Yes, I shoot. But I still love animals
As a Tory MP attacks Philip for preaching conservation while enjoying bloodsports, the defiant Duke fires back...
One Right-wing Tory MP — an ardent monarchist at that — believes that Prince Philip represents a glaring contradiction.
During a heated exchange at Westminster, Anthony Beaumont-Dark (Birmingham Selly Oak) demanded of the Prince: ‘How can you stand there when you hunt and kill for pleasure and make an appeal for conservation?’
The Duke of edinburgh has two apparently irreconcilable images.
On the one hand, the President of the World Wildlife Fund, passionately pleading on behalf of the panda. On the other, the master shot who downs hundreds of birds at Sandringham every year.
It was these two conflicting roles that I put to the Prince during an exclusive interview as we sat in the Buckingham Palace Library, a room he designed with Sir Hugh Casson. ‘What you’ve got to understand,’ he told me, ‘is that when you grow up in the countryside you learn the principle of conservation from farming.
‘You learn you have to keep the seed corn for the following year. You know you can only take the surplus from your flocks or you won’t have anything to breed from the following year. When I used to walk in the country with older relations, they would point out buzzards and eagles and my interest in conservation grew.
Sustainable
‘I began to watch birds at Sandringham because we were on a migratory route. What also happens is you gradually notice the subtle changes. For instance, back in the Fifties when all the very poisonous agricultural sprays came into being, the keepers at Sandringham suddenly reported that all the small birds were dying and they’d keep picking them up all over the place.
‘ Then they found the pigeons and foxes dying and worked back to discover that the seed corn was being dressed with stuff to prevent it being attacked by weevils.
‘Birds ate the seed and this material turned out to be toxic. Predators ate the dead birds and it accumulated so the whole natural system was affected.’
Pointing out the glaringly obvious is something the Prince approaches with delicate mastery these days.
‘There was a great battle to try to persuade people not to use the poisons and you had to persuade the scientists it was dangerous and they didn’t want to accept it because it was their livelihood.
Logic
‘Slowly the various chemicals were banned and people began to realise it was through country people seeing what was happening. You didn’t have to be an expert or converted — you just became aware of it.’
Prince Philip waves his hand towards where we can see trees in the park. ‘In this country we operate on a basis of sustainable use. If those trees didn’t belong to anyone, people would come along and take what they wanted for firewood and they wouldn’t last a minute.
‘In places like Africa, you just break off a branch if you want firewood because no one owns the trees so they just get cut down.’
He applies the same logic to other aspects of conservation, too. ‘I’d like to see fewer people wearing fur, for instance, but I would never tell them not to — that’s a dangerous argument.
‘What I would say is please make sure you only wear animal-based products from a species which is not in danger of extinction. This means it is either farmed — and there’s nothing wrong with farming animals — or when you are certain there are plenty of them. The important thing is to get through to the people who make the decision to put these things on the market. They’re the ones to influence.’
Although Prince Philip believes sound common sense is the key when it comes to putting his message across, he does have moments of genuine amazement at people’s behaviour which cause him to shake his head in despair.
‘ Sometimes it’s very depressing because if you criticise people they think you’re criticising their goodwill. I’m not doing that. I’m merely criticising their lack of comprehension.
Disaster
‘ Some people are frightfully concerned about a particular animal, yet unconcerned about the fate of an entire species.
‘Organisations like Animal Liberation are a disaster. They go and release an exotic species like mink which are being farmed — and once they get out into the natural system do the most horrific damage to wildlife.
‘We don’t know whether what we’re doing to this planet of ours is leading to a catastrophe or whether we’ve simply got a slow leak in the sytem which will crumble gradually before it runs down.
‘But rather like stretching a rubber band, you can pull and pull and the band will get bigger. But suddenly it will snap and you don’t have a rubber band any more.’
Clearly, Prince Philip’s concern is profound. Yet many criticise him.
How does he answer these people? ‘How do you divide your money up between hospitals and schools, theatres and art galleries?
There are lots of things that need to be done.
Goodwill
‘I think the conservation of nature is important because we depend upon it — and if we let it all go, it won’t matter about these other things because nobody will be around to enjoy them.’
The Duke of edinburgh, had given me more time than he intended, and that is time over and above the many hours he devotes to explaining his theories to a wide variety of organisations concerned with conserving this planet. He’d like everyone to go and join something, whether it’s the World Wildlife Fund, the RSPB or Friends of the earth, any group which can offer the information he feels we all need.
‘People can then make up their own minds,’ he says.
‘We don’t have very much time left if we are to try to save the panda and its habitat, as well as all the other threatened species of wildlife. We’ll have to use management and organisation, goodwill, enthusiasm and commitment.’
A handshake, smile and ‘Goodness knows what you’ll make of all that!’ in a selfdeprecatory tone, and he’s off. I left with a warm and very different picture of this supposedly irascible man.
Friday, March 13, 1987