DEFRA Buzzard Trial: WTF?

Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) soaring over the North Kent Marshes, August 2011

If you're reading this, you've proabably heard by now the shocking announcement this week that DEFRA has sanctioned a £375,000 trial to assess 'management techniques' that would reduce the apparently 'significant' effects of Common Buzzards on Pheasants reared and released by the Game industry. Based on some pretty dubious science, this absolutely mystifying decision has come about at the 'urgent' request of the National Gamekeeper's Organisation, who are presumably, about now, laughing themselves silly.

The trial is apparently a response to increasing Buzzard numbers in some areas resulting in pheasant numbers  being impacted; thus reducing the numbers available for lucrative shoots and impacting financial rewards. The most controversial aspect of the whole sorry deal is it proposes 'Nest Destruction' as one of the methods of displacing buzzards in the survey area: "destroying nests under construction, for example, using a squirrel drey-poking pole or shotgun from below thereby forcing  the pair to move on to find another nest site or not breed that year".

Please read about the details of the trial on the Raptor Persecution Scotland website here and see what you think. Here's the project specification according to DEFRA.

Re-reading the details, it seems more and more absurd each time. It is wrong on so many levels:

• Common Buzzards, as a wild bird, are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981). The same Act which which states "it is an offence under Section 1 (of the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981) to intentionally take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while it is in use or being built"
• Common Buzzards are a native species, pheasants were introduced in the UK predominantly for sport
• They are a species recovering from persecution in many areas by some members of the game fraternity; the precise extent of that persecution, like that of other raptors, will probably never be known. That rise in number (146% between 1995-2009) is surely largely in part to them recovering ranges where they were previously extinct. Isn't it telling that since 2009 the increase has levelled off to a 0% change?
• It is estimated that 40 MILLION pheasants are reared and released into the countryside by the Game industry every year. The DEFRA project spec states that "Buzzards are generalist feeders that respond to local variations in prey populations...It is claimed that individuals may target pheasant release pens if they learn that they can find a readily available food supply at them.  It is in these situations where they can come into conflict with game interests" - well then surely the problem lies with the management of the pheasant pens?!

What does this decision say about the influence of MONEY and lobbying on the government? In challenging economic circumstances, where jobs in the conservation sector are disappearing and money for projects has to be bloody scrapped for, HOW ON EARTH can they justify spending £375k of taxpayers money on this? Who benefits? I don't have a problem with people making a living off the land, or the game industry as a whole, but this is way off line.

The RSPB released their response today and pretty much nailed it, it's worth a read.

Love Buzzards? Hate stupid, wasteful, inefficient governance? Email Richard Benyon MP (DEFRA Minister) and let him know: 

richard.benyon.mp@parliament.uk

Hands off our Buzzards!