When it comes to conservation, it seems that not all at the RSPB are singing from the same hymn sheet. Amir Khan was elected as the charity’s president last October, having found fame as the resident doctor on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Amid media attention around the ‘Glorious Twelfth,’ Khan took to Twitter this week to slam a study on grouse shooting boosting curlew numbers. Quote-tweeting the research, Khan declared:
I’m the proudest of Yorkshiremen – but this kind of crap is exactly what we don’t need in our beautiful county. Grouse shooting brings millions to the tables of a select few and does nothing for wildlife conservation.
Mr S would have thought that more of these rare ground nesting birds were a reason to cheer. But more embarrassingly for Khan is the fact that his claim that grouse shooting ‘does nothing for wildlife conservation’ completely contradicts the views of the organisation of which he is president. Indeed, the RSPB’s own website says that:
In some upland areas, the control of foxes and crows by gamekeepers managing moorlands for red grouse shooting may be important in maintaining breeding curlew populations and preventing further declines. We are currently undertaking research that seeks to establish the extent to which declines may be related to changes in moorland habitats and land managements, including gamekeeping and predator control.
So much for the charity’s promise to be ‘neutral on the ethics of shooting’. Khan subsequently declared in a response to the Countryside Alliance that:
I made my position on hunting for pleasure clear to them when I took on the role – and have serious concerns of the environmental damage and loss of biodiversity driven grouse moor shooting and the subsequent land management causes
That’s, er, in spite of the RSPB’s own stance on the issue. It’s worth noting that the RSPB themselves carry out their own predator control using guns to protect curlew numbers. Why is it alright for the charity to do so but not gamekeepers?
You would have thought that after the Chris Packham furore, the RSPB might have learned a thing or two about which ‘slebs they choose to represent them…
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