In the Sunday Times yesterday Rod Liddle writes about Songbird Survival and interviews one of their trustees Nick Forde.
You have to pay Rupert Murdoch to read it or watch the video but you might just find it worthwhile.
Liddle tests Forde on his songbird identification - with, it has to be said, some pretty tricky species (meadow pipit, corn bunting and lesser whitethroat - and he fails. But he can recognise a pheasant.
Angela Smith MP, who is a doughty defender of birds of prey, is interviewed by Liddle on camera.
Songbird Survival's plans are to cull crows etc and see whether songbirds increase in numbers - it is possible that they will. But if they don't then Songbird Survival does not have a good record of taking on board the results of research which they have funded.
Liddle quotes the BTO very revealingly. The BTO, a politically neutral research body, said Songbird Survival had asked it to carry out research into “a supposed link between high predator numbers and a decline in songbirds. We discovered that there is pretty much no link whatsoever, and as a consequence they rejected our research”.
Let's be clear, it is interesting that Songbird Survival appears to have close links to the shooting community and previous blogs here have highlighted that. But shooting and nature conservation can rub along together most of the time. We have no beef with legitimate field sports and we work closely with organisations who have shooting interests. Not all conservationists are good people - the same goes for shooters. But where vocal or prominent Songbird Survival supporters have shooting interests and are anti-raptor then it seems fair to question whether it is love of corn buntings (even if one doesn't know what they look like) or love of pheasant bags that is the motivation for their pronouncements.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
It is depressing how many people not directly involved with science always think they know best despite the results from several good quality predator research projects done in good faith. The decline in song birds has been linked time and time again with the decline in habitat, including the decline in insect and wild flower populations. Pheasants are well known to be great predators of insects so depressing the insect populations especially for example butterflies. So I wonder if Song Bird Survivals next project after their cull of crows will be to get rid of all the pheasants and to see whether the insect population and hence song birds increase in number as a result? I hope Song Bird Survival can tell the difference between crows, rooks and jackdaws but the results of that test above do not give me much confidence.
redkite