CHRIS PACKHAM
AS A CONSERVATIONIST THERE ARE TWO THINGS I HAVE COME TO LOATHE ABOVE ALL ELSE – ‘COUNTRY LORE’ AND ‘TRADITION’.
“I’m a fully paid-up member of this newfangled thing called science.”
Welcome to the 21st century. In case you hadn’t noticed, the former divide between ‘townies’ and ‘country folk’ has long since been eroded. Gone are the days, post industrial revolution and pre mechanisation of farming, when there was a genuine gulf between rural and urban dwellers.
For starters, there’s little real countryside left nowadays, and much of it is owned by people who live in cities. Those who do live in rural areas have much the same lifestyle as everyone else – they shop in the same places, and watch the same news. And increasing numbers of us move freely between town and country.
So why does the raptor-hating shooting lobby pretend that there’s a binary divide in modern Britain? Are they seriously saying that ‘townies’ can’t understand what the countryside and nature is all about?
This is just a ridiculous ruse spun by desperate people who want to retain the right of governance over our landscape when anyone else dares question the validity of their traditions and lore. But I’m not up for that sort of rubbish, I’m afraid.
You see, I am a fully paid-up member of this newfangled thing we’ve got. It’s called science and it is all about the truth – not antiquated hearsay, spurious anecdotal ‘evidence’, subjectivity and insidious agendas.
Let me be very clear here. I’m not saying you need an ‘ology’ or degree to be a keen observer of nature or to understand how life works. (In fact I probably meet more good naturalists who don’t have any academic credentials.) Yet there is no denying that when it comes to understanding and explaining what goes on in the countryside, science has got it monitored, measured and mapped.
Science doesn’t prejudge or assume. It just delivers the facts, so if we had any sense it would be scientific facts that governed how we manage and enhance our natural heritage. Not a ramshackle assortment of cliquey gossip from yesteryear about magpies, gamebirds, raptors, badgers and foxes, sadly repeated in many media outlets with blind, unquestioning faith.
And then there is our second adversary: tradition. That we should be obliged to continue to do something simply because we always have, even when it is patently obvious that is no longer practically or morally compatible with the age in which we now live, is plain idiotic.
Let’s take an example. The lapwing, that once-plentiful farmland plover, has become something of a conservation icon. It declined by 57 per cent in Britain and Ireland in 1987–2012 (data from BTO/JNCC BirdTrends). When I was a kid the lapwing was still common, and you could legally collect its eggs to eat in spring. But now it’s on the Red List and we are actively conserving it.
Lots of farmers are helping. Some of them are paid, but it has also become a badge of honour to have lapwings nesting in your fields. The decline continues, but at least we’re doing our bit and trying. If only the same could be said for two other British wading birds, which are in critical decline yet treated very differently. Woodcock numbers fell by 76 per cent over 25 years, according to BirdTrends. Even worse, the snipe crashed by 89 per cent over 25 years. So both species have suffered a more severe population decline than that of the lapwing. Fact. Yet both are still legally shot – for fun – in the UK.
How can this be? It’s tradition, you see. Woodcock and snipe are called ‘gamebirds’, so that makes them fair game. Madness! It is high time that we curtailed this sort of idiotic, intolerable discrepancy in our laws. Let’s consign lore to the milk churn and take a scythe to tradition. I’m sorry, squire, but you simply can’t argue with science.
I’M A FULLY PAID-UP MEMBER OF THIS NEWFANGLED THING WE’VE GOT. IT’S CALLED SCIENCE AND IT’S ABOUT TRUTH”