The CONservation organised culls.

From: J Smytje (JSmythe_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/06/04 

Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 12:45:46 +0100

The RSPB, Woodland Trust, BTO etc slaughter millions of animals each
year between them. They call these animals "pests", a euphamism to
legal eliminate anything you dont like. Based on classic nazi
principals.

They suggest, though you'd be hard pushed to find any of the groups
willing to discuss it, that the killing is carried out by professional
marksmen, with minimal suffering.

Here's an interesting story to proves the lie in conservation carried
out by CONservation hooligans.

http://homepages.which.net/~rex/bourne/diary199902.htm

Saturday 20th February 1999

We went to Bourne Woods a few days back for one of our regular walks
only to find a notice in red letters stuck up at the entrance
announcing that they were closed that day because shooting was in
progress. Visitors at the entrance who had also been disappointed by
the closure asked us: "Who is doing the shooting and at what?"
The last time I complained to the Forestry Commission about shooting
in these woods I was told that culls of fallow deer were carried out
on two or three days each year because the population in the area is
so high that they killed off the young trees in new plantations.
Bourne Woods, like many others in Britain, have survived for thousands
of years without culling so why start now? If deer do cause damage,
then that damage will be done whether the herds number a hundred or a
mere fifty. No, the answer is that these deer are shot for profit
because their carcasses are handed over to a game dealer who sells
them for venison.

Those who cull will insist that their marksmen do it humanely but we
can be sure of nothing in this world and certainly not when trying to
hit a moving animal with a rifle shot. I have often seen pools of
blood on woodland trails left by a large animal and this indicates
that they have merely been wounded and on another occasion, a young
stag broke cover and dashed across the path in front of me with one of
its antlers dangling broken and loose. It was terrified and
disorientated and it seemed obvious that the animal had either been
hit by one of the gunmen or frightened by the noise of the firing.

The Forestry Commission has made no mention of organised shoots, which
I have witnessed on several occasions when the quarry is rabbit and
pheasant. We have even seen these gunmen in the woods on a Saturday
afternoon when walkers were in the vicinity, a most frightening
experience.

We once ignored these warning notices and watched a shooting party at
work in Bourne Woods in mid-week. Two dozen or more men armed with
shotguns arrived in lorries and then fanned out in line before moving
forward in order to give maximum cover to the woodland ahead and
therefore anything living in that area had little chance of escaping
their attention. Most of these men were farmers or connected with the
agricultural industry, which has already been responsible for so much
devastation in our green and pleasant land.

Why does the Forestry Commission allow this shooting to continue? Pet
owners are asked to keep dogs on a lead when walking in the woods and
horse riding is banned yet gunmen are regularly allowed in to destroy
wild animals. This is sheer hypocrisy.

Coincidentally, I have just been reading a leaflet issued by the
Forestry Commission which has owned the woods since 1926 and is always
ready to parade its green credentials. "Fallow deer are abundant in
the wood and if lucky you may catch a glimpse of their shy cousin the
muntjac", it said. "Be on the lookout for other dwellers of these
woodlands such as foxes, squirrels, owls, snakes and woodpeckers. Not
so common are the white letter hairstreak and white admiral
butterflies, hazel dormouse, nightingale and badger that also live
there."

It should also have said: beware of shooters because they regularly
roam these woods killing off our wildlife. Do these gunmen not know of
the changes that have been wrought on the English countryside in the
last fifty years? Are they unaware of the flora and fauna that is now
under threat? Have they not heard the siren calls of alarm that
creatures such as the brown hare and the common partridge that were
once so abundant are fast disappearing?

The leaflet also carries a warning to visitors asking them to remember
the forest code by protecting trees, plants and wildlife. Leave things
as you find them, take nothing away, it says. How does the Forestry
Commission reconcile these guidelines to the public with a day's
closure to enable gunmen hunt our wild animals? The Forestry
Commission should practice what it preaches and leave these animals in
peace. Hunting is a barbaric practice and totally unnecessary and
allowing it in the woodlands it controls is tantamount to pulling the
trigger on anything that moves.

I notified the Forestry Commission on Monday that because of the
increasing public concern over the threat to wildlife in these woods,
I intended writing on the subject and I asked them for a statement to
explain their shooting policy but although almost a week has elapsed,
they have not replied.