BY BERT BURNETT

Dear Editor,

Talk about hypocrisy! Chris Packham, with the blessing of the RSPB are challenging general licences to control crows and calling on a ban to stop killing foxes. The RSPB initially boycotted the Understanding Predation project and tried to scupper the Working for Waders initiative but now that MONEY is available for these projects there they are with begging bowls at the ready working their way into the driving seat.

The Working for Waders initiative has morphed into saving the Curlew (a wader) and yet again the RSPB will be found anywhere that money is offered. The RSPB showed scant interest in saving the Curlew before it became financially beneficial to do so, they don’t like being associated with the killing of wildlife but here they are with the begging bowl held out to the EU 2019 Project Life for money to kill foxes and crows, something that everyone else is doing for free!

With an income of £140 million a year and £200 million in the bank they won’t spend a penny of their own money to protect these birds, they want outside funding and when that runs out (as with the money for capercaillie protection from foxes) they simply abandon the birds to their fate, this is how much they actually care for the birds they claim they are protecting!

Everyone else involved in protecting the Curlew is doing it for the love of these birds and others, and work on a shoe string while Packham and the RSPB are working against them by trying to stop the legal predator controls they already carry out.

Lord Botham was right – “they forgot the birds” – and now everything they do is governed by how much money is in it for them.

The £92,320 is only part of the EU funding. Where has the rest of it gone? How many of their permanent staff with only a passing interest in this project are being paid from this handout?

Ireland is welcome to the cash, their Curlews are really struggling and any help they get will be worthwhile but here in Scotland in our managed uplands the Curlew is still thriving, yet Packham’s policies backed by RSPB are designed to reverse these successes and increase predation. Where is the logic in this?

Of course here in the rest of the UK this, for Packham and the RSPB, is not about logic or common sense. It’s about power through money and attacking people whose lifestyle they don’t approve off.

It seems the RSPB have no shame and their goal posts are on roller skates so they can be manoeuvred into a position to catch passing money not necessarily helping birds. I attach a copy of the tender document below.

Yours sincerely,

Bert Burnett

Bert is a retired gamekeeper.