Tim Bonner: RSPB celebrity president denies science

The RSPB has, for many years, courted celebrity in honorific roles such as president and vice-president. It was a very early adopter of celebrity culture when it appointed television presenter Julian Pettifer as president in 1994. More recently, however, such high-profile appointments have created some obvious challenges as outspoken RSPB representatives - such as vice-president Chris Packham - have strayed a long way from any science or evidence in making angry moral judgments about activities like shooting.

The RSPB’s current president is Dr Amir Khan, a GP who appears on breakfast television and who clearly has a deep understanding of healthcare issues and the NHS, as well as a love of nature. Dr Khan is also, you will not be surprised to hear, busy on social media and last week he responded to a Countryside Alliance tweet. We had shared a report from the Yorkshire Post on newly published research which found that threatened “breeding curlews are raising four times as many chicks on the UK’s grouse moors, compared to similar unmanaged moorland sites”. You would have thought that this good news would have been welcomed by the president of the largest nature conservation charity in the country, but apparently not. In fact, Dr Khan described the story as “crap” and stated that grouse shooting “does nothing for wildlife conservation”.

Dr Khan is entitled to his views on shooting (although the RSPB does claim to be neutral on the issue), but science denial is another thing entirely. I am sure that Dr Khan would be appalled at people who reject science on Covid, for instance, yet he is ready to dismiss peer-reviewed research carried out by our colleagues at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust and published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research as “crap”. The study not only found four times as many curlew chicks on grouse moors, but also a twofold increase in the presence of other wading bird species, such as lapwings, golden plovers, oystercatchers, and redshanks.

Nor should this be any surprise to anyone taking any interest in waders and other upland breeding species. Study after study has found that managed moorland and predator control create an environment in which biodiversity thrives. In fact, the RSPB itself says that “in some upland areas, the control of foxes and crows by gamekeepers managing moorlands for red grouse shooting may be important in maintaining breeding curlew populations and preventing further declines”.

Dr Khan, however, is clearly in denial as far as the evidence on the environmental benefits of moorland management for grouse are concerned. This is a worrying development and the RSPB, which says that it “prides itself on using the best scientific evidence available to guide its conservation policies and practice”, will have to ask itself whether it is best served by a figurehead who denies science.