I recently read a nasty little editorial in the September 2011 edition of ‘Modern Gamekeeping’ (we’ve mentioned them before – see here). Basically it was an all-out offensive on Mark Avery, the RSPB’s former Director of Conservation, who was described amongst other things as a “master manipulator“, “the man who steered the RSPB like MOSSAD for 13 years“, “a grandstander of the highest order“, and “a has-been“. What prompted this very personal attack? Avery had dared to discuss on his blog the obvious link between raptor persecution and upland game management.
After reading the editorial, I wondered whether Avery would have received the same treatment had he not had such a long association with the RSPB? It seems to me that even the merest mention of this organisation’s name causes an automatic knee-jerk reaction from the groups associated with game-shooting; the knee-jerk reaction usually being an attempt to discredit the integrity of the organisation and often in response to the latest RSPB report on raptor persecution figures. Here are a few (of many) examples over the years:
The RSPB has been accused by the Countryside Alliance and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association of harrassing gamekeepers (see here, here and here);
The RSPB has been accused by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association of attempting to pervert the course of justice (see here);
The RSPB has been accused by James Marchington (currently Editorial Director at Blaze Publishing – home of the rag ‘Modern Gamekeeping’) of using raptor persecution to ‘drum up membership and donations’ (see here);
The RSPB has been accused by Skibo Estate Sporting Manager Dean Barr (the man later convicted of being in possession of the largest stash of banned Carbofuran on record) of planting dead raptors on his estate (see here);
The RSPB has been accused by the National Gamekeepers Organisation of waging a ‘phoney war’ about raptor persecution (see here);
The RSPB has been accused by the National Gamekeepers Organisation, Scottish Countryside Alliance, British Association for Shooting and Conservation (Scotland), Scottish Gamekeepers Association, Scottish Estates Business Group and the Scottish Rural Property and Business Alliance (now called Scottish Land and Estates) of exaggerating the statistics on raptor persecution (see here, here and here);
The RSPB has been accused by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association of receiving too much public money and ‘squandering the rich wildlife and rare species attracted to their reserves’ (see here);
The RSPB has been accused by the Shooting Times of running an ‘offensive’ advert. The ad in question was promoting a confidential hotline for gamekeepers to report wildlife crime (see here). Shooting Times claimed their readers would find the ad ‘insulting’ (see here and the RSPB’s reaction here).
Most recently, the Scottish Land and Estates organisation dismissed the RSPB’s latest report on raptor persecution by hinting that the contents weren’t ‘official’ (see here). This claim is nothing new – its widely known that some of the game-shooting groups will only recognise the annual SASA stats as being ‘official’. Of course what they fail to mention is that the SASA statistics only relate to poisoning incidents – they do not include incidents where raptors have been found trapped, shot or battered to death, as detailed in the annual RSPB reports. Convenient, eh?
So what’s the problem with the RSPB? It’s fairly obvious isn’t it? They’ve been exposing the link between criminal raptor persecution and game management for a good many years now and slowly but surely the public is beginning to take note.
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