BY BERT BURNETT I am reminded of a project to help one of the country’s most threatened breeding bird species, the curlew, which was awarded more than £156,000 from the Scottish Government’s Biodiversity Challenge Fund. This initiative, titled Curlews in Crisis Scotland, aimed to increase breeding areas and reduce predation for Europe’s largest wader and one of its most iconic birds. Scotland is home to … Continue reading Crisis-hit Curlews, Cash & The RSPB
CSM EDITORIAL The dead cat strategy is the political strategy of deliberately making a shocking announcement to divert media attention away from problems or failures in other areas. In the PR world, it’s the introduction of a dramatic or sensationalist topic to divert attention from a more damaging issue that someone wants to keep hidden from the media, and therefore the public. ‘There is one … Continue reading These Days Nobody Falls for Tingay’s Dead Cat
BY BEN O’ROURKE BBC Presenter Chris Packham used to be known for his peroxide hair and quirky kids programmes then graduated to BBC’s ‘Springwatch‘ and all the spin-off series. As he grew older, so did his audience and the series gained him a new generation of young viewers interested in wildlife. Few people in the UK under 50 don’t know who he is. For the … Continue reading Chris Packham, the BBC Extremist: ‘Stick Your Head in a Bucket of Fuel and Set Fire to it’
BY BEN O’ROURKE Heavens to Murgatroyd! How did a botched bird report become the seminal study on raptor persecution? Most of the tags attached to the birds of prey failed and less than a handful were confirmed illegally killed, yet researchers fiddled the figures to support an agenda. Ruth Tingay sat in her office one morning in March, 2019, clutching a wad of freshly-printed paper, … Continue reading Raptor Persecraption: Heavens to Murgatroyd
CSM EDITORIAL There was a time, in the bad old days of ALF, when animal rights terrorists were considered the second greatest terror threat to the UK behind the IRA. While various Islamist groups have overtaken them now, animal rights terrorism still abounds, carried out by a small but active crew of extremist cadres who still resort to violence to pursue their political aims. The … Continue reading Hamas & the Hunt Sabs
BY GILES BRADSHAW The Wild Justice Director Mark Avery has given qualified support to disobeying the Hunting Act. He believes that it is “fine” provided that: I’m going to assume this is also the position of the campaign group to which he belongs. And I think this is a reasonable position to hold. I’d like to give qualified support to Avery’s qualified support of hunt … Continue reading Breaking the Hunting Act is “fine” says Avery
BY BEN McCARTHY Dear Squires, This week I noted with interest how Mark Avery of the campaign group Wild Justice turned his nose up at a recent ‘unsettling’ image of the Mendip Hunt Sabs: “It recalls, too readily for me, paramilitary action” is an odd quote from Mr Avery. The other 2/3 of Wild Justice are comprised of outspoken hunt sabs who’ve been posting these … Continue reading Expose the Terrorists Among Us
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN It was with some reluctance that I was asked to present on film my take on the current battles over the Great British Countryside. Not my scene at all. Nonetheless I trooped up to Yorkshire with our terrier Angus (our labrador was banned by the producers as they thought he might gobble the microphone muff) and we shot the following three films … Continue reading The Countryside Fights Back
BY JOHN NASH Dear CSM Reader. You are probably vaguely aware by now that there is something very, very, wrong with this dying government’s attitude to rural matters. After all, most people who make a living on or from the land thought they could rely on the Conservative Party for its down-to-earth policies – policies that once balanced the touchy-feely, self-centred anthropomorphic dreams of … Continue reading The Cancer at the Heart of Extremist Animal Rights Lunacy
BY JAMES BARRINGTON Asking what methods of wildlife management anti-hunting or anti-shooting groups actually support, as opposed to the activities they are keen to condemn, should always be part of any debate surrounding field sports. The usual response is either a deafening silence or an idealistic ‘leave it all to nature’. Practical examples of how these alternative models of the countryside might look tend to … Continue reading The Blindness of Zealots
