BY BERT BURNETT
How much wildlife have we lost through conservation charities like RSPB due to their management choices?
RSPB have managed Abernethy estate for capercaillie for over 25 years and have succeeded in reducing the capercaillie population by 75% minimum. They also inherited with the purchase a healthy population of mountain hare and upland waders etc., the hares have all but gone and the waders etc. are struggling.
RSPB and other conservation charities following RSPB’s example claim they don’t kill predators (we know and have known for decades this is not true from RSPB, they would just rather we didn’t discuss it openly and what they do kill is not enough to reduce predation of red and amber species) and this has resulted in absolute failure by many species to reproduce successfully enough to sustain local populations.
These charitable conservation bodies have between them received literally BILLIONS in public money over the decades, all in a bid, be it through habitat management or direct funding to increase various populations, they have failed!
What they have achieved between them is to squirrel away more than HALF A BILLION into their respective bank accounts. This allows them to pay high wages to ‘top’ staff and rely on volunteers to do what work is necessary.
These publicly funded reserves cover hundreds of thousands of acres within the UK, they were also purchased because they were the best habitats supporting the highest populations of rare birds … the RSPB alone manages 300,000 acres of prime habitat. Initially these thousands of acres produced thousands of fledgling chicks to sustain the national populations, now they struggle to produce any chicks at all. Have those that fund these organisations actually looked into this and asked WHY?
RSPB have managed Lake Vyrnwy in Wales for 40 years .. totally in control and financially supported .. yet 40 years later, by their own admission, the wildlife there has basically gone. So much so that they claimed without financial support reaching into the millions, even the RSPB’s favourites the raptors like Harriers and Merlins would disappear. This is the legacy we are asked to fund … a legacy that has been instrumental in depleting the populations of nationally rare birds like the curlew.
What is happening on these reserves is unsustainable. Drawing species into habitats to breed only to have their efforts thwarted by increasing numbers of generalist predators.
Things need to change, instead of paying millions to these people on a promise we need to finance them only if they can show sustainability and bird increases in real terms.
RSPB and other so called wildlife charities because of their failures to produce replacement chicks etc. even at a local level have now become part of the problem not the solution.
Bert Burnett is a retired gamekeeper with more than fifty years involved in gamekeeping.
