Yesterday I mentioned that in the evening I would be speaking to a group of parliamentarians with an interest in shooting. I survived!
In fact, to be serious, it was a very enjoyable evening. I was the after dinner speaker and so had to try to keep my wits about me. My message was that the RSPB is not anti-shooting, we do not campaign against legitimate field sports, and we do recognise that those who practise field sports often share our love of the countryside and nature to a very large extent. We don't see everything in exactly the same way - but let's try to get along!
My challenge to the shooting community was to rid itself of those people, probably a very small minority, who break the law and kill protected birds of prey. There was a recognition in the room that this was an issue for shooting to deal with. And privately it was clear that there is a wide degree of acceptance of the identities of some of the main offenders. It's interesting how often a particular name comes up in these discussions.
The conversation ranged widely from cats to nuclear power and biofuels to windfarms! There were two main challenges to us. The first was to be more careful about not painting all the shooting community as bad guys over birds of prey - point taken, and we don't ever say, or believe, that every game shoot in the country is persecuting birds of prey but if we have given that impression then that is, indeed, unfair and unfortunate.
The second challenge was that if we really don't campaign against shooting, such as wildfowling, then why don't we allow wildfowling on our nature reserves? This struck me as a strange request - and I said so.
There is some game shooting on RSPB nature reserves because shooting rights and land tenure do not always go hand in hand in this country. When you buy a piece of land you may not be able to buy the right to shoot on that land at the same time. A bit odd - but true. Our aim is always to acquire shooting rights to the land we own and then not to exercise those rights. We don't see wildfowling or pheasant shooting as being ideal land uses for nature reserves - and make no apology for that at all! I think that our position on this was accepted by almost everyone in the room - but not quite everyone.
I have no idea how many RSPB members shoot regularly - but there were some in the room last night and there must be thousands in our membership. I do know that many of our members find the shooting of birds as a sport abhorent and might disapprove of us talking to shooting interests at all. We find ourselves talking to lots of people with whom we do not agree completely - that's life! It's certainly life for a campaigning organisation - you have to talk to the people you want to influence. Our main gripe with the shooting community is that small minority who break wildlife law - and that is the area where we would like to work closely with the respectable shooting community to see much more progress.
Well Mark great that you survived to do another blog and the reward is(tongue in cheek)that I agree with everything you say.Its a really sensible attitude to take and probably will be rewarded by those you spoke to doing more to stop the bad eggs in their basket killing raptors.Funnily enough most of my friends are probably into shooting and if the price we have to pay to get their co-operation in preventing killing of raptors means that we have to be more tolerant of them I think that is what we have to do.It doesn't mean that we have to change our views.I do think that the more people like you talk to these people the more help you are likely to get and not talking to any groups just means you lose the chance of any communication.