1. Springwatch starts on Monday! For a taster, take a look at this trailer here.
2. The RSPB Make Your Nature Count survey starts next weekend. To find out everything you need to prepare, take a look here.
3. While you are sitting in your garden with a cold drink on Saturday morning, think of me sweating my way through the Bupa 10K run.
Have a lovely weekend.
As regular readers of this blog will know, I am not an aficianado of Twitter. But I hear that #buzzardgate was trending yesterday.
Why? The public is outraged by Defra's plans to spend close to £400,000 of taxpayers’ money on a trial in England to reduce buzzard predation of pheasant poults by, amongst other things, shooting out buzzard nests and permanently imprisoning adults. The message to Mr Benyon was clear - pull the plug on this project and think again.
Am not sure many were convinced by a Defra explanation in a tweet yesterday "There are no plans to cull buzzards. We're looking at researching how to protect young pheasants". It slightly missed the point.
Later this posting appeard on the Defra website under the section called 'mythbusting'.
"Defra is absolutely not proposing to cull buzzards or any other raptors.
We work on the basis of sound evidence. This is why we want to find out the true extent of buzzards preying on young pheasants and how best to discourage birds that may cause damage to legitimate businesses. This would be only in areas where there is a clear problem, using non-lethal methods including increasing protective cover for young pheasants with vegetation, diversionary feeding of buzzards, moving the birds elsewhere or destroying empty nests. The results of this scientific research will help guide our policy on this issue in the future.
As the RSPB have said, the buzzard population has recovered wonderfully over the last few years, and we want to see this continue."
Judging by responses on Mr Benyon's facebook page, the public did not feel reassured by this. You can views some comments here.
What about the other political parties? Am not sure that the coalition partners were that impressed. Here is what Baroness Kate Parminter (Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Backbench Committee on Defra/Decc) said:
"My colleagues on the Lib Dem Defra backbench Committee and I have been very clear that we oppose measures that would harm a protected bird of prey that’s only now recovering after decades of decline, and we’ve been making this case to Defra ministers. We believe the focus should be on tackling the problem identified by shooting estates only where it’s proven that buzzards are the cause, without resorting to capturing buzzards or destroying their nests. In those cases, we’re supportive of the non-lethal methods Defra has identified.
However, thousands of pheasants are killed by traffic every year and our view is that focussing only on the issue of buzzards eating young pheasants which, after all is nature taking its course, is far too narrow. If gamekeepers are suffering financially as pheasant poults are not making it into adulthood, we should take an holistic view of the problem rather than reacting on the basis of anecdotal evidence.
I know that many of you will feel that spending money on a buzzard management programme is not the best use of public money when many other conservation initiatives aren’t being taken forward."
And here is the comment from Mary Creagh MP (Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment):
"The restoration of the buzzard population has been a real success in recent years. It is astounding that Defra are wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax-payers money disrupting this protected species.
This out-of-touch Government’s priority is protecting the interests of large commercial shooting estates and non-native pheasant, rather than protecting our country’s native species. The Government should drop this plan now. This has all the hallmarks of another Defra shambles"
I don't want this to turn in to a full scale political row, I want Defra to see sense and start to focus their efforts on the real challenges facing our natural world.
And finally, if you want two very different persepctives, read George Monbiot's view here and Countryside Alliance here.
What do you think of Defra's response? Have you contacted your MP yet to let them know your views?
It would be great to hear from you.
Defra wants to spend close to £400,000 of taxpayers’ money (that’s our money) on a trial in England to reduce buzzard predation of pheasant poults by, amongst other things, shooting out buzzard nests and permanently imprisoning adults. You can read the Defra tender document here.
I want to tell you why I think that this approach is fundamentally flawed, why I am angry and why we need help to call on Ministers to think again.
Buzzards are one of the nation's best loved birds of prey. I remember as a boy walking on the Long Mynd being inspired by seeing a buzzard soar over head and I've always had a soft spot for these fabulous animals.
In the early 19th century, buzzards were a common sight throughout the UK, but persecution resulted in widespread declines and by 1875, they remained only in western Britain. Subsequent recovery was undermined in the late 1950s, when rabbit populations were decimated by myxomatosis and it was not until the 1990s that the rate of spread accelerated, with birds recolonising much of their former range.
Happily for me and for anyone else who loves these birds, buzzards now breed in every UK county. It is a sad fact in some areas the rate of expansion has been restricted illegally. Buzzards are still the most persecuted bird of prey, with 291 having been confirmed as poisoned in the last 10 years. And as always with wildlife crime, this figure is only the tip of the iceberg.
But not everyone loves buzzards.
Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
Buzzards will take pheasant poults, given the opportunity. Although generally scanvengers, buzzards can be lazy and will take the easiest meal available – no different to you or I nipping down to the fish and chip shop to save cooking. Current estimates suggest that pheasant shooting leads to 40 million non-native gamebirds being released into the countryside, often at very high densities. The result is a meat feast that any self-respecting buzzard is unlikely to ignore. So how many pheasants do buzzards eat? An independent report for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) found that on average only 1-2% of pheasant poults were taken by birds of prey. This is tiny compared to the numbers which die from other causes, like disease or being run over on the road (which accounts for about 3 million pheasants a year). Even if predation levels are higher in a few instances, there are plenty of legal, non-contentious techniques for reducing predation, which don’t involve destroying nests or confining wild birds to a life spent in captivity. Scaring devices, visual deterrents, more vegetation and diversionary feeding of buzzards could all make a difference, if done well. A few years ago we endorsed a BASC produced guidance note advising gamekeepers on how to reduce bird of prey predation using some of these techniques.
And is capturing buzzards likely to work? If you swat a wasp, but leave a pot of sticky honey open to the air, it won't be long before another wasp takes its place. The same is true of buzzards. Two gamekeepers previously employed on the Kempton estate in Shropshire were convicted of, amongst other things, illegally killing buzzards in 2007. They had killed over 100 buzzards in less than six months in one small part of Shropshire. As soon as one buzzard was removed, another (ill-fated) buzzard took its place. We think that the research project is the wrong answer to address what we see as a minor problem.
We think Defra is taking the proverbial sledgehammer to a walnut in reacting to calls from a small part of the pheasant shooting community to do something about buzzards.
And I am angry at what I see as bad use of public money.
At a time when there is so little to go around, when we know that there is a massive shortfall in funding required to meet the coalition government's ambition "to protect wildlife... and restore biodiversity", it seems ludicrous to be spending a large slug of public money to protect private interest.
I can think of loads of ways to spend £400,000 on nature conservation. Helping save hen harrier from extinction in England would seem a better use of cash.
I should point out that ours isn’t a knee jerk reaction. We’ve been working with Defra for a while to try to identify possible solutions for the small number of pheasant shoots that – we are told – are experiencing losses to buzzards. I genuinely hoped that we would find common ground and that I wouldn’t have to write this blog. That has not been possible.
Buzzards are a conservation success story, due in no small part to effective legal protection and a general warming of attitudes towards buzzards and other birds of prey on the part of many lowland land managers. While some will simply see this as a pilot project and will tell us not to get over-excited. I think that misses the point. If we have a perceived conflict in the countryside, let's first look at whether the conflict is real and serious and then look at the underlying causes of the conflict - in this case the release every year of c40 millions pheasants into the countryside. What are the environmental consequences of those releases? Addressing the symptom will do nothing to address underlying problems in the long term.
I would like to publicly call on Richard Benyon MP, the Minister responsible, to think again and pull the plug on this project.
If you are as angry as I am by this misguided use of public money and attack on buzzards, please step up and write to your MP and ask them to pass on your concerns to Mr Benyon. I will come back to this subject soon, and may seek your further action and support in the coming weeks.
If you do write to your MP, you may like to highlight;- Predation by buzzards is a relatively small cause of loss of pheasants- Buzzards are a native and recovering species, while pheasants are a non-native gamebird- The good that £400,000 could do for species of highest conservation concern, such as the hen harrier
I consider it a huge privilege to see buzzards nearly daily on my way to work. Let's not do anything to undermine the protection which led to their spectacular comeback.
Do you think Defra should spend c£400,000 on a trial to reduce buzzard predation of pheasant poults in England by, amongst other things, shooting out buzzard nests and permanently imprisoning adults? If not, what would you prefer them to spend the money on?
It would be great to hear your views.
The question in the title of my blog on Monday stands – will farming deliver? On the basis of the NFU’s new report, the jury is still out.
In fact, after having had the chance to peruse the document Farming Delivers for Britain, at the heart of the NFU’s new campaign, I am left a little confused – both as a consumer, keen to make environmentally and welfare friendly choices, and as a conservationist, acutely aware of the ongoing environmental challenges facing us in the UK countryside.
I was pleased that Peter Kendall, NFU President, noted in his introduction that the industry now faces the challenge of ”making optimum use of scarce resources and of producing in ways which enhance, rather than damage, the environment”. This is one of the great challenges we face this decade.
It was perhaps disappointing that there was little sign of how this is going to be achieved. Instead, much of the focus is on why production needs to increase.
We have certainly seen some environmental improvements over the last decade, in both efforts of farmers and outcomes for the environment. And the NFU is right about how important environmental protection and enhancement is to consumers and the public generally. But progress has fallen far short of what’s needed, and we need to work hard to secure the policies and support for farmers to make the changes needed on the ground.
The report does include a very welcome recognition of the significant and ongoing declines of priority ‘specialist’ farmland species. There is a lot of noise about whether declines in some groups of species can be compensated for by increases in others. This is a side-show – the conservation challenge is to stop the common becoming rare and the rare becoming extinct.
We need to be open and honest about the scale of the challenges and then work out how, together, we will rise to tackle them. I would hope that we and the NFU would be aligned in wanting to see agri-environment schemes bolstered and better designed to reward farmers to help save threatened wildlife.
Yesterday I expressed the hope that the NFU’s new campaign will put wildlife and real environmental sustainability at the heart of its vision for the future of farming. The campaign stops short of doing this. But I hope that this will not stop the NFU and the thousands of farmers we work with every year still wanting to deliver more for wildlife and the environment.
Have you read the NFU's report? What did you think?
Today the NFU launches a new campaign called Farming Delivers. At the time of writing, I know little about the campaign but I have a feeling that there is a clue in the title and the staging posts of the website: farming delivers for the economy, Britain, the environment, clean energy, animal welfare, food security, world peace etc.
I jest. I look forward to hearing what they have to say.
Centuries of farming helped create the wildlife and landscapes which we love. But changes in agriculture practice led to wildlife declines. We trust the NFU's new campaign will put wildlife at the heart of its vision for the future of farming. The stakes have never been higher, some farmland species such as turtle dove and corn bunting are on the brink. Farmers are working with us to help put the wildlife back and the NFU's campaign should strive to support those farmers who want to put food on the table and wildlife in the landscape.
I started this year at the Oxford Farming Conference, talking about how to find a better balance between agricultural production and conservation. Several reports have come out in recent years highlighting the unprecedented challenges facing the food system, including IAASTD’s Agriculture at a Crossroads (2009), the Government Office for Science Foresight report on The Future of Food and Farming (2011) and the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on Sustainable Food (2012).
All of these reports conclude that action will be needed on many fronts simultaneously if we are to end hunger and build a more sustainable food system. This includes action on biodiversity loss and ecosystem services, climate change, poverty and livelihoods, governance of the food system, health and nutrition, equity (including reducing consumption in rich countries), investment into agricultural research and development and reducing waste in all parts of the food chain.
These reports also emphasise the environmental degradation that has resulted and is resulting from intensive agriculture. Other reports have reinforced this point. The National Ecosystem Assessment (UNEP-WCMC, 2010) showed that increases in UK agricultural production to date have been associated with an increase in external environmental costs and have been at the expense of other ecosystem services. The European Nitrogen Assessment (European Science Foundation, 2010) concluded that the overall environmental costs of nitrogen pollution in Europe outweigh the direct economic benefits of nitrogen fertiliser in agriculture.
We need to work out what all this means for food and farming in the UK. What changes need to happen to ensure a sustainable future for the countryside, with profitable farming businesses, thriving rural communities, and healthy soils, clean water and flourishing wildlife? At the same time, how can we best play our part in the challenge of feeding the world’s growing population?
To help find the answers to some of these questions, the RSPB is participating in Defra's Green Food Project. In the Natural Environment White Paper the Government made a commitment to bring together stakeholders to discuss how to reconcile the aims of increasing food production and improving the environment. The RSPB is one of these stakeholders, taking part alongside other environmental, food and farming organisations.
We have been leading one of the working groups looking at case studies in different parts of the country. In each case study area we looked at conflicts and synergies between producing food and taking care of the environment, and discussed how land management could change to improve the balance. The conclusions of the Green Food Project are due to be published in July.
From our group’s work, I think it comes back to what I talked about at the Oxford Farming Conference: there isn’t a “one size fits all” solution to the challenges facing farming. We have a diverse landscape in terms of soil, climate and other factors, so the way we farm also has to be diverse. This will help us to get the best our of our land – the full range of services including food, clean water, biodiversity and carbon storage – and to stay within environmental limits so that farming is sustainable for the long term.
Of course, it’s one thing to talk about how farming needs to change – actually achieving these changes on the ground brings a whole new set of challenges. Society expects a lot out of farming – safe, nutritious food; a healthy countryside; thriving farmland wildlife – and farmers have to perform a complicated juggling act every day to try to meet all their different objectives. They are supported and influenced by regulations, agri-environment schemes, advice and information. Farmers and wider society will need to work together to find the best ways of making sure farming delivers what we all need.
I wish the NFU well with its campaign.
Have a look and tell me what you think.