| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
Professor Barrie Rickards is President of the Specialist Anglers Association (SAA) and President of the Lure Angling Society (LAS), as well as a very experienced and successful specialist angler with a considerable tally of big fish to his credit. He is author of several fishing books, including the classic work ‘Fishing For Big Pike’, co-authored with the late Ray Webb and only recently his first novel, ‘Fishers On The Green Roads’ was published. He has been an angling writer in newspapers and magazines for nigh on four decades. Barrie takes a keen interest in angling politics. Away from angling Barrie is a Professor in Palaeontology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Emmanuel College and a curator of the Sedgwick Museum of Geology. |
More about the RSPB saga
And so the RSPB saga goes on… now they are fighting the shooting lobby because the latter plan to kill lots of magpies. Or, to be more exact, the shooting magazine ‘Sporting Shooter’ is offering a big prize for the greatest number of magpies shot in a five-month period (Sunday Telegraph feature Feb 27th). What will be interesting to those watching the convolutions of the RSPB is that they now claim “…a lot of work done into the reasons (for song bird decline) and in no case are magpies cited as the main reason for the decline.” Well, well. Haven’t I been saying that for years, and were not the RSPB singing a different tune only five or six years ago?
If they are opposed to the killing of magpies, one of the crow family, how do they explain their killing of the carrion crow? Is it really true that “…instead that the population (of songbirds) was determined by the availability of food and suitable nesting places.” Obviously there’s a fundamental truth in that statement: no food and the birds die; no nesting sites and the bird fail to breed. It is na
