The BBC News website is reporting that a 47 year old man from Preston has been arrested and given a formal ‘harassment warning’ following an alleged death threat sent to SNH Chair Mike Cantlay over the controversial Strathbraan raven cull licence.
Good. This sort of behaviour is wholly unacceptable and it’s a shame this individual only received a warning, given the Sentencing Council’s guidelines for those who make threats to kill.
Interestingly, the BBC article places great emphasis on the fact that Chris Packham sent an email to Mike Cantlay in which he criticised SNH’s decision to issue the raven cull licence. We’re not sure why that’s relevant given that Chris’s email did not incite anyone to attack or threaten Mr Cantlay, and given that SNH received complaints from 1247 people but only one appears to have been stupid enough to include an alleged death threat. Perhaps the BBC is playing the same game as The Times, who, tipped off by SNH, published an article about the alleged death threat and ludicrously tried to link it to Chris’s email.
Then there are the usual clowns on social media who tried to use the alleged death threat to characterise those of us opposing the raven cull licence as “sickos”, “criminals” and “animal rights vijilantees” [sic].
Sadly for them, 795 of us have chosen not to send death threats nor indeed commit any other offence in reaction to the raven cull licence, but instead have decided to exercise our democratic right and support a lawful legal challenge against SNH’s decision to issue the licence. Over £19.5k has now been raised by an on-going crowdfunding appeal that aims to raise £25k by 4th July to cover legal costs.
If you’d like to donate to help support this legal action PLEASE CLICK HERE
And don’t forget you can now order #Justice4Ravens fundraising merchandise (t-shirts & beanie hat) with 100% of profits going to the crowdfunder but hurry up, these are limited editions and are selling fast! (See here for order details).
Thank you
Raptor Persecution UK 
That the Times should have endeavoured to engineer a spurious link between Chris Packham and the man who made the death threat is sadly unsurprising but for the BBC to be doing the same thing is extremely disappointing and, at best, extremely poor reporting. I shall be writing to the BBC (politely with no threats!) to complain about this muddying of the waters.
Much as one is occasionally tempted to do otherwise by the appalling antics of the “dark side” we should always try to stick to the moral “high ground” anything else gives the other side ammunition. Odd that the BBC should be lazy enough to follow the lead of the Times and Countryside Areliars in trying to link this oafs offending and Chris Packham.
BBC Scotland have a history of being at least ‘friendly’ towards the shooting industry
Do we know exactly what the unnamed 47 year old from Preston actually said?
Do the words used justify the description of ‘death threat’?
The lack of prosecution suggests not.
Sadly this seems to be the way of BBC reporting these days. I frequently notice them using subtle and not so subtle bias in there reporting and it always seems to be in such a way that encourages the recipient to think in favour of the establishment.
In cases like this the BBC certainly don’t always seem to be focused on reporting straight news without favour and to me it sometimes looks like outright propaganda.
I would never make a death threat myself, but can fully understand how someone could become so enraged by SNH’s action to do so, metaphorically. Incidentally, I actually received ‘death threats’ myself when I submitted comments to the ‘Countryside Against Chris Packham’ Facebook blog. At the time it didn’t even occur to me to take them seriously, but on reflection perhaps I should have. No doubt the BBC jumped at the opportunity to implicate Chris Packham, to “demonstrate the corporation’s impartiality.” This is worrying, because it might become a prelude to internal disciplinary action against Chris. Hopefully they won’t be that stupid, or their credibility might drop to SNH’s level.
Whilst I do not condone any form of threat what we have to realise it might have been born out of sheer frustration – If you have read the FOI release or any communication from Mr Cantlay it is like micturating into the wind and hoping not to get wet – I got an email from Mr Cantlay saying that SNH didn’t uphold my complaint – It wasnt a complaint it was a request for information backed by a statement of facts from referenced and researched journals
People are getting frustrated by the whole affair and SNH’s failure to accept criticism over this cull – plus the Strathbraan Wader Group are using ‘research’ and studies carried out be Game Conservation Trust – not an expert in waders in sight.
I repeat I do not condone it but it could be born out of frustration and can completely understand it if this is the case
Be clear, the Strathbraan Grouse Clique have NEVER made any request or application to carry out research. They have only ever applied for a licence for the conservation of wild birds. They are two different things.
SNH made the decision that the conservation of wild birds was not yet justified and they have insisted that this is research…. even though its patently obvious that its not research and the people undertaking it have never accepted that it should be research.
Quite right – a death threat to Mr Cantlay is unacceptable – a good kick up the arse is what he needs, Hang on, am I inciting someone to violence there? A smacked botty then – nah, can’t do that either nowadays – it’ll just have to be an expression of my deep disgust and disdain at him and his organisation (most of it anyway). That’ll learn him!
Circusmaxim you are right they have never made a request or application to carry out research – BUT to get the licence they require they have had to present ‘evidence’ and this has come from Game Conservation. I know because this was a question I asked in FOI request. It is interesting that no wader research comes up in an internet search (google scholar) from Game Conservation Trust. But I doubt nobody in bird conservation thinks this is about waders – we all know it is about grouse !
Over the past year I have been submitting comments to the G&WCT open website, some of which concern the apparent absence of evidence resulting from their ‘breeding wader research’ plots, plus the lack of any meaningful detail concerning methodology, analysis of results, or any explanation of how they arrived at their conclusions. Rather than respond in an open scientific manner, they simply seem to have chosen instead to reject my comments. They used to call themselves The Game Conservancy, but I believe we are now witnessing the hidden agenda behind changing it to the Game “& Wildlife Conservation” Trust !
As a resident of Wiltshire, where Gove / Natural England have also indicated they will licence culls of ravens – to protect lambs and ewes, despite nobody ever filming ravens attacking either in the UK: there are films of ravens in close proximity, but funny how they never seem to get the definitive evidence of attack or even evidence that the sheep are concerned about their presence, I fully understand why this has happened. There are almost certainly just a couple of hundred ravens in Wiltshire – they are not a problem: which is more than can be said for the Tory and SNP governments’ attitudes to wildlife (and Labour’s lack of anything to say on the matter).
It took over 15 years from when I moved to Wiltshire in the late 1990’s before my local patch, Ravensroost Wood, ironically had any ravens come to roost. At most there are two or three pairs in the Braydon Forest area: they just aren’t there in any numbers. This is another part of the general war on wildlife: from the failure to police the Hunting with Hounds Act, failure to prosecute raptor killers, to the badger cull and, now, the onslaught on ravens. Conservationists have, by and large, been too well-behaved in these matters: and the judiciary has been far too corrupt.