The petition to get chris packham sacked

[Whisky2014]

Wtf is this shit?

"87,866 Supporters
BBC to sack Chris Packham
As an employee of the BBC, Chris Packham should remain impartial and keep his views and beliefs to himself however, he is the face of many anti hunting campaigns and uses his celeb status as a platform to push his anti hunting agenda, he has made his goal to ban all kinds of hunting, and country sports and pursuits and I feel he is no longer fit to work for the BBC"

How about David Attenborough then? From this person's logic he should also be sacked

Ok. Enough's enough I think. Goodnight

From the Farmers Guardian, corvid attack. They're swines for trying to get frogs out of my pond, worse than the bloody heron. I've netted it more for them than for the heron. Vicious bastards. Magpie chicks aren't left in the same area in wildlife rescues as other chicks because it's not appropriate to leave predators with them, frightens them, apparently.

Pigeons are a total PITA: they're far too common and a massive problem for farmers, who can easily lose crops due to them. I'm not seeing much concern for the new licensing on here, it's more the love for a famous presenter than the practicalities of the bread and veg arriving on some people's plates that's a concern.

I'm amazed he didn't extend his protection to rabbits, but we'd be screwed if he did, I envisage cows falling down holes and breaking their legs and poor myxi bunnies wandering round because the farmer isn't allowed to shoot it.

Who ever put those dead birds on his gate is evil. Murdering animals is evil! I don’t give a crap what anybody says! Hooray for Chris packham!!!!’

Dear God.

Ok. Enough's enough I think. Goodnight

No one has been rude to you, but you can't come on and tell us that crows don't attack lambs often, (your evidence being that farmers aren't claiming insurance on it happening) and then get shirty when it's pointed out that statistics don't always show the whole story.

This is mumsnet, I'm here precisely because there's lots of intelligent women debating points and learning from each other. We don't have to agree but there's no harm in listening and learning from other people's points of view and lived experiences.

Sorry but you were rude @Scrowy accusing her of being a liar. I get the strength of feeling but you were shirty first.

I hold my hands up to being shirty. But I didn't accuse her of lying I accused her of not understanding the data they had before them.

Given we still haven't actually had anything more concrete than 'my worksheet says' I think it was a pretty strong claim for a professional to come onto a public forum to make when others in the farming industry were saying the opposite.

I don't even disbelieve they are a vet. But if you work in a rural practice it's imperative that you understand how farming works or you get unofficially blacklisted. Too many farm vets don't understand farmers and farm animals beyond a medical context.

To be honest I'm also tired of being patronised by professionals coming onto our farm. I'm actually reasonably educated, and extremely experienced and professionally qualified in an area that requires me to critically evaluate data (because I'm a woman and I was allowed to go and get an education rather than staying at home to farm). It's rare I tell people my other profession but I'm sick of being written off as a dumb wildlife hating farmer when exactly the the opposite is true.

and you are genuinely a farm vet

That's what I meant by accusing her of lying. There are extremely strong feelings on both sides so I get it.

Shall we have the whole paragraph for the full context?

If that's what you are basing your statistics on, and you are genuinely a farm vet regularly visiting farming clients then surely you must have some insight into just how far off the mark you must be? Do you not know anything about how the farming community works?

Hanging a couple of dead birds on someone's gate is nothing compared to what animal rights and anti-hunting groups do. What did he expect? He needs to grow up.

Given the shit we might be in with Brexit possibly having a detrimental effect on food imports, it does seem a bit short sighted to make things difficult for our farmers. If there are food shortages on the horizon, we really need to be producing as much home grown food as possible, not letting the crows and pigeons have it. Mind you you can eat pigeon. Not sure about crow or magpie. There’s probably some old medieval recipe somewhere.

What teacakeandlatte said 👍

I very much doubt sacking anybody for bringing about a legal challenge that he actually won (says a lot ) to protect wildlife would even be legal.

I very much admire his integrity. Many people who work for the bbc have opinions or chair charities, and speak about causes close to their heart.

It is not a sackable offence.

Nor should it be.

Hi, another vet here (small animal now, used to be mixed). Still help out with the ewes on my parents' farm. I have, on occasion, seen live lambs with empty eye sockets and cast ewes with their vulvas pecked to bits. Not for a while though; I think my husband shooting a few grey crows and magpies has helped (he also puts up bird boxes, owl boxes, plants loads of trees and manages the edges of the bit of woodland we have to leave cover for the woodcock we often see there).
I haven't signed the sacking petition as I don't think it's fair for someone to have the rug pulled from under them like that, but I do think CP should consider his responsibilities a bit more. Yes he's vegan and the decline in songbirds and ground nesting bird populations is likely due mostly to human activity, but in a practical sense- farm animal welfare matters too, even if you don't think farm animals should exist. There should be loads of curlew, corncrakes etc like in the olden days; their decline isn't magpies' fault...but if humanely knocking off a few of them in certain locations at strategic times of the year helps preserve what's left, then it seems dopey to pull general licences at short notice at the most critical time of year.
I like CP- I think he's a good presenter and a superb photographer; I used to watch the Really Wild show as a child and loved it; and that kind of thing helped get DH hooked on nature as a child though he is of a slightly earlier vintage! So I appreciate the likes of CP but the steamrollering crusading belief in his own rightness without considering other points of view is annoying.
Hanging dead birds on his gate was scummy behaviour though.

you can eat pigeon. Not sure about crow or magpie
DH leaves them up near one of the badger setts on the farm. No point in letting them go to waste...

powershowerforanhour

All of your post. Over and over again, sums up the situation exactly.

Thank you.

I'm extremely passionate about groundnesting birds, I'm eveninvolved in a very small, local but effective project to protect and preserve nesting sites. People familiar with my postings might know this but I appreciate others don't.

'Modern' ( 60s/70s onwards) farming practices have caused irreversible damage to some of our flora and fauna. But we have gone too far in the other direction to correct the wrongs of the past - you don't save curlews by allowing crows to become dominant.

No matter what your feelings are on it a farmed environment is no longer a wholly natural environment. Some of us are trying to do the best we can to maintain an environment where traditional wildlife can still thrive. Sadly over decades we have created an environment that requires human intervention to maintain a balance. We aren't in some kind of animals of farthing wood utopia where the woodand creatures all make a pact not to watch eat other.

Its become too polarised. People have lost sight of the bigger picture because it's more important to be against all animal death.

David Attenborough has never campaigned in the way this man has, used his celebrity or caused as much devastation as this man has. That is why there is a petition for his sacking.

I whole heartedly agree with you. Thank you for your educated and informed post (not to sound patronising)!

What Really annoys me is all these people in this thread saying that crows are pests, they’re horrible creatures so it should be our job to control them by killing them.

Yes, to us they probably annoying, they’re eating whatever they can get hold of, they’re trying to survive using any means possible, let’s remember that a crow can’t go into a McDonalds and pick up a slab of dead cow like us humans can.

We call a pest a pest because they are an annoyance to us. In reality, they are doing the same as us trying to survive, looking for their next meal.

I’m sorry but humans are a hell of a bigger pest to this world than a bloody crow.

Then you get people like Scrowy trying to use scare tactics like ‘lambs having their eyes and tongues pecked out by crows’ so we think oooh poor baby lamb, but it us humans who are slaughtering countless numbers lambs and other animals day in day out.

It’s ok for us to do it, but that is all.

Ella041007

So what was this then, if not campaigning on the BBC to save wildlife:

amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/15/david-attenborough-urges-immediate-action-on-plastics-blue-planet

Crows and pigeons can be pests to farmers. I believe it should be up to farmers to decide if they need to shoot them or not. Hopefully the new laws will reflect this.

And in the meantime hopefully CP will campaign against crops flown in from other countries where they are allowed to shoot pigeons. Oh hold on, maybe it's only British farmers he hates?

Then you get people like Scrowy trying to use scare tactics like ‘lambs having their eyes and tongues pecked out by crows’ so we think oooh poor baby lamb

I'm not trying to scare anyone? What would be the point?

Did you miss all the posts I made about crop destruction (yes farmers make food for vegetarians too!) and conservation of groundnesting birds or does that not give you the same sort of opportunity to farmer bash as livestock farmers trying to protect their lambs and sheep?

Yeah perhaps I would sympathise more with them if they actually cared about their sheep rather than the money in their pockets.

Maybe read this... should we blame the crows for this too?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/2018/05/farmland-birds-declines-agriculture-environnment-science

Of course they care about their sheep. They aren't pets, no, but luckily for the countryside not everyone in this country is a vegan

Oh bog off. We've been doing 16 hour days for the last 6 weeks through lambing time because we care about our sheep and because that's the only way to make (an increasingly small) profit on an hill farm.

No one who has ever spent any time anywhere near a hill farm would ever say farmers were just in it for the profit.

Tell you what, why don't people start campaigning at the supermarkets to only sell environmentally sustainable produce. Make them insist on hedgerows round every field of lettuces, and pay farmers and growers a price for every lettuce that enables them to farm in an environmentally sustainable way.

Perhaps launch a public campaign perhaps to get the public to insist on higher food prices so that there is more give in the system for wildlife to be wildlife.

Perhaps ban domestic cats, and close open access land to dog walkers to protect ground nesting birds.

Or is it just easier to blame farmers for everything whilst enjoying incredibly cheap food and not thinking too hard about how it got to the supermarket at that price?

The power really is in the hands of the consumer

Yeah perhaps I would sympathise more with them if they actually cared about their sheep I never stop worrying about them.

It’s your job to grow my vegetables so stop moaning. You think I owe you something? We pay you, that’s how jobs work, I don’t owe you anything more than that you get my money not my respect.

If you don’t like your job, then why don’t you do something that makes you happy!

I personally can’t understand if you truly care about something how you can slaughter it. That’s my opinion and you don’t care about that, so why should I care about yours.

If you have been doing 16 hours a day, I’m not sure why you’re spending your only free 8 hours talking to me. Good bye.