RSPB Hub

[pickle]

Did you hear the one about the RSPB tubby girl who spent £1,000,000 pounds destroying immigrant rats on a remote Puffin Island colony somewhere in the North Atlantic or was it in the South Seas or summit else where. Anyway, what she did was (on the Sky tele) to fill the Puffin nesting holes wiith large blocks of solid poisoned bait material to eradicate the naughty rats - they were eating all the eggs and chicks thereby decimating the Puffin population. So after spending around £80.000 odd thousand pounds a month for 12 months on rat bait and RSPB helpers fees, (special bottled water unsullied by pollutants) etc extricated from the RSPB coffers containing members subscriptions, government aid and lottery grants notwithstanding dedications from dying or deceased do gooders they eventually apparently did away with ratty. Great stuff. Apparently there were about 5,000 or 6,000 or so rats at peak breeding season. So how much does 10,000 .177 pellets cost plus expenses for NV Forum members travel and bivvy. Few bottles of malt and not a few cans of lager and Morrisons' sandwiches parachuted in to while away the time. OK, call it 20,000 .177 lead pellets and lots of batteries for your diy NV gear. What do you think the cost might be to the RSPB had they invited a bunch of substantial, experienced NV Forum gunnies instead of leaving all that poison bait behind in those burrows. Actually now that I remember the eradicator was Australian and a world wide authority on rat destruction. So at only £150.00 plus per rat head you can have your private island de ratted - cheap at half the price.

It was in fact the Shiant Islands West coast of Scotland (amongst others). I think the RSPB must be barking and require another top dog ceo like the RSPCA.

[Nipper64]

They've apparently skimmed £5 million of donations to subsidies their pension deficit. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... birds.html

[pickle]

Hi Nipper 64, I wondered why the RSPB ceo wore that imbecilic smile that seems to infect every other member portrayed in Natures Home. He knows something we don't - and now we do? Now what was the name of the RSPB journo/hack that advocated it might be a good idea to put sugar in the petrol tanks of Rolls Royces owned by sporting people (Simon Barnes). Now that i think of It, the monies (if the Daily Mail is correct) were probably part of the pile that the RSPB raised in defence of the island in the Thames Estuary where the government of the day proposed to build a new airport which was or is a bird sanctuary. All that pointless posturing and sabre rattliing by the RSPB to whip their members into a frenzy for donations when it was generally accepted that it was a lost leader and would never happen anyway and guess what, it never did. But of course the RSPB ceo knew that all along. Could it be that the ceo's pension is more important than a Red Backed Shrike.
Why do they call the RSPB's pension fund Minsmere - because it's ring fenced.