Pack him off with the really wild folk and Packham will see sense

Charles Clover 13 September 2015

I am fascinated by the cult of the BBC wildlife presenter Chris Packham, for he has an attraction for some
that I struggle to grasp. He certainly brings something new to the job of talking about lapwings and otters:
a sharp haircut, a way of weaving the lyrics of pop songs into his scripts and maybe, yes, a bit of
Hollywood preening, as you will see in his latest eight-part series, in which he wears Wayfarers and drives
around in a 1960s convertible.
All this is vaguely stylish, and I can see why a few years ago the BBC chiefs in the boring old Natural
History Unit in Bristol chose to puff up this edgy presenter and give him Bill Oddies slot on Springwatch
a few years ago. So Packham and the equally irritating Michaela Strachan get to present the whole
panoply of 100 outside broadcast cameras filming British wildlife in ways that you have never seen it
before, and the ratings soar.
Then it goes to Packhams head. He starts saying things that dont get through the filter of truth, fairness
and rationality. I am thinking of Packhams description on social media of the farmers involved in the
pilot badger cull to tackle bovine TB as brutalist thugs, liars and frauds. Remember, these people were
isolated and facing intimidation as well as volatile milk prices at the time.
The BBC duly rebuked him for intemperate language, but this didnt quite grasp the problem. Imagine
the outcry if Jeremy Bowen, the BBCs Middle East editor, were to write an abusive article accusing the
Israelis or the Palestinians of being brutalist thugs and liars. If Jim Naughtie, the Scottish presenter
of Radio 4s Today programme, were to make a chippy tweet in favour of Scottish independence his job
would probably not last the day.
Yet in the celebrity factory of natural history broadcasting, taking sides on impulse is fine and it is just
abusive language we have to deal with. The BBC seems not to get it: nature can be as political as any other
issue. Packham has ignited controversy again in his column for this months BBC Wildlife magazine.
He says he is just sticking up for wildlife. He accuses conservation charities such as the RSPB and the
Wildlife Trusts of failing to stand up and be counted when he and others opposed a change in the law on
hunting in the summer. This change, requested by Welsh sheep farmers, would have harmonised what
happens in England and Wales with what happens in Scotland, by allowing more dogs to be used to flush
foxes to guns. Packham calls this modest adjustment a return to the barbarism of foxhunting.

The self-appointed defender of wildlife goes on to accuse conservation bodies of failing to oppose the
badger culls implemented by a democratically elected government on scientific advice to tackle the
reservoir of disease. He rages about the illegal persecution of the hen harrier and moans that charities will
not back a ban on driven grouse shooting in retaliation for it because they are in collaboration with the
nasty brigade, as he calls traditional landowners.
At that point Tim Bonner, the new chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, a defender of country
sports, complained to the BBC Trust. A Guardian columnist hit back, suggesting that we should treasure
Packham for speaking his mind, which shows how political he is.
I am all for Packham saying anything he likes in any forum that will print or air it as long as it is not
funded by the taxpayer. The issue is whether people should use the privileged position they have been
given by a national broadcaster as a platform to campaign for their own beliefs, particularly when those
beliefs would ultimately abolish the livelihoods of, say, gamekeepers and sheep farmers.
The problem with Packhams argument anyway is that it confuses conservation with animal rights and
in so doing makes a classic mistake. He moans about conservation organisations failure to protect the red
fox and the badger when these two species are near to perfectly conserved. No issue. The reality is that
creatures without predators need to be managed, even by wildlife organisations.
I love wildlife. But I am not a wildlife lover in the cuddly, cutesy way that Packham and his Twitter
followers mean it, for that has become code for a political point of view, a heady and ill-thought-out
mixture of class war, animal rights and land reform. That is why there is substance in the Countryside
Alliances complaint.
The solution to Packham is not to sack him. It is to do what an editor does when a reporter gets too close
to the story send him out to spend more time with people with opposing views: wildfowlers, Welsh hill
farmers, even gamekeepers. Making them talk to reasonable people and listen to them, away from the
sycophants in the office and on Twitter: that is the way to stop the celebrity becoming a monster.