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Welcome to the Patrick Foundation |
| British Wildlife Management www.britishwildlifemanagement.net Supporting those who deploy man's benevolent guiding hand in the good management of the planet - for wildlife and people |
Very little indeed of the scenery, even the wildest and least touched parts of our islands, can truthfully be described as natural. Ever since man began in earnest to clear the natural vegetation to make way for crops and animals of his own choice - our scenery has undergone a process of gradual evolution. Our motives today are largely economic and perhaps the age of the great landscape architects of the late 18th century was the only period when there was a conscious attempt to alter scenery for its own sake. At that time the great landowners had no inhibitions about preservation: they were determined to create scenery and, according to the fashion of their time, to create beauty.
In these days we are less sure of ourselves: consciously or unconsciously we fear the rising tide of change and so seek to crystallize and preserve for ever, or at least for the foreseeable future, a particular stage in natural evolution. But our land is clothed in a living mantle and tenanted by living creatures. All living things are born, mature decay and die, to be replaced in due course by others which are different. However much therefore we may enjoy a particular phase of scenic evolution it is not a conversation piece to be framed and hung upon the walls of a museum or art gallery. It is alive, and our task is so to direct its growth that we create beauty, not destroy it - L. Dudley Stamp - Man and the Land 1955.
In simple terms, Wildlife Management is the three legged stool requiring all year round, Habitat, Food and Water, and Protection from predators, human disturbance and disease, for a wide range of species in the Uplands, Lowlands and Waters of Britain. Protection from predators, human disturbance (requiring legal access agreements) and disease, are the crucial third leg of the wildlife management stool, which collapses, if there are failures within these departments.
Good wildlife management following the above guidelines by the practitioners (wildlife managers) facilitates the ability to harvest a surplus of game species provide the sporting activities for participants, which enables them to pay the cost of that good management, thereby providing the self-funding of the private sector, without the need for demands to be made on the taxpayer. The required control of specific predators, also by participants within the wide range of sporting activities, provides additional free management, which is designed and proven over time to deliver a biologically rich and diverse range of habitats and species for other important wildlife.
The rich biologically diverse habitats and species of the past were achieved with maximum utilization of uplands and lowlands for cattle and sheep, in addition to the roles of wildlife managers on traditionally run estates. A study of past game bags, including fish, speaks for the evidence which benefitted virtually all species, with very few predator exceptions. The Welfare Equation has a major role to play in measuring management success, compared to bad management or neglect.
Properties under the management of the RSPB currently fall under the category of bad management, requiring restoration to former good management. RSPCA and LACS are also shamefully hostile towards management, managers and the participants of management activities, as illustrated later in this submission.
A. Primary factors in establishing humaneness, minimising cruelty, eliminating unnecessary suffering, and removing sick, diseased and injured animals, namely deer, fox, hare, mink, squirrel, badger and rabbit.
The above ten factors are key features of hunting methods, nearly always absent in the stalking or shooting of the above species. The current indiscriminate slaughter by undisciplined mass shooting and poaching is causing serious population collapses (e.g. red deer), and legislation is required to ensure that point nine above is competently addressed. This requires all shooting to be supervised by well informed local managers/harbourers.
B. Welfare Equation – Government manages to draw up guidelines in order to provide good advice on humane methods of killing or capturing wild animals in most forms of managing wildlife, with the exception of using dogs and guns. The animal welfare science through the use of the welfare equation can now be used to address this and many other wildlife management issues, not connected to hunting with dogs. High standards of species management can be assessed and acted upon using simple arithmetic. Carrying out Species Counts and defining Predator/Prey Ratio’s to illustrate good and bad management to the public, will remove the need for conflict, and encourage the successful self funding of high standards of countryside management that we can all be proud of. This is best provided by a State backed Wildlife Management and Forest Service.
C. Management Best Practice or Protection Policies - The central objection against killing animals, continually quoted by the RSPCA is that they are sentient beings. The Oxford University Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey reinforces this statement by drawing on the biblical texts to support his case that we humans have no moral right to kill. Professor Linzey has two cats in his garden and is not concerned when they hunt and kill. The central guidance issue within all religions is that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. If animals are considered sentient beings, then all the more reason why we should execute our duty of care to manage individuals and species to the highest standards using the most humane and suitable methods. That means we should not allow a sick animal to suffer for any longer than necessary, or let some animals impact adversely on other wildlife species. Mankind’s dominion or duty over the natural world is set out clearly within the revised translation of the early chapters of Genesis reproduced on www.britishwildlifemanagement.net Currently protection policies of animal rights organisations lead to disruptive and unproductive conflicts between countryside managers and the so called environmentalists, resulting more often than not in massive losses to national productivity, ridiculous costs to taxpayers, and catastrophic impacts on farming and wildlife populations.
D. Human Rights – The Countryside Alliance were unsuccessful in their three legal cases, because they failed to address the central issue of the Human Right to use the most humane methods of management. The most humane methods of management are those highlighted by the Welfare Equation, which draws fully on the Animal Welfare Science of comparing suffering between different methods of control and management. The search and dispatch of casualties being the fundamental issue ignored in the debates and legal cases about the Hunting Act, and a major reason for the current need for improvements to legislation. The Countryside Alliance also failed, when given the opportunity, to address the illegal use of the Parliament Act, which was corruptly used to transfer powers for the exclusive use of the Commons, in defiance of our Constitution and Rule of Law. No doubt the essential repeal of the Parliament Acts, now being discussed, would invalidate the Hunting Act.
Edmund Marriage – 8 May 2012 - www.britishwildlifemanagement.net
An interesting separation between the Ancient Egyptians was that no one presumed to interfere with the occupation of a different trade or work that differed from his or her own. As written by Diodorus "no tradesman was permitted to meddle in political affairs, or to hold any civil office in the state, lest his thoughts should be distracted by the inconsistency of his pursuits, or by the jealousy and displeasure of the master in whose business he was employed." The Ancient Egyptians feared that if no such law existed, in consequence of necessity or desire, the individual(s) would become conspicuous in public station and those (by vanity and self-sufficiency) would interfere in matters out of their sphere - A Popular Account of The Ancient Egyptians - Volume 2 - Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, D.C.L., F.R.S. - Harper and Brothers, New York. 1854. Note; Over 200 trade crafts and guilds were recorded in the Euphrates city of Mari before 2,400 BC.
The RSPCA, IFAW, LACS, Compassion in World Farming and the Peoples Ethical Treatment of Animals, amongst many other welfare or rights organisations, use the term ethics, based in reality on unsound interpretations of biblical texts, to justify their lobbying of Government for animal welfare legislation. This involves the protection of certain species through legislation, or alternatively to justify demonstrations against the killing of predators, pests, or using of animal skins, eating meat or conducting experiments on animals. The main base for this ethical approach comes from the Rev. Professor Andrew Linzey who claims Biblical texts support his thesis that all animals are sentient beings, and therefore should not be killed, eaten or abused.
This ethical view is challenged by www.goldenageproject.org.uk/genesis.php research demonstrating that a correct translation of the Genesis text requires mankind to take benevolent control of the good management of species and the planet.
The one consistency is that these organisations tend to raise large sums of money, act in concert, and milk the emotions of a trusting public on specific targets, where they use untruthful and misleading promotional material. Once campaigns are underway more extreme measures and propaganda are used to justify their existence to those who fund them.
In the absence of ethical or moral evidence based on established customs, we find that scientific research and common sense considerations are buried by hypocrisy, dogma, and political expediency. Politicians who are expected to exercise a duty of care and search for the truth though the provision of evidence and informed debate, have resorted to absolving their duty of care responsibilities in order to pander to public opinion. Opinion, which after long targeted misinformation campaigns by those with the largest resources, naturally tend to be slanted towards that misinformation.
This extraordinary situation has arisen through an endemic of bearing of false witness accompanied by raising funds or favours from such activities. This in simple language is a deceitful and fraudulent activity, which unfortunately is not being policed under current information overload conditions.
The major conclusion reached at the Defra organised conference on 30th July 2008 titled Working in Partnership to Deliver an Effective Animal Welfare Strategy was that animal welfare issues should be resolved by evidence, and that a duty of care existed as a fundamental feature of the Animal Welfare Act, wherever unnecessary suffering could be prevented. This statement was clarified by Bill Swan (lead RSPCA advisor) in his presentation, when he stated that the prevalence of poor welfare can be assessed by the observation of behaviour, and calculations of the duration and severity of that poor welfare, which is exactly what is produced by the British Wildlife Management Welfare Equation.
An alternative and authoritive translation of the parts of the Genesis text, which provide advice on the management of wildlife, and were taken from the much earlier Sumerian Enuma Elish.
They are recorded as forming part of the Edicts of An and Enlil. An and Enlil were the key male figures in the re-start of civilisation at Kharsag (Sumerian head enclosure) following global catastrophe
c. 9,500 BC. Kharsag was known later as the Hebraic Garden of Eden.
Gen 1:24 - Indiscriminate killing by man forbidden
Gen 1:25 - Caring for them and tending them as all good farmers do
Gen 1:26 - Take responsibility for the good management of wildlife
Gen 1:28 - Make it your servant or manage it
A fundamental duty of care exists towards our precious wildlife, so that we must deploy the benevolent guiding hand of man wherever possible to improve the quality of individual lives and the quality of the species.
The neglect of protection policies is not an option.
Protectionists exercise their undue influence on animal and wildlife welfare legislation, in the belief that species other than man are sentient beings - if this is so there is added reason not to neglect them.
The oldest Hebraic and almost identical Aramaic script, constructed without the use of vowels, was adapted from the much earlier Phoenician alefbeg (alphabetic script) no earlier than the 9th century BC. The absence of vowels suggests that it was a deliberate codification to be learned by heart, with no option for different interpretations, therefore not allowing what is called parasonomia. Parasonomia in translation allowed the looking for the different meanings of words dependent upon the subject matter.
For further information see An Alternative Genesis www.goldenageproject.org.uk/genesis.php
2.2.1 Just as anglers are in a unique position to monitor the health of our waterways, hunting people are in a similar position to observe changes in wildlife demographics, as highlighted, prior to the Hunting Act 2004, by John Webster, Emeritus Professor of Animal Husbandry at Bristol University, “The hunting communities have the potential to become the most effective contributors to the monitoring, management and conservation of wildlife in England and Wales by virtue of their numbers, their widespread distribution and their commitment.”
“On the other hand, legislation that simply bans the use of dogs in the killing of foxes, hares and deer, will seriously compromise policies and actions that are already making as insignificant positive contribution to the quality of the living countryside, and which have the potential to do so much more”.