Against Corvid Traps has joined in the criticism of SongBird Survival’s funding of a project of intensive killing of corvids.
An RSPB spokesman is quoted in the Guardian newspaper (January 27, 2011) as saying: “there are dark forces at work here,” in describing the news that Songbird Survival are funding an £88,000 project with the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust aimed at intensive killing of magpies and crows in several areas of the UK: Hampshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Herefordshire and the Scottish Borders.
The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust is a pro-game-bird shooting organisation founded by shotgun manufacturer Eley in the 1930s. The SongBird Survival Trust, founded in 2001 by pigeon racers, has Viscount Coke as a principle Trustee and spokesman. The heir to the Holkham Estate, Wells-Next-The-Sea, Norfolk, is no stranger to controversy. In June 2000 he faced 12 charges relating to the use of poisons on the family’s Norfolk estate. The case against him was later dropped, but one of the estate’s gamekeepers was convicted of shooting and poisoning three kestrels which he blamed for killing partridges being raised for shooting.
Against Corvid Traps believe SongBird Survival is just a front for shooting fanatics like Viscount Coke to blame corvids and raptors for songbird decline. In 2008 the Queen, herself a shooting fanatic, donated to SongBird from her private income.
A spokesperson for Against Corvid Traps commented, “Our investigators have visited the Holkham Estate to see this wildlife paradise and were amazed at how few songbirds were on the estate. Ivy, being the best songbird habitat, was chopped down and the house was surrounded by intensive farming, devoid of many birds and littered with cruel Larsen traps.
“The use of corvid traps, which are encouraged by Songbird Survival, leads to cruelty for the decoy bird which is held captive for months, and neglect and suffering for the trapped birds. Owls and birds of prey are also trapped and with great uncertainty they will ever be released. Corvids and birds of prey are already widely persecuted and this ‘research’ will be as flawed as their previous reports.”
Source: Against Corvid Traps
