The Truth about Wildlife – TV review

I’m not quite sure how I missed this series the first time round – may be the original broadcast did not go out on BBC Wales – but it was a fascinating programme presented by Chris Packham. It was refreshing to have a balanced review of wildlife policies affecting birds on farms.

BBC reporting at it’s best.

For me this was BBC reporting at it’s best. It spent time looking at both sides of the argument and really gave the viewer something to think about. It’s the sort of programme that we need to see more of, it’s important that a critical view of our wildlife policies arew undertaken to see if current policies are the best way forward.

This first programme in the short series looked at farming, farmland birds and grants. Despite ever increasing amounts of public money being given to farmers our farmland birds are still in major decline. there are some notable exceptions but these occurred because of expensive species specific projects in small areas. The general outlook for farmland birds though is bleak – the stewardship grants are not bringing in the results of conserving farmland birds.

Wildlife or wheat – where does the profit lie?

Some farmers are using the latest modern technology to find areas of their fields that are unprofitable for crop growing and converting those sections of fields to wildlife areas for the grants. This technology though is expensive and tends to be used on the large farms where technology can be made to pay. in the example shown in the programme the farm using this is making real headway in improving the bird life on the farm – and making a profit from it.

Another farmer featured was a small tenant farmer without that sort of technology and was in the process of converting his field margins to crop growing areas because the price of wheat had doubled recently and paid much more than wildlife stewardship grants.

Two totally different scenarios that demonstrates how complex the wildlife and agriculture interaction is. It’s not just the arable farmers who are impacting on the wildlife. Pastures which once used to be diverse and wildlife rich grasslands are now restricted to two or three grass species and have lost much of the wildlife.

How is public money being used to conserve wildlife?

There is a need to look again at the public money that is given to farmers to protect our wildlife because as things stand the grants are failing and not fit for purpose. There are some possible changes in the pipeline that means farmers will be paid by result rather than just paid whatever happens.

There’s also a real need to look at some of the programmes that are being funded. One situation on the programme showed a project that was growing winter seed feed for birds. These late seeding plants provided food for wild birds well into January. the problem was that once those seeds had gone there was still a period of time before other food became available so in reality the winter seed only delayed the impact of starvation or migration rather than tackle it.

I’ll admit that I did not come to the same conclusion than Chris Packham in relation to tackling the problem. His suggestion that we should pay even more money to farmers to protect our wild farmland birds really has no evidence that it will work. We’ve paid ever increasing amounts of money to farmers and the problem has continued to get worse so even more money is not going to tackle the issue.

What do we really want to achieve in conservation?

The time has come for a real discussion on what we want to achieve with combining farming and wildlife. That discussion must not include just the farming industry and the conservation organisations, it also needs to include the taxpayers who are eventually the ones to pick up the bill and pay for it.

For me the current countryside stewardship grants are ineffective because the money is too thinly spread. To make a real difference to the wildlife the grants would have to increase to such an amount and cover such a wide area that it would be unaffordable for the country. I really don’t think that the majority of tax payers would be prepared to pay the levels of tax to make it happen – especially for the next 20 or 30 years where the UK will be going through rather stagnant growth and for many a lowering of living standards.

Time for ‘managed retreat’ from the general countryside.

We have to look again at how we fund wildlife and what we want to achieve. It’s not going to be popular but I think the time has come for a ‘managed retreat’ in relation to wildlife and agriculture. The funds need to be concentrated into projects and areas that can make a real impact and other areas need to be left to fend for themselves.

We need to be concentrating the bulk of the grants into areas within national parks so that we can really boost farmland birds in those areas. Farms within national parks should be paid sufficient to allow them to turn over 20% or even 30% or more of their land towards conservation management. Those farms outside the national parks sadly will have to lose their grants unless there specific reasons for them not to.

Concentrating resources within a landscape area rather than a hotchpotch of conservation patches will enable much more sustainable projects to be accomplished and will increases the chances of re-introducing sustainable populations.

Who knows, the national parks may eventually act like no take zones in oceans and act a population bank of species that can spread out to surrounding areas and help support long term populations in those areas.

Something needs to change and just throwing more money at the problem is not the solution.

External links:

BBC The Truth About Wildlife