Tim Bonner: RSPB and the Packham tendency

The RSPB's Director of Conservation, Martin Harper, was invited to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Shooting and Conservation convened by our colleagues at BASC on Tuesday night. Mr Harper is vocal on - and some might say a little obsessed with - shooting issues, so he was at home on his favourite subject. Unfortunately, the RSPB's position on shooting has become increasingly political and reliant on a series of dubious assumptions and claims.

In RSPB world, pheasants are always 'non-native', whereas the brown hare never is despite the fact that they were both introduced by the Romans. Grouse moor management is always 'intensifying' despite the fact that grouse bags have been falling for decades. Raptor persecution (which we can all agree is an appalling crime) is forever increasing despite actual incidents being at historic lows and raptor populations booming.

Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly the mistaken belief that a narrow band of anti-shooting activists, personified by Chris Packham who is regrettably a Vice President of the RSPB, reflect the views of the population as a whole, or even the attitudes of RSPB members. I also wonder, however, whether a significant part of the reasoning behind the RSPB's attacks on shooting is not to deflect from its own failings and internal contortions.

Our Chairman Lord Herbert, a former RSPB species champion for the lapwing, put his finger on one of the RSPB's difficulties at the APPG when he asked Martin Harper why it was not able to produce lapwing chicks, and those of other ground nesting birds, in anything like the profusion that the Norfolk Estate in his old constituency of Arundel. The problem for the RSPB is that we all know what the answer to that question is. Once the critical habitat for species like lapwing has been provided, the success, or failure, of ground nesting birds relies on systematic predator control.

The RSPB is increasingly conflicted by this knowledge as it pits practical conservation against the Packham tendency which labels predator control "casual killing" and brings Judicial Reviews to challenge the Government on the issuing of General Licences for the control of exactly the corvid species which like nothing better than to snack on a lapwing chick.

Thus far its answer has been to build fences and practice token control of avian predators. Fence building is one of the RSPB's dirty secrets. It has massively constructed 'predator fences' at 28 reserves, many of them stretching for miles. These defences may exclude foxes and badgers, but they necessarily increase the impact of those species on neighbouring holdings and the fences have a range of negative impacts on other species. They restrict the movement of hares and otters, electrify hedgehogs and frogs and kill birds like swans and geese through collisions.

The full hypocrisy of the RSPB's fencing policy can be seen when you compare its advice on 'creating nature highways and byways' when it advises people to cut holes in wooden panels in their garden and take wire cutters to fences. Meanwhile, Martin Harper also points out, with a heavy heart, that as a 'last resort' the RSPB also uses lethal control, but the numbers involved are so paltry that it is no surprise that as Lord Herbert pointed out, the RSPB cannot compete with private reserves using game management practices. For instance, in 2017 the RSPB killed 528 hooded and carrion crows on all its reserves in the entire UK. Those are numbers that any lowland wild bird keeper or upland grouse keeper would laugh at.

The sadness is that rather than admitting the reality and arguing the case for more intensive predator control where it is relevant, it seems that the RSPB would rather throw stones at the shooting community to divert attention.