Following earlier posts on DEFRA’s ‘management’ plan for buzzards (see here and here)…..this outrageous proposal has now attracted the attention of the mainstream media.
BBC news article here
The Telegraph has it’s usual pro-shooting stance here (illustrated by a picture of a falcon! Now removed!). This article includes a fantastic quote from David Taylor of the Countryside Alliance, who insisted, “gamekeepers do not want to kill buzzards“. Of course they don’t, David, they despise themselves everytime they illegally shoot, poison or trap one, and they can’t look at themselves in the mirror after they make yet another application for a buzzard-shooting licence. [Hover your cursor over the image of the dead buzzard to find out how much love one member of the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association had for buzzards. Six months before he did this, he was convicted for having a buzzard inside an illegally-operated crow trap on the very same game-shooting estate!].
There’s a BBC news video (here) that includes an interview with the RSPB (also includes some footage of a Harris’ Hawk – these picture editors really need to get their acts together!).
The Independent has an article (here) with a statement from Shadow Environment Secretary Mary Creagh, who has called for the government to drop the project: “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 taxpayers’ money disrupting this protected species. This out-of-touch Government’s priority is protecting the interests of large commercial shooting estates and non-native pheasants, rather than protecting our country’s native species. The Government should drop this plan now. This has all the hallmarks of another DEFRA shambles“.
And of course we are all able to have our say through social media. The tweets, blogs and emails continue….best tweet of the day goes to @WarwickSloss: “Buzzard management to protect pheasant farmers? Brilliant. We have a proud history of ‘managing’ raptors. What could possibly go wrong?”
Keep at it everyone. If you haven’t already emailed DEFRA Minister Richard Benyon MP (who just happens to be a grouse moor owner) to tell him what you think about his master plan to ‘manage’ buzzards, please take a minute to do it now: richard.benyon.mp@parliament.uk. If you can copy in your own local MP then all the better; Benyon will get a double whammy effect when all these local MPs start asking him what on earth his department is doing!
UPDATE (24 May) – click here to read DEFRA’s response to public outcry and click here to sign a petition against the buzzard ‘management’ trial.
Raptor Persecution UK 