Scrutiny

It's always best to hesitate before engaging with newspapers. It's in their nature to distort and mangle or dilute your message. The letter in today's Telegraph is a case in point. An office skivvy has been given the job of editing our letter and in the process has contrived to emasculate it. The heading they've chosen to put over it is just about acceptable: The decision to hand over moors to these charities needs to be scrutinised. But a telling and significant section was left out altogether.

That read:

In July 2013 the senior RSPB officer defended their grazing of cattle and sheep on the Eastern Moors because 'there are nowhere near enough deer on the moors'. This was at an important Action for Involvement conference on the moors attended by conservationists and environmentalists including Dr Mark Fisher and George Monbiot from the Guardian. Just over a year later a letter from RSPB was circulated privately to a select group of local 'stakeholders' telling them they intended to shoot 25% of the deer, while having no plans to reduce numbers of farm animals. The stakeholders are anonymous making it difficult to gain accurate information or make representations. A request to see the names of those stakeholders consulted and the minutes of their meetings has been declined.