Time to change your tune, BASC warns RSPB

BASC is warning of “disastrous consequences” for our important moorland landscapes unless the RSPB reassesses its evidence base and rethinks its position on managed moorland burning.

In an open letter to the charity’s chair, Kevin Cox, BASC chairman Eoghan Cameron calls out the RSPB’s “increasingly negative” public attitude towards sustainable shooting and “our” community.

Mr Cameron says in the letter that this is “entrenching positions and creating barriers between groups and organisations which should be working together more than ever to tackle our climate and nature emergencies”.

Mr Cameron says in the letter that an example of a divisive approach is the RSPB’s campaign for members of the public to report moorland fires.

BASC is concerned that the charity’s high-profile campaign calling for the public to report all fires – and the subsequent media coverage – is misleading and designed to further an “extreme and inflexible objective” that is at odds with the evidence and one that would have “disastrous consequences for our important moorland landscapes”.

Mr Cameron signs-off the letter with the hope that: “Following our advice may start to arrest the widening gulf between the RSPB and many otherwise supportive landowners and land managers.”

He adds: “Doing so would be in the public interest; Rather than sowing division, working together would better address the nature and climate crises we collectively face.”

To read the letter in full, click here.