Wildlife benefits from management of copses and hedgerows, argues conservation director
Sunday 29 March 2015 00.05 GMTLast modified on Sunday 29 March 201500.09 GMT
The UK’s managed shoot industry, which sees millions of pheasants raised and shot every year, has received support from an unexpected quarter.
In a blog published on the website of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, its conservation director Martin Harper has praised the role of managed shoots in protecting wildlife.
“The contribution progressive shoots can make to supporting threatened wildlife is significant, and we are delighted to help them further,” Harper wrote. “This isn’t a contradiction. We simply do whatever nature needs and will work with anyone that wants to help wildlife.”
His views might come as a surprise to some of the RSPB’s 1.1 million members, who would have been persuaded by its original pledge “to discourage the wanton destruction of birds”; they would equally have been a surprise to the RSPB’s detractors in the shooting world.
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