Tag: politics

Letters to the Editor (4)

February and early March saw farmers protesting all over Wales. The object of their hatred was the Welsh Government’s proposed Sustainable Farming Scheme, as a result of which, to benefit from further public subsidies, farmers would be required to set aside a certain percentage of their land for woodland and wildlife habitat. Our local newspaper – the Cambrian News – carried numerous articles, editorials, and letters which were uncritically supportive of the protestors. There was at no attempt at any stage to explain why the subsidy system needs reform. I thought it was about time the full picture was made clearer. This was my letter :

Over much of Wales farming is completely unviable financially and without subsidies it would naturally come to an end. The last few decades have seen massive amounts of public money being poured into agriculture in Wales to enable farmers to keep farming. Not that long ago Ceredigion was a patchwork of mixed farms which supported a wild variety of wildlife. Since then the intensification of farming systems has, often inadvertently, led to much of our farmland becoming inhospitable to wildlife. Biodiversity on farmland has plummeted, and in many cases disappeared altogether. Water quality in some of our rivers is, frankly, disgraceful, partly due to run-off from agricultural land.

The Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015 commits the Welsh Government to reversing the decline of biodiversity on farmland by 2030. In the wider UK Michael Gove first coined the phrase “public goods for public money”. The Agriculture Bill (Wales) 2023 introduced the idea of ‘sustainable land management’ into Welsh law. The SFS is the Welsh Government’s attempt to put these ideas into practice. The recent consultation round was the third and final one. Following the first two a “co-design” process took place at which farmers were closely involved, and the Welsh Government published a 65 page report in September 2021. It is available online for anyone to read. To suggest that in any way the SFS is undemocratic is very wide of the mark.

The requirement for 10% of the land to be planted with trees appears to be an attempt to offset carbon emissions while at the same time – if the right species are planted – adding much needed woodland habitat. Many farms will already contain hedgerow trees, shelterbelts and actual woodland which would count towards that target. Other measures in the scheme are designed to restore nature on farmland, or maintain it if it still exists. It may not need any particular action by the landowner to comply. But fulfilling these requirements (and others) would be needed in return for continued support from the public purse.

Whether this scheme in its current form is the right way to do it, I’m not sure. Whether the funding will be available to make it a success is another unknown. But we should support the Welsh Government in their attempt to balance food production, carbon sequestration and nature recovery on Welsh farmland. And the least the media can do is to report all sides of the argument.

What I didn’t say in the letter (but did in my consultation response) was that whenever any change is proposed which might benefit wildlife on farmland , the farming unions react with horror and outrage. Two other recent examples come to mind. Firstly the possible re-introduction of beavers to Welsh rivers. Any number of “consultations” have taken place but Natural Resources Wales has never approved it. Despite this beavers seem to be finding their way here somehow, though. Secondly, the very ambitious “Summit to Sea” project which foundered following hysterical and misleading objections from some farmers and their Unions (see this post). This project is still progressing under a new name in a very diluted form with the RSPB at the helm.

Many of us, the public, politicians and the media alike, still seem to believe that farmers can do as they like in our shared landscapes while continuing to be funded by the public purse. It really is time that this particular gravy train came to an end.

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Raptor Nut (Part 4)

Juvenile merlin.

As I mentioned in posts one to three in this series, I have a particular interest in birds of prey. It began when I first worked for the RSPB in 1979. I was posted to a remote part of north Wales, living in a caravan on a farm and asked to watch two pairs of peregrine falcons which had a history of being robbed of either eggs or young. Two years later I was sent to the Isle of Mull, where I enjoyed a full breeding season surveying white-tailed eagles, peregrines and golden eagles. Following that I spent the next breeding season in the Lake District checking up on pairs of peregrines and golden eagles.

Where my interest came from I’m not sure. Perhaps it was the wilderness areas these birds tend to inhabit that drew me to them. But I also began to experience the strength of personal feeling that tends to surround the birds and their human admirers. With the RSPB, one was parachuted into a new area each season and had little contact with local people. My experience of the animosity between certain individuals in these areas was second or even third hand but in the last year I have unfortunately become personally involved locally.

Several years ago I began watching a pair of merlins nesting high in a mid-Wales cwm. Last summer – watching from a great distance – I located the nest site, and informed a trusted friend who happens to be a very experienced and highly regarded ornithologist. He in turn informed Tony Cross, also a very experienced ornithologist, and a bird ringer for about forty years. I think it’s fair to say that both of them are part of the birding “establishment” in Wales. At the time I was (almost) the only person who knew the exact location of the nest so it made sense for me to lead them to it. In Tony’s professional hands the ringing of the five chicks was successful.

About a week later another raptor enthusiast visited the cwm and saw no signs of merlins – adults or young. On a second visit he found the remains of one merlin chick. He had seen my report of the ringing expedition on the Ceredigion bird blog and put two and two together, getting five. It was the ringing that had caused the failure of the breeding attempt, and the adults had fled. Circumstantial evidence there certainly was but no more than that. He began questioning me in great detail by email about the visit, but, knowing how these things might get out of hand, I politely refused to get involved. Little did I know at that moment how nasty the situation would get. This man later complained about Tony Cross both to the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) – the ringing authority for the whole of the UK – and Natural Resources Wales, who issue licences to visit the nests of Schedule One bird species in the country. This was beginning to look like a vendetta. But in both cases, to use the legal terminology, it was found that he had no case to answer.

A couple of months later an opinion piece appeared in my local paper. I know the journalist quite well and up until that moment had considered him a friend; a good friend even. But he has never, to my knowledge, had any interest in birds or ornithology. He used sections of my blog (without permission) about the merlins to flesh out his uninformed opinion that as a result of the ringing attempt, they had failed to rear young. I can only assume that the “raptor enthusiast” (Mr X) had put him up to it although the journalist denied it. Tony wrote a long and detailed defence of ringing for the newspaper. The journalist later informed me it was “libellous, lying, long-winded, disjointed and meandering”. As for Tony Cross : “Never mind, he must be all right, mustn’t he, otherwise he wouldn’t have received all those awards, would he…….?”. I just don’t understand where all the bile came from. But one thing is for sure; Tony Cross will have done a hundred times more for wildlife conservation than a bird artist and a journalist between them will ever do.

This year I visited the same cwm a number of times. I am very pleased to say that the merlins were back, and by early June they were feeding young. The thought of sharing even the same mountain with the “raptor enthusiast” was not a welcome one, but I suppose it was inevitable. Visiting with a trusted friend one day in mid-July I recognised him. My friend and I kept a low profile. However he later sought us out and began his interrogation. Getting steadily more agitated, he was just about to leave but could no longer resist: “Did you hear about the ringing?” He is obviously still obsessed with what he must believe are ‘his’ birds and just cannot let it go. His parting shot was that he “didn’t approve” of my posts on the Ceredigion Bird Blog. I can’t say that I covered myself with glory either and with the benefit of hindsight should have kept my mouth shut. It was a very unpleasant encounter.

As for the birds themselves: having successfully reared at least four young, the adults took them from the nest site to a grassy hillside about 300 yards away, dotted with scree and rocky outcrops. This served as their base camp for a number of days. On one visit I was observing them from a respectable distance when one juvenile left its perch and flew directly towards me, landing about fifteen yards away. A fraction of a second later another youngster appeared from behind me and landed right next to the first. It looked over its shoulder, saw me and they flew off together like a shot. The whole episode lasted perhaps two seconds, just enough time for me to realise that I didn’t have my camera to hand. I saw little more, really, than a fast-moving jumble of wings and tails. But it confirmed for me that young merlins are inquisitive, impetuous and easily get bored!

Ironically, I found myself on the same side of an argument as X earlier this year. Another birder (Z) was posting photographs of peregrines to a Facebook page, of which he just happened to be the moderator. X responded that it wasn’t a very good idea to do so, and I backed him up in the most tactful way possible, noting particularly that the location was barely disguised. Z justified his own behaviour at great length and then shortly later began criticising me on Facebook about my own blog posts. He had obviously not read them thoroughly because his criticisms were well wide of the mark. I took myself off the Facebook page immediately and have not been back. It is so easy to become embroiled in finger-pointing and vindictiveness where raptors are concerned. We all believe we are correct and who’s to say where the reality lies?

NB : For those that want to read more about merlins, I highly recommend “The Merlins of the Welsh Marches” by D.A. Orton, which is available secondhand for a few quid from online book retailers.

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