Thursday, May 24, 2012

Typical Tory Policy..oooo the poor shooting lobby

Serious post - £375,000 of our money has been put aside to research ways of disuading Buzzards from taking Pheasants. A native bird with a population of 41,000 pairs vs a non-native of 4 million birds put out every year. The trial includes translocation, capture and nest destruction. I find it disgusting and urge you to contact your MP. Here is a description of the meeting that precipitated this ILLEGAL study. 'Meeting with Richard Benyon MP, Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ... 9 November 2011 It was encouraging when the Minister opened the meeting saying, “This is a subject close to my heart.” Three Trustees of SongBird Survival made a short present - ation to Mr Benyon and his team from Defra outlining the aims and activities of the Charity and describing our research projects. One of the suggestions made to the Minister was that a small fraction of the £500 million cost of agri-environmental schemes should be spent on research and that the inclusion of predator control should also be considered to enhance effectiveness. The Minster and his colleagues were presented with copies of the review of predation research published by the University of Reading in 2010. In the opinion of the Trustees this study casts grave doubts on the quality of much of the research on which Defra policy is based.' Please write to your MP to register your protest. I will be.

4 comments:

Jeff Cox said...

Words fail me. I'll be contacting my chocolate fireguard MP to see if he's melted in the very warm weather we've been having, and if not would he care to raise an objection in the House against this waste of time and money. It's not only a waste of time and money, it's also disgraceful behaviour for any government, regardless of political leanings.

heavy birder said...

Totally agree its madness, instead of destroying a species that belongs in Britain they should be looking into the effects that so many released pheasants have on Grey Partridge numbers, google effects of pheasants on Grey Partridge populations, theres a lot there.

Nick Carter said...

It's making my blood boil just thinking about it! The following site is good for finding your local MP via your postcode.

http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/

Click on their name and then you should get contact details

Nick Carter said...

Taken from Raptor Protection Scotland website......

So what can you do? You can email DEFRA Minister Richard Benyon MP (richard.benyon.mp@parliament.uk) and tell him what you think about this illegal, scientifically-illiterate and unethical trial. You might want to ask him what scientific evidence was used to justify the proposal and ask him whether there was any consultation on the issue, and if there was, which organisations were consulted?

Go for it. There has been so much interest in this story and so many people expressing their outrage – let’s put it to good use and make sure Mr Benyon knows the strength of feeling on this.