BY GARY BAXTER
Right. The Scotch has been poured, the blood pressure is merely simmering instead of boiling over, so let’s have a look at what other masterstrokes of genius are being cooked up by the clipboard-wielding classes this week. You’d think they’d run out of ways to complicate the simple art of land management, but their capacity for nonsense is apparently limitless.
First up, the great Gull Con. I think the biggest struggle concerning these birds is the way they are counted, and by whom. We’re constantly told herring gulls and the like are in dire decline, a protected species no less. If that’s true, how come the problems in towns and cities have increased and become almost unbearable? On my summer travels, I saw them lined up along roofs like feathered stormtroopers, bobbing around on every local loch and pond, and plenty wheeling through the air. I’d bet my last pound that most of them were never entered into any official population count. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? You’ll note the population numbers are calculated by Computer Modelling—a desk-top study where they count what they think is there. If they don’t have all the info, the results are flawed from the start, wide open to a lack of data and the bias of the modeller who’s never had a gull steal his chips or keep him awake at dawn with its racket. It’s ecological guesswork used to justify inaction, while town centres become no-go zones for anyone trying to enjoy a sandwich in peace.
And while we’re on the subject of fantasy land, let’s talk about the great Rewilding Con. I’ve just read a glossy brochure—probably funded by your taxes and mine—about a new scheme to turn productive, lowland farmland into a “mosaic of scrub and natural regeneration.” Translation: they want to pay some city-boy landowner to let his fields go to rack and ruin. Thistles, ragwort, and brambles—that’s their vision of biodiversity. They call it “ecosystem recovery”; I call it a derelict building site. The skylarks and hares that lived in that managed grassland? Gone. Replaced by the very rats the gulls should be eating, if they hadn’t all moved to the urban takeaways. It’s a greenwash, a feel-good fantasy for people who think their organic veg box just magically appears. They’re creating a museum of neglect and patting themselves on the back for it. You can’t eat view, and you can’t farm scrubland.
Finally, the death of common sense by a thousand consultations. I got a letter the other day—another bloody “consultation document” from Natural England about “Visual Impact Assessments” for farm buildings. You read that right. They’re worried about how a new barn looks. Not whether it’s well-built, or useful, or essential for animal welfare. No, they’re concerned it might offend the sensibilities of a handful of ramblers who can’t read a map. We’re drowning in paperwork, strangled by red tape, and paralysed by the opinions of people whose only connection to the land is walking their labradoodle across it on a Sunday. They’ve created an industry of talking about the countryside, while making it impossible for the people who work in it to get anything done.
It’s the same story, different day. An assault on practicality, a celebration of ideology, and a contempt for the people who know the land because they live and breathe it. They’re not stewards; they’re vandals with a degree.
The glass is empty. Time for a refill.
Gary Baxter is the son of a gamekeeper, is an ex gamekeeper and has run his own falconry based bird control business for the last 20 years.