October 28, 2008

Interview with a Gamekeeper

The Guardian, which occupies a somewhat similar (perhaps even more leftward) place in the British media spectrum to that of NPR's All Things Considered in the United States, interviews a British gamekeeper.

"A lot of people don't really understand what we do," he says. "The bottom line is, I'm not going to deny it, we're rearing game birds to shoot. People think we're murdering bastards, just killing things. But they don't see the benefits of it ... you're more likely to see songbirds out on a shoot than you are on non-managed land, where the predators at the top of the tree are the ones surviving."

Via British blogger James Marchington, who called the piece "surprisingly balanced."

If your word association with "gamekeeper" is "Lady Chatterley," then you are probably an NPR listener--as am I. But the arguments that Geoff Garrod makes are what an American would expect to hear from the local district wildlife manager, game warden, etc.

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