RSPB has shooting in its sights
HOT on the heels of the Natural England general-licence palaver earlier this year—and in a move that Tim Bonner, head of the Countryside Alliance, has termed ‘the final step in the RSPB’S long journey to becoming an antishooting organisation’—the charity is expected to oppose game shooting for the first time in its 130-year history.
Speaking at the RSPB’S AGM, chair Kevin Cox announced an impending review on shooting and land-management policy ‘consistent with the ongoing climate and ecological emergency, respectful of our charitable objectives and maintaining the confidence and support of our members’. This policy overhaul could take up to a year.
Mr Cox continues: ‘Environmental concerns include the ongoing and systematic illegal persecution of birds of prey such as hen harriers... the ecological impact of high numbers of game birds released into the countryside increasing the density of generalist predators; the mass culling of mountain hares... lead ammunition; the impact of burning peatlands and medicating wild animals for sport.’
This news ‘displays the organisation’s bizarrely warped priorities,’ says Mr Bonner, as ‘the environmental, economic and social benefits of shooting have been repeatedly illustrated by research and reports’. However, Caroline Bedell, BASC’S executive director of conservation, is more optimistic. Surely, she believes, the RSPB will ‘conduct the review in the manner expected of an evidence-based organisation. That evidence will point the review directly and clearly towards shooting as an activity that massively benefits the economic and environmental make-up of the British countryside’. Shooting is involved in the management of two-thirds of the UK’S rural land area, she adds.
Patrick Galbraith, editor of Shooting Times, agrees that ‘almost everybody in the know accepts that the birds the RSPB purports to cherish, such as black grouse, curlew and lapwing, depend on land-management practices that shooting estates carry out’. His major cause for concern is that the RSPB’S ‘new stance will be informed “by the views of members”’.
Meanwhile, with a General Election on December 12, the first December polling day since 1923, BASC has relaunched its campaign website, allowing the public to lobby election candidates (www.basc.org.uk/political-affairs/lobby-your-mp-candidate).
Now in its sixth iteration, the annual Art on a Postcard auction is back and, this year, there are some 600 artworks by 250 international artists, including Norman Ackroyd, Jeremy Deller, Louise Lawler and Helen Beard; last year, so many were Royal Academicians and Turner Prize-winners that it was dubbed ‘a mini summer show’ by the press. As usual, all pieces (such as The Artist’s Grandmother Ranchi, above) are anonymous until sales are finalised. The money raised goes to Hepatitis C Trust. Bidding is now open (www.artonapostcard.com) and there’s an exhibition at Wework, London EC2, on November 12–14