The RSPB are, once again, proving their mastery at incompetent conservation.
Their latest abject failure comes in the Forest of Bowland where an experiment with tagged curlew chicks were to be protected by their ‘predation fence’.
Out of 61 chicks that were tagged, only 2 survived. That’s right: 59 of 61 curlew did not make it. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of these were down to predation from stoats, buzzards and gulls.
On a neighbouring site at Clapham, out of the 16 chicks that were tagged, only one chick successfully fledged.
In order to carry out this ‘experiment’, the RSPB received significant funding from the Forest of Bowland Farming in Protected Landscape Fund and the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. Despite both donor organisations suffering from financial pressure in recent years, the RSPB somehow thought their donations would be best spent on an experiment with curlews, the inevitable outcome of which could have been predicted by any member if the moorland workforce.
In the funding document the RSPB said, ‘the aim of the project was to inform conservation advice for curlew in Bowland, and contribute to national data’. What a complete load of nonsense; nonsense, which the two donor organisations seem to have simply lapped up.
The conservation advice surrounding curlews could not be more clear: predation control. The RSPB can come up with many different ways of thinking it can protect the curlews with expensive electric fences, but it is entirely foolhardy and belligerent by the charity who know that there is only one way to give these iconic birds a future.
Yet, despite their findings, and this widely-held knowledge of everyone who works in the uplands, when the RSPB wrote their conclusions from this costly experiment, the charity it did not even mention the phrase 'predation control'. Instead, under the heading ‘what we can do about it’ the charity wrote:
Continue work we know helps.
Improving habitat, mainly through AES schemes.
Fencing nests.
Advise farmers, landowners and keepers.
Continue collecting data, hopefully with another year (or more) of tagging.
Strive to work at scale, with neighbours doing ambitious, joined up work for waders. across larger areas of land.
Continue advocating for waders and their habitat.
A suitably nonsensical conclusion for a suitably nonsensical piece of research. Curlews do not have time for further grandiose experiments at the behest of the RSPB. If it were not for the upland gamekeepers, who carry out proper conservation work, day-in and day-out, the curlews would almost certainly already be extinct.
It is as depressing as it is inevitable that the RSPB's cycle of conservation failure continues. As is the absurdity of many of the staff who work there. This research was led by Annie Masters, who felt the need to include a presentation slide labelled: 'trigger warning: predation events predicted', ahead of an image of a predated nest. What sort of imbeciles does she think she is presenting to? Nature does not care two hoots about woke sensitivities. It is nature, and it is real, and it is the duty of humans to maintain the balance of nature.
Until those organisations that continue to fund the charity wake up to this, and realise they are funding failure, the population of curlews, as well as many other red listed birds, will continue to collapse.
Enough is enough of this madness, surely?
This post seems like it was written by someone with no basic comprehension skills who clearly knows nothing about avian conservation given that they shoot birds for a living… why do you think predators seem to be the biggest problem? It doesn’t have anything to do with your raising and releasing of game into their habitat does it???? I’d go as far to say they have no understanding of how basic research works, seeing as how the point of the project flew straight over their head.
Brood meddlers can't count
The person who wrote this article is a dumb cunt