This amazingly aggressive article has been published in the Angling Times. It describes a violent attack by an unknown person on someone culling cormorants under licence. Let us hope that the police catch the person involved. The RSPB certainly does not condone or encourage such behaviour.
But the author of this article, Mr Partner, uses it as an opportunity to attack birdwatchers, attack birdwatching as a pastime and misrepresent the RSPB's policies and outlook on life. The million and sixty thousand RSPB members can all feel maligned by Mr Partner's article.
Let me put on the record that the RSPB did oppose the extension of licences to kill more cormorants - but government saw fit to go ahead and that's that.
The Minister who approved the increase in licences, now a Cabinet Minister, Mr Ben Bradshaw, was quoted as saying that he was once harassed in the street by a cormorant - a very fishy story!
But since then we have worked closely with fishermen and their representative bodies on subjects such as the Water Framework Directive, cleaner rivers and the Severn Barrage. I am sure that there are many fishermen who will be highly embarassed by Mr Partner's ill-informed and provocative article.
We won't let Mr Partner's words deflect us from working with responsible fishermen on a wide range of environmental issues. And we hope that this article doesn't signal the start of a new round of anti-cormorant, anti-bird, anti-birdwatcher, anti-conservationist articles in the angling papers.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Jamesm - I agree that current media approaches are frequently less than helpful - but everyone uses them - what about those Countryside Alliance stickers claiming that 51% of people are in favour of hunting !
Having said that, as politicians keep finding out - and never seem to learn - the voters aren't quite as stupid as so many lobby groups think. We all whether birders, shooters of foresters have deeply held beleifs - and, frequently, a campaigners inability to see that others might not actually see it our way - and the really big thing everyone in the countryside has top get their head round is that this is now an overwhelmingly urban country, and that doesn't just include birders - it includes most paying guests on shoots as well. As I think is the case with farmers the majority of urban people are amazingly respectful of the skills of rural professionals - we sometimes need to ask ourselves whether we return the compliment - far too many rural people are too ready to take the attitude that we know best, they are ignorant - and there is no clearer area than illegal persecution of raptors, which really does risk urban goodwill.