It didn’t take them long.
Following the successful launch yesterday of the new, non-profit organisation, Wild Justice, the gameshooting industry’s lies, spin and blatant fake news has begun.
Check out this ‘article’ on the Fieldsports Channel (here). It opens like this:
It goes on to accuse Wild Justice Director Chris Packham of saying something that he blatantly did not say during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today programme (13 Feb 2019):
We have listened to this interview several times, just to be sure, and nowhere during it does Chris say ‘he counts everyone in the fieldsports community as a wildlife criminal’. He says nothing of the sort. Not even a hint of it.
Incredibly, the Fieldsports Channel even provides a recording of the interview, which, when you listen to it, proves without doubt that the Fieldsports Channel’s claim is not just a blatant misreprentation of Chris’s comments, but is an outright lie, designed, perhaps, to whip up more animosity from this sector towards Chris.
In case this recording ‘disappears’, here is a transcript of the full interview:
R4 interviewer Anna Hill: The wildlife campaigner and TV presenter Chris Packham has launched a new non-profit company dedicated to bringing prosecutions against public bodies which break wildlife laws. It’s called Wild Justice and will be funded by public donations and crowdfunding. It’ll consider cases in England and Scotland. I asked Chris Packham what sort of cases he thinks it’ll take up.
Chris Packham: Wild Justice has been motivated by the fact that we think that wildlife crime isn’t adequately recognised as crime in the UK. If we rob a bank, if we rob a post office, if we break the speed limit, there’s no ambiguity about the fact that that’s a crime and it’s seen by society as a criminal offence. We will take action against anyone who is ignoring or conducting wildlife crime, and we want to raise the profile of that. There are many instances where we know that foxes are being hunted illegally, there’s no ambiguity about that, we know that there’s hare coursing taking place, and we just want to make sure that these are properly seen as crimes and the law is implemented properly in line with the rest of the law of the land.
Anna Hill: What about things like the badger culling for instance, which is within the law, or persecution of raptors for instance which is sometimes done by individuals rather than public bodies?
Chris Packham: The culling of bafgers is not illegal, that’s not on our agenda. We are interested in crime here and making sure that the crime is punished. And when it comes to the illegal persecution of raptors it doesn’t matter whether it’s groups or individuals, this is a criminal act and unfortunately its very difficult to get these cases in to court and when we do get them in to court, it’s very infrequent that the sentencing is appropriate. If I go in to an art gallery and I slash a John Constable painting, I’ve committed a criminal act and I would be pilloried for that around the world; I’d damaged a national treasure, in fact a global treasure. If a gamekeeper shoots a golden eagle on a grouse moor in Scotland, from my perspective that’s damaging our natural heritage, that’s as much a crime as me slashing a painting, it’s robbing us of our ability to enjoy an aspect of our environment and in the case of the eagle, one which is playing a critical ecological role.
Anna Hill: Litigation is notoriously expensive. What if you get caught up in a long-term legal wrangle and the money runs out?
Chris Packham: Well I’m confident that we will be properly funded for this. There’s an enormous number of people out there who are fed up with wildlife crime not being properly punished and I think that we see this in social media. We’ve seen a couple of crowdfunding initiatives recently run when we’ve had judicial reviews against a raven cull in Scotland and brood meddling with hen harriers in England, and they’ve raised the money very rapidly because people have grave concerns about these sorts of things. I’m confident that we will find an adequate source of money to pursue our objectives and equally that we will raise the profile of these crimes.
Anna Hill: Are you hoping to change legislation, because your literature mentions, and I’ll quote it, “If you’re breaking the law, if the law is weak, if the law is flawed, we are coming for you”. So do you want to change legislation?
Chris Packham: Indeed we do. We’re going to question the legislation that’s in place, see if it’s adequate, see if it’s useable, and if it isn’t adequate and useable and we’re not able to implement it easily enough to prosecute crimes, we’re talking about criminal acts here, then we will ask for changes in that legislation.
Anna Hill: It’s very interesting, earlier this week we ran a piece about hare coursing and the police were saying they couldn’t use the law that exists at the moment to stop hare coursing, they were using other laws in fact. Farmers would thank you, I think, because many of them have been threatened by people who carry out hare coursing illegally. If you could crack that, that would be quite an achievement, wouldn’t it?
Chris Packham: Yes, I’ve been following a number of campaigns that have been run in Lincolnshire looking at hare coursing and the police have shown a very clear association with people who conduct hare coursing with other rural crime, there is a clear link there, so if we can catch peple for hare coursing and we know that’s going to improve life for people in those rural communities, then why not change the law to make that easier to implement? And that’s just the sort of thing that we’re going to be looking at.
ENDS
Chris Packham is used to being wilfully misquoted and misrepresented in the pro-shooting press – we’ve been blogging about this recently after fake news articles were published by the Telegraph (here) and Shooting Times (here) – all part of a wider and long-running nasty smear campaign to get him sacked from the BBC because he’s vocal about the criminals within the shooting lobby and people listen to him because he has the very thing the shooting lobby lacks – integrity.
We can’t speak for Chris but would guess that were he to be aware of this appalling piece of ‘journalism’ on the Fieldsports Channel he’d probably laugh it off, especially if he reads further down the article and finds them trying to portray members of Scottish Environment LINK as ‘animal rights activists’ and a senior staff member of Ramblers Scotland an ‘anti’ just because she posted some photos of traps on a Scottish grouse moor (see photo below) and questioned such land management techniques (which, incidentally, led to the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association going in to meltdown, beautifully skewered here)
Overwhelmingly, Wild Justice has been received with huge positivity (thank you!) and we’ve already made some really important connections with unexpected supporters and potential collaborators. More on that in the future.
In the meantime, we’ve now instructed our lawyers to press ‘go’ on our first legal challenge and we hope to have some news about that in approx three weeks.
For anyone who missed it, Chris was talking about Wild Justice on Good Morning Britain today which can be watched here for the next seven days (starts at 0:49.09).
Raptor Persecution UK 
I don’t think anyone here would begrudge you using their donations to sue these lying scum for libel.
When Chris makes mention of crimes being committed there is clearly no mention of everyone in the field-sports community. Therefore the only conclusion we can draw from the comment is that it’s the author that considers everyone to be involved. It certainly doesn’t give a very good impression of how they view themselves!
Precisely.
‘Don’t tell him Pike’
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Showing their true colours early on, does the Press complaints authority have any interest in on line content?
What are your lawyers view on these blatant lies? Slander? Libel?
Or just keep allowing them more rope? :)
This doesn’t surprise me at all about the execrable Fieldsports Channel. A few years back when Chris self funded the documentary trip to Malta re illegal hunting and the spring hunt etc he very scrupulously and decently made sure he spoke to hunters, hunting organisations and government reps as well as Birdlife Malta, the general public and volunteers treating injured birds to ensure all viewpoints were represented. FSC did a riposte and called it….’A Packham of Porky Pies’. No interviews with anyone apart from Maltese hunters and their pals, and of course derision regarding Chris P including the ludicrous accusation what he was doing was a ‘form of neo colonialism’. It’s good to force yourself to watch the FSC every now and again, because although painful the ammunition they produce to shoot themselves down with is wonderful. The Fieldsports Channel – by social inadequates for social inadequates.
I’ve known Helen Todd for years. She’s magic and you’d be very hard put to meet anyone as kind, conscientious and intelligent as she is – which is why she obviously felt she needed to report the horrendous level of trapping she saw in one of our so called National Parks. She’s a prominent peace activist, and so the attempted slur of labelling her an ‘anti’ is particularly ludicrous and contemptible. If there’s anything approaching the level of disgust at carbofuran poisoned eagles and buzzards with smashed legs dangling from pole traps it’s the way honourable and decent people who won’t keep quiet are being vilified by those who frankly aren’t good enough to lick the soles of their shoes.
I’m not clear what’s wrong with being designated as an ‘anti’; personally I’m quite proud to be labelled as such, or at least it doesn’t exactly get my back up! However used on its own it is unclear to many third parties just exactly what an ‘anti’ is supposed to be against. Could be ‘anti-Brexit’ to some? At least we understand the meaning of the straightforward term ‘criminal,’ even better defined by the term ‘wildlife criminal.’ As far as I’m concerned, anyone who participates in grouse shooting is complicit with a criminal activity, even if not directly involved, or innocent in legal terms. We need to get real and seek protection for foxes, crows and other harmless native fauna. I’d go even further and suggest we end the practice of culling introduced flora and fauna which do far less harm to the ecology and countryside than carried out by we humans! Any scientist with half a brain knows that the cull of Ruddy Ducks and Grey Squirrels are equally ridiculous, based on fake science and a desire to generate personal fame or credibility, or perhaps a full-time occupation in a highly competitive job market! Some are innocent but deluded, just like hunters, who claim to believe their ‘sport’ is not cruel. Who are they kidding?
Yes you’re right and I think it’s something to be proud of, but they’ve done such a good job of persuading people that hunt sabs etc are violent thugs that ‘anti’ has very negative connotations for many people. Having spent a lot of time looking at videos of hunt sabs and monitors receiving terrible abuse – verbal and often physical – from hunt supporters, it disgusts me that to many of the public it’s the ‘anti’ hunt people that are considered violent. Of course they try to extend that label to everyone they don’t like. I think we need to reverse that process right to letting the public know that the hunt sabs were doing an incredible job under terrible pressure and the only thanks they got for it was to be called thugs. It turns out many of the supposedly unemployed hunt sabs, unemployed therefore scum according to hunt folk, were actually health care professionals and on occasion actually gave medical assistance to injured riders, they may well have saved lives. Terrier men are absolutely vile, but how many of the public have heard of them?
The general wildlife slaughter on grouse moors is ridiculous, and I’m not comfortable getting angry about hen harrier, golden eagle, pine marten and otter being illegally killed and not about the massive number of foxes, stoats and crows killed legally. The conservation organisations desperately need to point out that if we could have proper large scale eco restoration then our wildlife wouldn’t be confined to unnaturally small and fragile populations (i.e black grouse on the edge of grouse moors), and the closer we get to the natural complement of predators we should have the weaker and weaker arguments get for any form of culling. The pine marten returns and the grey squirrel dwindles away and the red squirrel returns too. NOT practicing predator ‘control’ at Strathspey was seen as one of the key reasons why black grouse and capercaillie increased there. Two dead otters have just been found dumped in a lay by in Cornwall, members of the angling fraternity sending us a message? The conservation organisations need to get together to counter the anti predator rhetoric, it’s habitat management that’s being sidelined as a conservation tool by the field sports lot and predator ‘control’ that’s being pushed forward, which is ridiculous.
AND sort out the Police Les, as they are a disgrace to their uniforms!
It’s way, way past time there was a bloody massive expose about the dirty tricks, including infiltration, this lot have been using for years. While there are police officers absolutely dedicated to fighting wildlife crime, there are obviously others who’ve put themselves forward to be WCOs when their actual background is in hunting, fishing, shooting. I wonder why? Dam shame, one of the people doing their absolute best to draw attention to the perfectly legal slaughter of beavers on the Tay, and it looks as if it could run into hundreds of animals, is a former policeman. A former copper was also among the people who turned up for the impromptu demonstration against hen Harrier persecution we had a couple of years ago outside the Scottish parliament. I think it’s good now due to social media that when WCOs have links with hunts it gets flagged up with a vengeance – dodgy placements aren’t acceptable anymore and the embarrassment and suspicion resulting from them will hopefully mean more Nick Lyalls will come along and be allowed to get on with their job. They’re desperately needed. The SGA posted about the new proposed lynx reintroduction in the Cairngorm’s, as expected lots of comments at least two saying the lynx would be ‘lamped’. Right there’s a pretty good reason why we’ve practically lost the wildcat, and beavers have disappeared from parts of the Tay, and of course for so many missing raptors. Clearly a ‘culture’ of if you don’t like it kill it, feck the law.
Brilliant! As ever you state the obvious and display a wonderful humane attitude to wildlife. Thank you. It’s so refreshing and inspiring.
If a crowd funding site were launched to sue them for libel, I would be quick to support it.
As a mark of how things may at last be changing, I did note that the Good Morning Britain interview made no attempt to accuse Chris Packham of being anti anything except criminality.
He must’ve rattled their cage, desperate measures me thinks!