It's a sad day when your childhood hero, whose picture hangs in your downstairs loo, attacks the organisation you work for and whose mission you care passionately about. But, remarkably, Sir Ian Botham (who owns a shoot) has joined forces with others from the shooting community to launch a complaint to the Charity Commission regarding the RSPB's expenditure on fundraising as opposed to nature reserves.
When I saw the website that Sir Ian is fronting, I thought someone had hacked into his internet account again. Have a look for yourself here. You will quite quickly realise that this is not one of Beefy's infamous in-swinging yorkers that did for Rod Marsh et al in his devastating spell at Edgbaston in 1981*. There's a lot of nonsense written and some of it is actually quite funny - wondering why, for example, we don't spend more time promoting chickens. I think our charitable objects may stop short of permitting us to do chicken conservation.
But, before anyone dismisses this as a Botham long-hop, I am reminded that he managed to pick up quite a few wickets with his bad deliveries.
Any complaint to the Charity Commission, even if motivated by the fact that we have hardened our position on grouse shooting, deserves to be taken seriously.
The central charge is that only 24% of our charitable expenditure is on nature reserves and, in an outrageously lazy slog-sweep aside, that our reserves aren't any good for birds. Really?
Abernethy - one of 210 fabulous nature reserves (Andy Hay, rspb-images.com)
The RSPB is 125 years old this year. Throughout our history, we've always campaigned to change policy, legislation, attitudes, and behaviour. Yes, we started to acquire nature reserves in 1930 (Cheyne Court, Romney Marsh - yes, Romney not Rodney) and we now have the responsibility of looking after 15,000 species on 210 nature reserves across more than 150,000 hectares. We're proud of the work that we do on our reserves and I reject any suggestion that our dedicated team of staff and volunteers are 'ineffective'.
Yet, we've never believed that our nature reserves - brilliant as they are - will ever be sufficient to save threatened wildlife on their own. How can they be when they only cover 0.6% of the UK surface area? You we can't save nature by putting a fence around reserves and hoping the remaining 99.4% will take care of itself.
On the day that we hear of Beefy's attack, the UK Government also reported (see here) on progress of the wild bird indicator: woodland birds down 28% since 1970, seabirds down 24% since 1986, and farmland birds are now at their lowest level down 55% since 1970. We care about these declines, we want to do something about them and we know that we cannot rely on nature reserves alone.
Cirl bunting: a bird that we have, through working with farmers, helped to bring back from the brink (Andy Hay, rspb-images.com)
I am sorry Beefy, but that means we will spend money on researching why species are declining, we will work out what needs to be done to help them, we will work with farmers to advise them on how to manage their land for wildlife, we will save special places by fighting inappropriate development and yes, heretical it may be to some, we will seek to influence governments to change policy. And you know what, we will continue to try to grow the market of people that are interested in nature conservation - the motivation behind our Giving Nature a Home advertising - or, through Vote for Bob, to urge politicians to give nature a fair showing in their manifestos. The threats to the natural world are so great that we have to use modern techniques to ensure nature's voice is heard.
We've done this for 125 years and we plan to continue. Our members will expect nothing less.
And if you keep bowling us long hops, we'll crash them to the boundary. And, if you continue to slur us, we'll get our own Bob Willis to bowl at you.
Howzat?
*If you don't know your cricket, Edgbaston was the second of the three tests in the 1981 Ashes series where Sir Ian was named man of the match for his match-winning spell of 5 wickets for 1 run in 28 balls. You can watch it again here.
I am a huge fan of the RSPB's work. However as a member i am worried by some of the things the RSPB do. The campaign to licence Grouse moors i feel is a huge waste of time & money, if we can't catch 'the bad apples' now when it's illegal to kill birds of prey, how on earth are we suppose to police them under a licence? The only way forward on this issue is to Ban Driven Grouse Shooting and this is the campaign that's got the shooting industry worried. Unfortunately attacking Mark Avery wouldn't generate enough press for them so they have to attack a bigger fish. The RSPB, & possibly the Wildlife Trusts will be next, are the NGO's that are very unfairly being shot at. The work that the RSPB & Wildlife trusts do for conservation far outweighs the conservation, or destruction, that the Grouse moor landowners do. They really do have a cheek to throw these accusations around when doing so much damage themselves.