Just fly off our screens, Chris – and spend a lot more time with the birds

TOXIC… psychopathic… evil: that’s how Chris Packham describes grouse moors and the food they produce. This is the same Chris Packham who says we should be not be spending money on ‘chasing cures for cancer’ but instead put it into the ‘health of the planet’. It’s certainly emotive. Yet being on the extreme fringe of a debate does not sit well with being a balanced TV presenter. For all Chris’s charm and enthusiasm he can not be convincingly neutral. His stream of outbursts – a sort of eco-Tourettes – drags down confidence in the Corporation among rural communities. He ruffles more feathers than Jeremy Clarkson and is damaging the reputation of the BBC’s wildlife team for impartiality. When next month the BBC Trustees announce their solution to their Chris Packham problem, they may tell him to spend more time with the birds, away from the cameras. That would be sensible for the BBC and helpful in healing the polarised debate about the countryside, where wildlife protection needs practical collaboration between conservationists and landowners. Chris has plenty of work to do as a campaigner. He is vicepresident of the RSPB and the rallying point for a small group of angry bird activists who need leadership because all they do is sit at their computers ranting about birdlife.

I love debating the tough choices we face in managing nature with these campaigners when they have hard evidence rather than speculation.

Yet they confuse tweeting for conservation. Twitter may have a bird symbol – but posting a tweet does nothing to help birds.

What does help is the hard work of creating great habitat and protecting birds from predators.

Let me playfully raise the blood pressure of these tweetaholics by saying that the best friends of Britain’s endangered wild birds are gamekeepers.

The facts speak for themselves. British Trust for Ornithology ringers have just conducted a survey of a grouse moor in the Pennines. They found 800 pairs of lapwing, 400 curlews and 100 golden plover on one estate. There were 89 species – 21 of them endangered ‘red list’ birds. Another grouse moor in Scotland has 81 species. This is bird heaven.

The RSPB’s scientists admit that grouse moors are the best breeding grounds for birds, saying that there are up to five times more endangered birds on grouse moors than on other moors. So if the activists who run the RSPB had their way and forced grouse moors to shut down it would be devastating for Britain’s endangered birds. This is the inconvenient truth that the tweeters are in denial about.

What is the point of an RSPB that does not protect birds? It is the over-fed cuckoo in the nest of bird conservation devouring resources other groups would love.

Officials are wondering how they can justify giving millions of taxpayers money to an RSPB that lectures but never listens.

Nature does have a voice, and it is not the RSPB. The birds are speaking by flocking to grouse moors where millions of them flourish along with grouse – Britain’s ultimate free range food.

The grouse I will shoot next week live all their lives in the wild. By contrast the chickens we eat typically live only six weeks in cramped conditions before they are slaughtered.

My message to the selfrighteous bird activists is simple. The grouse on my plate will have lived a far better life than the chicken on theirs.