Richard Benyon, the minister responsible for wildlife protection at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), is backing a plan to destroy the nests of protected birds of prey to reduce the alleged predation by buzzards of pheasant poults in the interests of pheasant shooters?
Poults are the young pheasants which are intensively bred elsewhere like battery chickens, and then released into woodlands on shooting estates so they can be shot when the season begins in the autumn. Forty million of them are released every year. A study carried out by the agricultural consultants Adas, commissioned by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, which found that on average, the number of pheasant poults taken by birds of prey (all birds of prey, that is, of which buzzards would be just one element) was 1 to 2 per cent, with far more dying as a result of road collisions. 15 million are eventually shot. The rest become wild, are run over, die of disease or are eaten by predators – of which the buzzard is only one of many. The non-native pheasants are bred in large numbers to be shot, generally by and for some of the richest people in the country. They are reared in pens, then released into the countryside. People then pay a fortune to line up in a field, armed with shotguns, while an army of beaters works its way through the woods towards them, driving the pheasants into the air and over their heads. This activity is classified as "sport". Pheasants are slow and clumsy fliers. Shut your eyes and fired randomly into the air and you can scarcely fail to bag one.
Richard Benyon, a millionaire landowner with a 20,000-acre estate in Berkshire and a strong sympathy for the shooting lobby, personally sanctioned research costing £375,000 of taxpayers' money to investigate buzzard control through measures which include "permanently removing" birds from sites, and giving them to anyone who will take them, and destroying their nests by "for example, using squirrel drey-poking pole, or shotgun from below". Richard Benyon is using public money to provide services for his aristocratic friends.
The RSPB criticised Defra for spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on the project when money was tight for genuine conservation measures.
Surreally, Countryside Alliance's David Taylor, shooting campaign manager for the group, said: "It is a shame the government have had to commission this expensive exercise simply to appease a group of people who believe that raptors have a greater significance than any other bird." He added that shooting estates generate billions for the rural economy and support thousands of jobs. Perhaps he could start compensating the many motorists smashed car windscreens caused by the birds of his industry
Only 20 years ago populations of buzzards were mainly restricted to the West Country, Wales and the Lake District as a result of generations of shooting on estates. Greater protection came into law in the 1970s and 1980s and numbers have soared, with a 72 per cent increase between 1995 and 2009. Recent estimates put the number of breeding territories at between 31,100 and 44,000, making the buzzard the country's most common and widespread bird of prey.
The landed rich just cannot conceive that their will and interest should come second to those pesky conservationists and environmentalists. They retain their faith in the holy rights of property, of the power of property to hold sway over society. They forget that the power of property rests upon the political power to enforce it, and now the law is against them, they don’t like it. The countryside should not be a preserve of a tiny minority. All of this just serves to show the influence and privilege that is part and parcel of capitalism . The attempts of the rich and the powerful to maintain their power over making the rules and laws of society is an affront that serves to illustrate how shallow democracy under capitalism really is.
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Poults are the young pheasants which are intensively bred elsewhere like battery chickens, and then released into woodlands on shooting estates so they can be shot when the season begins in the autumn. Forty million of them are released every year. A study carried out by the agricultural consultants Adas, commissioned by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, which found that on average, the number of pheasant poults taken by birds of prey (all birds of prey, that is, of which buzzards would be just one element) was 1 to 2 per cent, with far more dying as a result of road collisions. 15 million are eventually shot. The rest become wild, are run over, die of disease or are eaten by predators – of which the buzzard is only one of many. The non-native pheasants are bred in large numbers to be shot, generally by and for some of the richest people in the country. They are reared in pens, then released into the countryside. People then pay a fortune to line up in a field, armed with shotguns, while an army of beaters works its way through the woods towards them, driving the pheasants into the air and over their heads. This activity is classified as "sport". Pheasants are slow and clumsy fliers. Shut your eyes and fired randomly into the air and you can scarcely fail to bag one.
Richard Benyon, a millionaire landowner with a 20,000-acre estate in Berkshire and a strong sympathy for the shooting lobby, personally sanctioned research costing £375,000 of taxpayers' money to investigate buzzard control through measures which include "permanently removing" birds from sites, and giving them to anyone who will take them, and destroying their nests by "for example, using squirrel drey-poking pole, or shotgun from below". Richard Benyon is using public money to provide services for his aristocratic friends.
The RSPB criticised Defra for spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on the project when money was tight for genuine conservation measures.
Surreally, Countryside Alliance's David Taylor, shooting campaign manager for the group, said: "It is a shame the government have had to commission this expensive exercise simply to appease a group of people who believe that raptors have a greater significance than any other bird." He added that shooting estates generate billions for the rural economy and support thousands of jobs. Perhaps he could start compensating the many motorists smashed car windscreens caused by the birds of his industry
Only 20 years ago populations of buzzards were mainly restricted to the West Country, Wales and the Lake District as a result of generations of shooting on estates. Greater protection came into law in the 1970s and 1980s and numbers have soared, with a 72 per cent increase between 1995 and 2009. Recent estimates put the number of breeding territories at between 31,100 and 44,000, making the buzzard the country's most common and widespread bird of prey.
The landed rich just cannot conceive that their will and interest should come second to those pesky conservationists and environmentalists. They retain their faith in the holy rights of property, of the power of property to hold sway over society. They forget that the power of property rests upon the political power to enforce it, and now the law is against them, they don’t like it. The countryside should not be a preserve of a tiny minority. All of this just serves to show the influence and privilege that is part and parcel of capitalism . The attempts of the rich and the powerful to maintain their power over making the rules and laws of society is an affront that serves to illustrate how shallow democracy under capitalism really is.
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