...some time in the future, when the RSPB announces that it is embarking on an ambitious campaign to make the world richer in nature, the NFU will respond as follows:
'We welcome this campaign. As stewards of the countryside, farmers are alarmed at the big declines in farmland birds that indicate wider declines in wildlife as a whole. We are pleased that the RSPB works so closely with farmers carrying out free surveys for thousands of NFU members at the RSPB's expense, providing a network of advisors delivering free advice for farmers, working very closely with those farmers lucky enough to have the rarer farmland birds such as cirl buntings and stone curlews on their land and we often walk, almost hand in hand, into meetings with government ministers to ask for better designed and more effective agri-environment schemes so that millions of pounds of taxpayers' money can deliver more wildlife. We will always be grateful to the RSPB and other wildlife NGOs for campaigning during the Comprehensive Spending Review to protect the funding for agri-environment schemes when the NFU was silent on the matter. We recognise that the RSPB doesn't just talk about these issues, it puts its money where its mouth is and its Hope Farm project has shown beyond doubt that modern arable farming can deliver increasing farmland bird numbers if farmers do the right things. Thats why NFU office holders are all implementing such proven measures on their own land and we are all hoping to win the prestigious Nature of Farming Award. We are going to step up for nature with the RSPB.'.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Trimbush - the Shooting times will never agree with the RSPB and the fact that they take such a defensive position is very telling indeed. People tend to forget that the RSPB is a charity and not a profit making organisation or some large corporate power so has no vested interests other than protecting our wildlife for us all. Can't say the same for people who kill things for fun and earn a pretty penny out of it so these comments are for a very narrow audience and irrelevant as far as I'm concerned as they add not one jot in doing anything positive for biodiversity.
Let's see these people and the NFU doing something positive for a change and stop sniping at the RSPB and other conservation bodies.
Redkite - I agree the RSPB is not critical of farmers , just the system within which they (and actually the RSPB themselves have to operate) - it's the spin machine of those organisations and narrow interest groups (who are mainly motivated by money) that find the truth difficult to take that twist it so.