Something not quite right
October 24th, 2008 Posted in Mundane musings
I was perusing the local free rag when I happened upon a report on an inquest. The unfortunate chap was killed by his own shotgun on a grouse shooting trip. The article went on to describe him as “a trustee of the Earsham-based Otter Trust charity”.
It occurred to me that he must have been a fairly focussed conservationist to want to protect otters but shoot grouse.
I then started to wonder whether I’d missed something - why did he support the gathering together of those otters?! Was he planning an otter hunt?
October 24th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I heard that police were looking for a team of radical otters with a grouse.
October 25th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
I remember reading about the incident at the time in the local paper; it said that he was shot by someone else’s gun - I hadn’t realised that it was in fact his own. You should never move with a loaded gun, it’s too dangerous. I’ve never used a shotgun but I do know that.
One can be a conservationist and still eat meat - it’s not only vegetarians who campaign to Save the Whale or against battery farming. If you want to eat meat but are against factory farming, then shooting wild animals, as long as it doesn’t endanger them as a species, is not inconsistent with general animal welfare, though obviously the individual creature isn’t too pleased about getting shot at.
When Philip Wayre set up the Otter Trust, English otters were an endangered species. He spent several decades breeding them in captivity for the purpose of reintroducing them to the wild. This has been done with such success that he is winding down the work of the Otter Trust and has stopped the captive breeding programme, as he thinks keeping otters in a zoo is only acceptable if they are endangered, to save the species.
I happen to live in Earsham, which is why I’m boringly knowledgeable about it, sorry.