Read on Twitter
Three points
1) Becky is right about language of ‘rewilding’ alienating farmers (as I’ve been pointing out for years)
2) ‘Rewilding’ is utterly meaningless & 100% interchangeable with ‘conservation’
3) The RSPB asking farmers to rip down fences. Really?!? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/04/rewilding-polarising-farmers-says-rspb-chief-reveals-nature/
1) Becky is right about language of ‘rewilding’ alienating farmers (as I’ve been pointing out for years)
2) ‘Rewilding’ is utterly meaningless & 100% interchangeable with ‘conservation’
3) The RSPB asking farmers to rip down fences. Really?!? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/04/rewilding-polarising-farmers-says-rspb-chief-reveals-nature/
On language @horton_official as usual gets the wrong end of the stick. The concern in the farming community isn’t particularly about the release of lynx or wolves, and Becky Speight doesn’t seem to suggest that. The issue is far deeper than that
The problem with ‘pure’ rewilding is that by its definition it rejects farming & envisages the destruction of communities which are based on agriculture. The whole point of rewilding used to be that it was ‘landscape’ scale & therefore farmers would be removed from that landscape
The car crash that was ‘summit to sea’ in West Wales has led to desperate revisionism by @RewildingB and others about what ‘rewilding’ actually is which brings me on to my second point about the word becoming increasingly meaningless
When Becky Speight talks about “Using those rewilding principles around better hedgerows, better margins, natural regeneration and tree planting in the rough marginal areas” she is talking about conservation activities that responsible farmers have been carrying out forever
They have nothing to do with “rewilding principles” but conservation organisations (note the name) seem to think it is impossible to discuss land use without dropping the meaningless ‘r’ word. I don’t suppose it matters that much, but it is complete nonsense
Which brings me on to my last point about the RSPB’s desire to rip down fences which is a trifle rich coming from an organisation that has massively constructed predator exclusion fences around no less than 28 of its reserves separating them from surrounding farmland
As I wrote a few weeks ago the RSPB has a challenge in discussing the need for predator control with a small but noisy portion of its membership, however Becky Speight is obviously as uncomfortable as many farmers with the wildlife ‘ghetto’ model https://www.countryside-alliance.org/news/2020/12/tim-bonner-rspb-and-the-packham-tendency
All in all though, my pet issues aside, Becky Speight talks a lot of sense and does so in a way that raises far fewer hackles than her Director of Conservation. Hopefully we will hear more about collaboration & less about confrontation in future
