On a wing and a prayer: Simon Richardson and campaigner Christine Brock are battling to save Borehamwood's parakeets.Having paid more than £26,000 a couple of years ago to build a bat sanctuary above my stables, I received an email last week informing me of an upcoming inspection to see how the bats are getting on – which will cost me a further £195.
I phoned the ecologist, who I’d already paid hundreds of pounds to monitor the building work, and told him the bats were fine. I watch them leaving the loft above my house every evening, like Second World War bombers.
I don’t have £195, but apparently it is the LAW.
Building the bat sanctuary was imposed on me in the first place. Defra insisted on it as part of a project to convert a barn to provide low-cost housing for an agricultural worker, a building that was still slapped with 17 per cent, and then 20 per cent, VAT.
Borehamwood is home to 33 parakeets, but officials say they are a pest.Isn’t this interesting – the care we lavish on bats, compared to the sort of spying never applied to Victoria Climbie.
You’d think, given the outrage in this country about dogs left in hot cars, that animals are treated fairly here.
But given what’s going on in a leafy suburb in Hertfordshire, I’d counter we are living in the Soviet Bloc rather than 21st Century Britain, where the Government does not listen to us, or even to reason or science.
In this bastion of law-abiding, tax-paying Middle England, a campaign is being mounted to save the Borehamwood 33 – a flock of wild birds descended from 12 monk parakeets that escaped from an aviary during a house burglary 16 years ago.
The Government has decided they are a pest: two years ago, Natural England added both the monk and the ring-necked parakeet to the General Licence, which means the birds can be shot. Yet in New York, a law was passed to protect a flock of approximately the same size as this one.
I spoke to Simon Richardson, a business analyst, who started the campaign to save the birds in his road.
Caught in the act: Simon Richardson took this picture of a Defra worker who was part of a team sent to Borehamwood to cull parakeets.
‘On Thursday evening I returned home at 10.30pm to find Defra operatives dressed up as soldiers climbing the trees in my neighbour’s garden to destroy the nests and the birds. This is such cowardly behaviour.’
These petty pen-pushers so love playing at soldiers.
In the past, Richardson took pictures of what was happening only to return home to find a police car outside his home.
The policemen told him if the photos appeared in a paper he would be in trouble.
In 2008, Defra performed secret field trials in Borehamwood at a cost of £37,000. This involved shooting seven birds and destroying three nests to ‘observe’ what would happen.
Richardson added: ‘I think everyone knows what happens if you shoot a bird – it dies.
‘People here are saying, “What right do the Government have to come into our town and kill them? These birds are part of our community!” ’
The budget for this year’s activities is £90,000. Which means more than £1,000 per bird is being spent to eradicate the 80 living nationwide, which in a time of austerity is a scandal.
In a staggering piece of nonsense more worthy of the Labour Left at its looniest, Defra claimed the action is necessary ‘because of bird droppings’. If that’s the case, why don’t they shoot all birds!
Simon Richardson found a local wildlife rescue centre willing to rehome the trapped birds. But Defra has not bothered to contact them. This killing of parakeets is fully sanctioned by the RSPB, an organisation that fetishises the rare and the indigenous over the many and the foreign.
These are BIRDS. They didn’t smuggle themselves here in the back of a truck.
I also really don’t understand the war being raged in the countryside against crows, magpies and jackdaws. I heard another horror story last week about a pig farmer who traps up to 80 jackdaws every night, which he then clobbers over the head (trapping of corvids is also legal under licence).
He feeds the birds to his pigs as extra protein.
Like most corvid murderers, this farmer loves to shoot. Isn’t it interesting, too, that sport, a recreation, is placed at the top of the pile over humanity.
At least corvids clean up the rotting carcasses of sheep (often, pregnant sheep) left in fields because the farmer can’t be bothered to move them.
And even if we do disapprove of the behaviour of corvids or parakeets, that is no reason to kill them. We might as well imprison cuckoos.
This all reminds me of a recent story about a cleric who sentenced a dog to be stoned. Remember that only humans are capable of evil. That is what makes us unique.
You can join the parakeet protest at www.thepetitionsite.com/4/stop-the-monk-parakeet-cull/.
Sunday, July 24, 2011 at 11:34