Stop wishing. Start doing.

Tags

birds, Birds of prey, conservation, environment, George Monbiot, Hen Harrier, nature, persecution, photography, wildlife crime

When we think of corruption it’s often in terms of somewhere abroad. Somewhere in Africa, maybe, or perhaps southern Europe. It’s not usually about something on our own doorstep, but, as George Monbiot writes, that’s because we’re not looking hard enough. ‘Would there still be a commercial banking sector in Britain if it weren’t for corruption? Think of the list of scandals: pension mis-selling, endowment mortgage fraud, the payment protection insurance scam, Libor rigging, insider trading and all the rest.’ (1) Corruption occurs everywhere.

And so it is with wildlife crime. We might think it’s ‘over there’ somewhere, and indeed it often is, with ivory poaching and rhino killing in Africa, industrial scale songbird slaughter all around the Med and commercial whaling in all but name from Japan, Iceland and Norway. And it’s not difficult to find lots of other instances around the world. But, just as with corruption, there’s plenty of wildlife crime on British soil. Take the Ministry of Defence’s bases on Cyprus for a start. Although the trapping of songbirds was made illegal 40 years ago, last year saw 900 000 birds trapped and killed there – on British soil. I’ll just say that again – just short of a million birds were trapped and killed on British soil in 2014 alone. And what’s more, the situation is getting worse, with 2014 being the worst year on record.

So, why is this happening? Graham Madge of the RSPB said, back in 2012, “This isn’t just a few guys trapping on a Sunday morning with a few nets, this is almost getting into the realms of organised crime. There are massive operations at some locations, to the point where shrubbery is planted across hillsides to attract the birds, irrigation systems are put in to water the bushes to make them attractive to insects and therefore to birds, sound systems are put in. They play the bird song at night as the birds are migrating over the island in an attempt to try and pull them in to trap them.” (2) And all this is just so the local dish of ‘ambelopoulia’ – grilled Blackcaps, Robins and warblers eaten whole – can be brazenly and illegally served in local restaurants. And the Ministry of Defence? Again, back in 2012, it said it took the matter ‘very seriously’. And yet the annual number of birds killed is estimated to have doubled in the two years since.

Although this area is British soil, and thus is our responsibility, it isn’t Britain as such. But wildlife crime is rife here too. We don’t have to go abroad to get a bellyful. We just have to go out into the countryside. Chasing terrified foxes and hares with dogs has hardly gone away despite legislation. Badgers are still ripped apart for fun with incidents on the increase partly, perhaps, as a result of a degree of legitimisation by the government through its non-evidence based scapegoating of the badger and cap-doffing to the National Farmers’ Union. In addition, all manner of animals and birds are exterminated across our uplands in the name of grouse moor ‘management’ on behalf of wealthy landowners. It’s against the law and it all deprives us of having more wildlife encounters, more biodiversity and a richer natural world.

As Monbiot concludes, for many countries the kind of corruption that exists involves paying bribes to officials. But what happens in Britain is much more sophisticated and is carried out by the rich and powerful. Corruption is dressed up as legitimate business.

In the same way that the elite influences what qualifies as being corrupt, and therefore excuses their own practices from inclusion for their own benefit, the same happens with wildlife crime. When it would benefit those with power to alter what is a crime against birds and animals they want to change things. Repealing hunting laws? Killing, sorry ‘culling’, protected badgers? Making it legal with special licenses to kill certain birds of prey? Coming up with a plan to legally remove Hen Harriers? The list goes on… and most of these are being discussed to benefit the elite and their activities. The bottom line?  Anything rather than changing their own ways.

The question is how much do we – you and I –  care? Unless people like us take that extra step then things will just go on, illegally, as before, benefiting the few at the expense of the many and perpetuating animal cruelty.  And that would be criminal.

So, there are plenty of things we can do:

• Report any wildlife crime by ringing 101 or, if the crime is actually taking place, 999. To do so anonymously ring 0800 555111
• Join an organisation, such as the RSPB, League Against Cruel Sports or the Badger Trust
• Write to your MP about strengthening laws to protect our wildlife and to put an end to the disgrace in Cyprus
• Write to your Police and Crime Commissioner about what their force is doing about wildlife crime
• Support those trying to fight wildlife crime here and abroad,  e.g. Fundrazr appeal
• Get your friends and family involved, e.g. raising awareness and family fundraising
• Follow and support like-minded individuals and groups on social media such as Birders Against Wildlife Crime, Wildlife Crime Aware and Mark Avery

It’s time to stop wishing and start doing.

1 http://www.monbiot.com/2015/03/18/hard-graft/
2 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/political-row-flares-over-brutal-slaughter-of-three-million-birds-a-year-in-cyprus-8181671.html

Britain’s deserts

Tags

birds, Birds of prey, environment, George Monbiot, Hen Harrier, moorland, nature, photography

So, Hen Harrier Day is over. It was uplifting, and those of us who were there, dripping and paddling, felt a sense of cohesion and inspiration from being with a group of committed, like-minded people who have simply had enough of the illegal persecution of birds of prey. And it’s now so important that this momentum builds.

The fact that the likes of the Daily Telegraph is writing such tendentious, scurrilous, ill-informed pieces show that some people, somewhere, are running scared. Maybe in the future we will see Hen Harriers and other raptors living unmolested on our grouse moors. Let’s hope so, but it could be some time in coming. Nevertheless, I’m in it for the long haul.

In the meantime, with our attention focused on driven grouse moors, let’s not forget all the other areas of our uplands that are also harrier – and raptor – free. In fact many of them are pretty much bird free altogether. In April I spent a day in Snowdonia – one of our national park ‘jewels’. After 8 hours of walking my birdlist was……… five. Five species – in a national park for God’s sake. If it hadn’t been for half a dozen Herring Gulls scavenging sandwiches at the summit of Snowdon the total of individual birds seen wouldn’t have been much more than five. A few Ravens, a singing wren, two Meadow Pipits and a Pied Wagtail in the car park completed the list. After eight hours in a National Park in April. Wow.

Raptors? Don’t be silly, there wasn’t a single one. Why would there be raptors? There was absolutely nothing for them to eat. I say it again – in a national park in April.

Bird, mammal and insect free

George Monbiot’s term for these uplands is the most apt – they are ‘sheepwrecked’. (1) They are a barren, green, short-cropped desert, the result of subsidised overgrazing that we – you and I – pay for. It seems that, in 2010, the average Welsh sheep farm on the hills received £53 000 in subsidies. The average net income per farm was £33 000. Hang on, that’s a deficit of      £20 000 per farm. That’s right, in creating a green desert each farm incurred a loss of £20 000. So, we pay £53 grand a year to each farm to encourage them to, in effect, remove wildlife and wildlife habitat from the hills. So no harriers there either, then. And this is considered normal in our national parks. Let’s just do that again. We – you and I – pay £53 000 per farm to create an upland desert.

And it’s not just in Wales that these green deserts proliferate. There are huge swathes of English and Scottish uplands, much of which is in national parks, where birdlists would stay well inside single figures. To quote Monbiot,

Sheep farming in this country is a slow-burning ecological disaster, which has done more damage to the living systems of this country than either climate change or industrial pollution.(2)

And it gets worse. Before 2004, subsidies were paid to farmers according to how many animals they had, but since then they have been paid in accordance with how much land is farmed. This has made it financially advantageous for hill farmers to remove any remaining scrub etc. on their land to increase their eligibility for subsidies and, in so doing, further reduce its wildlife potential. It’s clearly a nonsensical way to go about things.

One of the traps that we, as humans, often fall into is believing that things have always been as they are now. In the case of our uplands they haven’t always been as they are now. Grazing by sheep has created the current lifeless state of much of them. Hardly anything survives their relentless molars. But, when any change is mooted, the prophecies of doom come thick and fast, e.g. Will Cockbain, until 2012 the National Farmers’ Union spokesman on hill farming, ‘If the hills are not grazed, they will turn to scrub and trees, which may look scenic but will decrease biodiversity.’ (3) Good God! Less biodiversity? Could that be possible? Could we be heading for a birdlist of zero? You simply couldn’t make such nonsense up.

Beautiful, but empty

Sheep farming is a particularly unproductive and damaging use of our uplands and it’s about time that we, in Britain, had a look at the whole issue of our upland areas. Their current state is an economic and environmental disaster. And that’s not to even mention the rain that now streams straight off the scoured hills to create flooding misery downstream. Let’s think beyond the constraining prism of the present. We need to get past all this trotted-out nonsense about sheep farming being vital in maintaining the land as it always has been. It isn’t and it hasn’t. It used to be richer, more diverse and much more full of life. We need to develop a vision of what these areas could be. We need to discuss what we think the uplands are for and then find a way of changing them for the better, both for wildlife – harriers included – and, as a result, for us and our experiences of being in them.