Curlew collaborative

3 thoughts on “Curlew collaborative”

  1. Sadly we live in an age of binary debates, the reasons for this are complex ,but there is undoubtedly little critical thinking employed by most of the loudest voices, and this is not being helped by a catchy headline orientated media. The debate on shooting suffers the same problem to the extent that to concede even the smallest point risks loosing the argument. The shooting community (and a speak as a member) does itself no favours when it flatly refuses to acknowledge the appalling raptor persecution happening on some of our managed grouse moors. Maybe if we were prepared to more loudly condemn this, then the anti-shooting lobby would see that there are acres of common ground between us which we both want to fill with the glorious sound of curlew, lapwing and drumming snipe.

    1. I myself shoot birds but with a DSLR not a gun. To be honest, I’ve never understood the allure of it nor am convinced by the more strident claims that it is essential to proper bird conservation (I’m not a scientist so can only go by what I read in various publications).
      Yet I completely agree with you Owen, about finding greater common ground between the various nature-concerned groups and individuals, not just on shooting and bird conservation, but more widely in conservation as well.

      For me the biggest obstacle we need to overcome is the entrenched negative attitudes many have towards those on the “other” side. In particular I struggle to understand the attitude expressed by some regarding “true” conservationists – e.g. “Rob Shepherd (Hants farmer) telling us about land managers taking back ‘ownership of conservation’s destiny’ during his deadpan delivery of ‘don’t mention buzzards and badgers’” from Rob’s ‘Together for Wildlife’ post. This seems to be quite pertinent when you have nature-concerned rurally dwelling people coming up against nature-concerned urban dwelling people.
      To me these kinds of attitudes, also seen with conservation NGOs as well, works against the goals of conservationists – whether farmer, land owner, NGO employee, volunteer etc. This seems to stem from the way some big organisations and well-known individuals aligned to the one-side-of-the-argument conduct themselves toward one another – e.g. anything between Mark Avery and Tim Bonner reflects this.

      It’s good to see more collaborative approaches starting to take hold, as examplified by this Curlew collaboration. The more open we are to interacting with “other” views, discussing ideas and ridding ourselves of the entrenched attitude, the better the outcome will likely be for Curlews, Lapwing, Hen Harrier, etc.

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