No sex please, we’re conservationists

There is nothing that polarises the human race quite so precisely as snowfall. You are either a lover or a hater of the stuff.

If the sight of a snowy landscape sends you giddy with joy when you open your curtains then you’re in the opposing team to me. I hate snow. I hate the carnival atmosphere that it invokes in others and I hate the resulting disruption. I hate the mess that it leaves behind. Most of all, I hate being cold.

My negativity is more intense than usual because this is our third consecutive year of heavy snow. As a potato grower, I appreciate a hard winter to kill off pests, but this also has a damaging impact on the rest of the wildlife around the farm.

As most farmers do, we have measures in place to leave a winter food source for our birds. The primary one is leaving hedges, field margins and ditch banks uncut until the spring. This goes against the natural instinct of a tidy farmer, but the berries and weed seeds serve a purpose.

While I have been pondering weed seeds for wildlife, the RSPB has been focused on seedy activities of their own. They recently hosted a stand at Erotica 2010 to attract new members. You may not be familiar with Erotica 2010. It is an exhibition of well um products for people with avant garde sexual interests. The RSPB was even selling T shirts with pictures of Great Tits and Shags on them.

The RSPB has completely trumped me on this one; the story is impossible to satirise. However many times I think about it, I can’t make it any funnier. This clearly goes against the natural order of things.

The RSPB should be doing the serious conservation work for which they are paid and I should be making smutty gags about them here. Why are we doing one another’s jobs all of a sudden?

There is no reason why someone can’t be sexually “adventurous” and committed to conservation, but it is far more likely that this was all x done merely to grab the headlines. In which case it has worked. The tabloid press loves puerile publicity stunts such as these; the story even featured in the Sun under the headline “Pornithologists.”

Once my titters had died down, I had to reflect on whether the RSPB really deserves all of the credibility it commands. Although it does some fantastic work and markets itself very well, it is also a powerful lobbying organisation which makes great capital of its “one million voices for nature” slogan.

These voices would count for much less in political terms if many members had actually joined up to buy an amusing T shirt or to receive a free gift.

And forget the bedroom, the RSPB has fairly “avant garde tastes” in food production. Its fetish for compulsory set-aside is the most perverse. Are they sure that all of their one million voices are also in favour of higher food prices? I do not believe that the whole RSPB membership is politicised in this way and I hope that ministers take such thoughts into account when they make agricultural policy decisions.

Fortunately some of the RSPB’s activities are helpful to British farmers; I hear it has done a lot to increase the price of leather and feathers recently.