The RSPB AGM is a desperate affair for its audience, and even more desperate for conservation in this country more generally given the failures listed.
This year's AGM was no exception, but even by their own lowly standards one claim was particularly desperate.
This moment of absurdity arrived when the RSPB's CEO, Beccy Speight, announced amongst their list of notable achievements this year that a pair of golden plover had nested on their Lake Vyrnwy Reserve for the first time in decades.
Yes, you read that correctly. One single pair.
What makes this even more preposterous is that there were an abundance of golden plover nesting on the reserve in the 1980's when the RSPB took over the management of this ex-grouse moor. Yet somehow the healthy number of birds that existed on the moor when they took it over has been lost on their watch.
It is even more surprising that Beccy Speight chose to mention Lake Vyrnwy at all given it is really the clearest example RSPB failings. Indeed, it is probably the clearest example of the failure of the charitable conservation anywhere in Europe.
The idea that a single pair of golden plover nesting on 8,000 acres of ex-grouse moor is any sort of achievement is frankly stunning. It has been a catastrophic failure of management.
What is most shocking is the arrogance, incompetence and disingenuous greed that far too often characterises the RSPB's actions and the waste and damage that results.
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