for over 30 years. The majority do leave obvious raptors alone , but there are quite a number who do kill some birds of prey.

 

On some of my local estates thriving populations of sparrowhawks and tawny owls suddenly disapear , and in my area every year we find wounded or dead harriers which have been proved to have been shot. I friend of mine ( a keen shooting man )witnessed 2 being shot in West Norfolk last winter ( the case made the national papers ) , but by the time the police made a search ( the following day ) no sign of their bodies could be found, but the keepers had 18 hours in which to dispose of them. We have recent examples of keepers being found guilty of posioning kestrels localy , goshawks being pole traped ( again the keeper was found guilty in court ) and several years ago a badly wounded sea eagle was found with shot gun pellets in its body.

 

I love my shooting , but I also love to see raptors about my shoot and would never think of raising a gun at one. The sight of them is well worth the loss of a few pheasants. As raptors start to regain their natural population levels ( before DDT posioning and gamekeepers desimemated their numbers ) the potential for conflict between game shooting interests and raptors is going to increase. But if the killing of them becomes widespread it will only bring shooting into disrepute and bring on the day when the law makes reared game shooting becomes a thing of the past as it already has in some European countries.

 

If you have a raptor problem rear a few more pheasants to make up for losses or better still put the money and time into improving the habitat for wild game. Get the whole ecosystem right , good cover , game food , plenty of other wild birds and animals such as voles and the raptor problem dimishes. Shove of 100s of half tame pheasants into an environment short in natural cover and you are only asking for problems. However for all that the number of pheasants killed by hawks is but a fraction of the number run over by cars. A badly sited release pen resulted in over 200 pheasants being killed by cars and the keeper blamed the local harriers. They may have taken a few poults , but you only had to walk the road to see dozzens of squashed pheasants on it at any one time. Despite this more were released in the same spot the following year and the harriers strangely moved on

[Chard]

It's naive to spout that gamekeepers are always innocent of persecuting raptors. This ****hole gave me a lecture once about how there were too many Goshawks in this valley, and he eventually got done for disturbing them. He actually cleared them all out of the valley, they're hard to find there now. He got off light though, and is probably back there killing them again.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/3484908.stm

 

based on your one experience with this guy

 

And who said this incident was the limit of my experience of this?

 

Read Anser2's post above on the subject. It's the first piece of honest good sense I've seen on the subject

[lurcherboy]

If you have a raptor problem rear a few more pheasants to make up for losses or better still put the money and time into improving the habitat for wild game. Get the whole ecosystem right , good cover , game food , plenty of other wild birds and animals such as voles and the raptor problem dimishes. Shove of 100s of half tame pheasants into an environment short in natural cover and you are only asking for problems. However for all that the number of pheasants killed by hawks is but a fraction of the number run over by cars. A badly sited release pen resulted in over 200 pheasants being killed by cars and the keeper blamed the local harriers. They may have taken a few poults , but you only had to walk the road to see dozzens of squashed pheasants on it at any one time. Despite this more were released in the same spot the following year and the harriers strangely moved on

 

 

 

 

 

LB

[Chard]

People go on about food for the anti's. Here we have a shooting man shouting his mouth off about keepers killing birds of prey. Fair enough it happens but its one of those things that just isnt talked about.

 

 

It won't be the likes of Anser2 that will be feeding the antis - it's the part of the shooting contingent that think they're above the law.

 

Hunting and shooting sports are under increasing scrutiny and organisations (not just big ones like the RSPB) will increase their efforts over time. The fact that shooters would do well to accept, is that Joe Public does not, and never will, regard raptors as vermin. That comment that Avery of the RSPB made, about the skies belong to nobody, will stick and reverberate round this country for all time now. If the die-hards continue to flout the law in the face of a rising tide of opposition and disapproval, both from the public and the legal system, then the days of our sports are numbered.

 

You can rail on and on about your rights till you're blue in the face, but it won't change a damned thing. The fact is that we're under scrutiny and it's not that the public SUSPECT that these things are going on - everybody with any wick in their lamp KNOWS they're going on and their efforts to prove it are getting ramped up all the time.

[markm]

Markm ,

before you send emails to the RSPB make sure you are on firm ground.

 

Not the RSPB but the local rag for giving a one sided (edited) view.

 

 

 

Below is my email letter to him -

 

 

Dear Mr Mclean,

 

I write with great concern about your piece in the News Post Leader this week. I would welcome some response from you on why only part of the press release was published. Surely the job of a newspaper reporter is to show a balanced and fair argument? the original press release was related to the Peak District. The link below clearly will be of interest to you.

 

 

http://www.farmingviews.co.uk/landwriter/p...er.asp?aId=6407

 

It is a well known fact that 'pigeon racers' are also concerned about raptors taking pigeons in flight, again you failed to mention this. Are they taking the law into their own hands?

 

I am intrigued that you also failed to tell readers that the RSPB shoot foxes and other pest species on land they own and catch and dispatch animals such as stoats and Wiesel's. Do these animal not have the right to "Our most beautiful wild places"

 

You tarnished all shooters with the same brush and make no reference to shooting organisations such as BASC or CA taking a stance and speaking out against illegal persecution.

Edited May 2, 2008 by markm

[anser2]

So George are you saying we should keep quiet and just let some keepers get on with breaking the law and killing raptors. Because if nobody speaks out against this that’s exactly what will happen until it blows up in public and then the government introduces a law to remove the problem by stop game rearing. That’s really going to play into the hands of the antis. Its probable that within a decade or so there will be moves to try and ban rearing game for shooting anyway and any keeper who gets caught killing raptors is only going to bring that day closer.

 

One of my local estates has 3 pairs of marsh harrier , 3 pairs of common buzzards , 2 pairs of hobby and 6+ pairs of sparrowhawks and kestrels plus odd visiting red kites and goshawks and yet they still manage 10 full days of game shooting averaging 100-200 birds a day ( pheasant and partridge ) . Not a bird is reared all being wild. They have got the grants and put a lot of work into getting the habitat just right for wild game. Yes the harriers take quite a few young pheasants and partridges , but with the right management losses are minimal and there are plenty of birds left for the shoot.

 

As for the events surrounding the shooting of 2 harriers last year I would guess you really know what happened as I did not say they were shot as a right and left and yet you seem to already know this. Yes it did happen , I can see no reason for my friend to lie ( he is pro shooting ) . The birds had been roosting there for some time and were not seen again after that night.

 

Yes raptors are a problem for us game shooters , but a problem we are going to have to learn to live with if we want to continue to shoot reared game in the future.

[pin]

Nothing like a unified voice for shooting and related sports, is there

[dustyfox]

Yes the harriers take quite a few young pheasants and partridges , but with the right management losses are minimal and there are plenty of birds left for the shoot.

 

Yes raptors are a problem for us game shooters , but a problem we are going to have to learn to live with if we want to continue to shoot reared game in the future.

 

I agree in Game management you will expect to have losses, the person has to predict how many birds he will need for the shooting season. I know its there job to preserve the game stocks but you got to abide the law. Weather someone graases you in or not your gonna get found out.

[Chard]

There's a harsh lesson that people running a shoot for financial gain will need to learn, the same as all businessmen have to learn it.

 

If the profitability of your business is dependant on breaking the law, you don't actually have a business at all. What you are doing is engaging in moderately profitable criminal activity. If I ran a corner shop and it was only profitable because I broke into Tesco's warehouse once a week and nicked all my stock from there, then I don't have a business.

 

If shoots can't turn a profit without wasting every raptor in sight, then they're not businesses and they're insulting legitimate business if they try and class themselves as such.

 

Somebody in a previous post has already accurately described one example of poor business management, releasing pheasant poults next to a main road. I've seen this myself in Kent, when I lived there - Pheasants all over the place and we counted over a hundred roadkills in the area, some of them quite old (obviously no predators or carrion eaters around to clear them up). This shoot were probably blaming raptors for their inefficiency as well.

 

The days of these sloppyarses being able to operate in this way are over, whether they want to acknowledge it or not. They are going to be increasingly scrutinised and brought into line eventually. If the majority of the British public turn against our sports, we will lose the right to participate in them, because it becomes a vote-winner to ban them.

 

There's absolutely no point in us all showing a united front, if it's to support flouting the law, that just paints us all in a bad light. The public and the law aren't completely stupid and they don't believe all these protestations of innocence any more than I do.

Edited May 2, 2008 by Chard

[digger]

How would anyone poison a Kestrel ? They are not well known for feeding on carrion. Perhaps gamekeepers pre poison adult birds which when caught by said kestrel are injected via the keepers lap top ? It must be true because a "charity" said so.

RSPB ? Langholm, we can do it, they can only spew bile and half truths.

[anser2]

Digger , I agree that usualy kestrels catch their own food , but on occasion I have seen them feeding on road kills.

 

In the case in question again on a well known very large N Norfolk estate where 2 kestrels were found containing posion and the same posion was found in one of the keepers trucks. He admited the offence and was fined in Norwich Crown Court ( though I expect the estate covered the fine ). All the details were in the Eastern Daily Press and local TV at the time.

Edited May 3, 2008 by anser2