Raptors have been the subject of discussion in a couple of BBC Radio 4 programmes over the last two days.
On Sunday (6 January) there’s just under a minute and a half of misinformed information from Clive Aslet, editor-at-large of Country Life magazine. Mr Aslet claims that red kites are “eating up lots of larks“. You can listen here (starts at 56.32, ends at 57.52).
Today (7 January) there was a five minute discussion about hen harriers between Martin Harper, the RSPB’s Conservation Director and Adrian Blackmore, the Countryside Alliance’s Moorlands Director. Neither covered themselves in glory, although Martin Harper’s arguments did get stronger as Adrian Blackmore’s got weaker. It’s a shame that Martin didn’t mention the scientific evidence to support his opinions, particularly the Hen Harrier Conservation Framework. You can listen here (starts at 52.25, ends at 57.30).
Raptor Persecution UK 
The so-called guaardians of the countryside use every trick in the book in their campaign of mis-information on the subject of raptors. A few letters into both BBC 4 and Country Life would be no harm at all.
I quote Clive Aslet from the radio interview, and yes, once again a misinformed, scaremongering, imbecilic, anti-RSPB, anti-raptor response from a pro-shooter;
“But what these pieces never say is that if you have a lot of predators at the top of the food chain, of course it’s not very good for other creatures down below.”
Another ‘guardian of the countryside’ that doesn’t have the intelligence to work out the simplicity of the predator-prey relationship.
He also commented on the plight of hedgheogs:
“…it’s true of badgers also. Badgers have been very bad for hedgehogs, for example.”
Really? I would have thought that snaring, trapping and killing of hedgehogs near pheasant-rearing areas would have an adverse impact on this species. So once again, we have hypocrisy coming to the fore. A native creature is not allowed to kill another native creature in order to survive, but it is perfectly fine to kill a native creature to help a non-native creature for shooting purposes. Yes, it would seem that the hypocrites are out in force these days.
Furthermore, in addition to the laughable “eating up lots of larks” lie, there was the following hypocritical statement on raptor reintroductions;
“Everything has to be contained in the system we’ve got, and it’s unbalancing it.”
Once again, Aslet is way off target as due to decades and decades of raptor persecution and eradication, conservation organisations are now redressing the balance. And shooting estates that eliminate all predators and encourage artificially high numbers of grouse is not an imbalance? And introducing non-native species at the expense of natives is not creating an imbalance? The pro-shooting buffoonery during the past couple of days has been exceptional!
The BBC used to produce the best factual wildlife programs in the world, how far they’ve degenerated shows up only too well in their recent misinformed and biased, (probably intentional) rubbish spouted on Radio 4.
The usual Songbird Survival shite being trolled out on the BBC, disgusting. Note how he brought in Badgers killing hedgehogs too, nothing to do with the proposed cull to ‘protect’ cattle I don’t suppose?
But by mentioning hedgehogs, he has proved to the nation that he and the shooting lobby are hypocrites as hedhehogs are killed in large numbers to protect gamebirds. Aslet tried to portray himself as an expert on the subject, but in my opinion he came across as a self-centred shooter and one of those ‘guardians’ that obviously knows next to nothing about wildlife.
It is also a real pity that the RSPB didn’t have a firebrand representative on the other show to rip Blackmore’s arguments to shreds.
We should let thes imbeciles and bloody hypocrits and liars on the radio more often, the public will soon see through them. Martin Harper was disappointing though. It might be interesting to know who funds Blackmores job at Countryside Areliars when he makes his excuses for the poisoners trappers and shooters club.