National Trust members to vote on banning barbed wire
MEMBERS of the National Trust are to decide whether to ban barbed wire from its properties today in a vote aimed at protecting wildlife.
The move follows the death of a deer at an Oxfordshire estate earlier this year – but the charity’s trustees are fighting the motion, as they argue it will cost millions of pounds and potentially push up membership fees.
The proposals were backed by 50 of the trust’s 5.2million members, automatically triggering a pivotal vote at the annual meeting in Swindon.
The resolution claims barbed wire is “outdated” because it can injure “wild animals and people” and is therefore at odds with the trust’s commitment to nurture wildlife.
If passed it would affect 1,600 tenant farms and see more animal-friendly fencing erected throughout 250,000 hectares (617,765 acres) of land and 750 miles of coastline within five years.
But trustees insist it is “very rare” for animals to get caught up in barbed wire in the way the deer did at Greys Court, a Tudor country house near Henleyon-thames. The carcass of the animal was discovered hanging upside down entangled in fencing.
Insisting landowners retain their “farming freedoms” they added: “The population of deer in the UK is at an alltime high. In spite of this the number of incidences of deer being harmed by barbed wire is extremely low.
“Deer will normally try to find a way around a fence before trying to jump over it.”
A Countryside Alliance spokesman said: “If this proposal is successful it will cost millions of pounds, and that means either the trust membership will have to fund the cost with an increase in joining fees or the money will come out of real conservation projects that the trust was set up to deliver.”
He also said the trust had got itself into a “ridiculous situation” with the automatic vote of the full membership “no matter how absurd the question”.
But Elisa Allen, director for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, praised the plan to ban barbed wire as a “more compassionate way to coexist with other living beings”.