Stepping up for nature - that's our latest campaign and you'll hear much more about it over the next weeks, months and years.
There was an interesting piece on the Today programme this morning (at about 0740) with RSPB spokespeople and the Defra Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman, as well as Farming Today and an early start for me on BBC Breakfast.
Mrs Spelman said some nice things about the RSPB and the need for our campaign.
Today there is also a hand-in of the 350,000+ signatures from Letter to the Future into 10 Downing Street, an event for some of our campaigning members and another event this evening where Caroline Spelman will talk to us.
It's a long day but a good one.
Ruralgeek I think thats fundamentally wrong. While predation is of course an important part of population dynamics, there really couldnt be a more natural interaction. Studies which look for relationships between a species numbers and its predators will always find them, since they are integral parts of ecology.
As far as I know, predation only becomes a serious threat to a species long term when many other factors have reduced the fitness of a population to such a low level that it becomes vulnerable to carnivory. In natural systems, predator play relationships exist in delicate highly dependant relationships, which ecological time has stabilised to shallow relatively predictable reactive sine waves.
Its only introduced species that can upset that balance substantially, and ultimatley threaten entire ecosystems not just species (Eg brown tree snakes and Guam). Im interested in the BTO study that supports your claims, because Ive read none that do unless taken out of context. Where as many studies demonstrate the predator prey relationship, there are not any I am aware of that dont contribute the large additional factors that intensify that relationship.
Even grey squirrels are now being shown to have relatively little effect on song bird numbers where previously they have been painted as remorseless egg burglers. 'Predator control' is tackling conservation from the wrong end of the food chain. Where as in some places (introduced species) it may very well be a necessary last resort, its practice can have dramatic long term negative effects for the very species you are trying to save.