Gamekeepers proving that People Care

I grieved today to hear of an English gamekeeper who lured birds of prey to be killed using a live pigeon as bait. Many rare birds have died.

Acceptance and non-judgment are important precepts to me but hearing such stories of cruelty as well as illegality make it hard to be unmoved. Indeed, I cannot be so. There is a reason for everything that happens and it may be that the conduct of this man, and others like him, will result in a change to the law to give greater protection to these wonderful creatures and stronger sanctions against their violaters, but still such acts shock. While on the one hand  I hated hearing about it, on the other I was glad it featured prominently on the main evening news and is one of the most read stories on the BBC website. People care, and so there is hope something will be done eventually.

Meanwhile red kites, buzzards, goshawks, and peregrine falcons soar and swoop in the skies above me, and their young are beginning to fly also. There is much to be said for living in an area where there are no great estates with commercial shoots and over-zealous gamekeepers, and where money matters above anything, however special and loved that anything may be.

 

I write more about the importance of the nature world in my book Spiritual Wisdom