Six bodies lie in the gloom in a darkened one-way mews behind a busy north London street .
This sort of gruesome find is usually the opening scene of a brutal murder mystery that only a maverick detective can solve. There is no maverick detective. There are six bodies.
This dark mews is typical of the narrow lanes behind High Street shops and flats. It's all steel security grills and garage doors. Air conditioning units hang off the walls and can be seen on the low flat roofs of the store room extensions. And there's one security camera too. This is Wolsey Mews behind the Kentish Town Road in Camden, London. The victims were all shot and left to rot. The crime has been reported to the Police, who''re short-staffed, and this crime comes well down their list of priorities, after all, the victims were just pigeons.
Feral pigeons are not a species of conservation concern. Many consider them pests. They are still birds protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, albeit subject to general licence controls. Regardless of your thoughts and feelings on feral pigeons, aren't you alarmed by the fact that someone, armed with a rifle in Camden is taking pot shots at moving targets just metres from a Primary School and a busy high street with its chemists, bank and supermarket? The weapon was an airgun and was powerful enough to kill six times.
This past week has seen the publication of some groundbreaking science showing a baseline for people's connection to nature. We fear it's below what it should be. For someone to kill wildlife six times in a single session is yet another indication that the science is right. We are, as a society, no longer connected to nature. There is little respect for it. No understanding. Without respect or understanding, there will be no nature in future. This is a desperate time for wildlife and for the very future of society.
Debate rages on the future of energy, where to put a new Thames crossing or the pros and cons of developing Crystal Palace and its Park, but if the very basics of our connection with nature has been eroded, what hope is there for a better tomorrow?
The responses I've heard to the launch of our report on the benefits that lie ahead when we embrace nature are encouraging. The indifference shown to those six pigeons is indicative of the apathy and ignorance that spawns repression and prejudice. It has no place in a modern forward looking society and should be taken very seriously.
Sadly there are people who don't have respect for life and no doubt just saw these poor ferals as targets and nothing more. Certainly they would not have seen them as living things or considered the pain and suffering they would be inflicting. On a lower level, but equally reprehensible, I saw two young lads on Kingston station earlier today and they treated a feral like an object and nothing more. They were initially throwing peanuts into the air and trying to catch them in their mouths. They were mainly unsuccessful and the fallen peanuts attracted a lone feral. They finally noticed it and threw a peanut or two in its direction. This turned to throwing them AT the feral and finally, just as their train was pulling in, one of them threw what appeared to be a disposable lighter at the poor thing. Fortunately it had already started to take flight because of the arrival of the train, but it shows the level at which people like this operate. I always have a pair of disposable gloves with me, just in case I see a feral in distress and have to take it home and then on to a pigeon refuge. Opposite sides of the same coin I guess.
Unicum arbustum haud alit duos erithacos
(One bush does not shelter two Robins)
Zenodotus (3rd Century B.C.)