He is, but his hatred of gamekeepers is hypocritical.
Yes part of the gamekeeper’s job is trapping some carnivores when numbers are out of hand, but this isn’t just for the sake of pheasants for wealthy shooters, they do an awful lot of work to conserve many species of wildlife, just like the RSPB did when they culled deer for the same reasons.
We live in a human infested country, full of people who need to eat and need to work, that’s not going to change any time soon. Packham’s take on it is that we should leave wildlife alone, forgetting that in doing that many species will go because they rely on a level of protection that is provided by the very people he is vilifying. As areas have been built up, wildlife habitats have shrunk and changed, meaning that some species need more protection (eg ground nesting birds) when other species (eg foxes) are thriving. Unless we all want to disappear off the face of the earth and allow the planet to be truly wild, we will need to carry on managing certain areas to maintain healthy numbers of species that would otherwise vanish.
I live in a gamekeeping area, in the last 15 years we’ve seen an upturn of ground nesting birds and waders, thanks to the year round work of the gamekeepers. Curlews, which I believe are technically endangered, are flourishing round us, numbers go up every year, thanks to combined efforts and monitoring of gamekeepers and farmers. We see buzzards, kestrels, red kites and other birds of prey on a daily basis - 10 years ago there were very few in our area. We have also started seeing migrating sea eagles in recent years.
Of course Packham has a point, but when he talks about farmers and gamekeepers, having worked on farms and lived in the middle of the countryside all my life, much of what he says shows very little knowledge of what actually happens. It’s like he’s decided on his stance and is sticking to it no matter what.