Howard Jones and the RSPB's Selective Truth-Telling

As reported yesterday by the Peak District Moorland Group, Howard Jones, an RSPB ‘Senior Investigation Officer’ gave a presentation this week in Glossop which offered a masterclass in how to manipulate an audience through selective presentation. It also highlighted why the RSPB's Investigation Team has become such a liability to genuine bird conservation.

For those unfamiliar with Jones's modus operandi, the evening followed a predictable pattern: emotive imagery, carefully curated horror stories, and a narrative framework that positions gamekeepers as wildlife criminals and the RSPB as heroic investigators. What was absent proved far more revealing than what was included.

The Evidence Jones Buried

Start with that 2018 Breeding Bird Survey. Jones mentioned it only in passing, and for good reason – it comprehensively undermines his core thesis. Buzzards and ravens showing the fastest population increases across Peak District moorlands? That's inconvenient when you're trying to paint these areas as ecological disaster zones. So Jones rushed past it, offering instead his now-infamous footage of two short-eared owls being shot in Cumbria in 2017.

 The BTO survey showed significant increases in most bird species within the Peak District

Jones's gleeful recounting of the footage's 350,000 views worldwide reveals something troubling about the Investigation Team's priorities. This isn't about bird protection – it's about generating content that demonises an entire profession based on isolated incidents. By Jones's logic, we should judge all police officers by their worst examples, all doctors by struck-off practitioners, all journalists by phone hackers.

The omissions multiplied. No mention of gamekeepers who cooperate with bird surveyors and police – including that Dark Peak egg collecting case where keeper intelligence proved crucial. No acknowledgment that bird or preys are at their highest ever levels. No recognition that the waders thriving on managed moorland are collapsing elsewhere across Britain. No discussion of the anti-social disturbance from rock climbers, wild campers, and off-lead dogs during nesting season that impacts far more birds than persecution ever could.

Contaminated Evidence and Frustrated Police

Most damning was Jones's glossing over his team's "evidence gathering methods." What he presented as professional investigation work, numerous Police Rural Crime Teams have privately described as amateur hour – covert surveillance operations that contaminate evidence chains, instances of misinformation that undermine prosecutions, and cases thrown out by the CPS because RSPB investigators have compromised the integrity of potential proceedings.

This isn't minor administrative error. When the RSPB's desire for sensational content overrides proper investigative protocols, actual criminals walk free. Police officers trying to do legitimate wildlife crime work find themselves cleaning up after Jones's team rather than building prosecutable cases. But you won't hear Jones discuss those failures in village halls.

The Licensing Agenda

Jones's call for shooting licensing sounds superficially reasonable until you examine the RSPB's actual intent. This isn't about ensuring compliance – it's about creating a mechanism to incrementally restrict and ultimately prohibit game management regardless of conservation outcomes. The "any wrongdoing leads to suspension" standard Jones advocated would hand enormous power to an organisation that has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept uncorroborated allegations as fact.

Jones breezed past the documented cases of gamekeepers being set up: false witness statements, dead raptors strategically placed for "discovery," legal traps tampered with to render them illegal. These aren't conspiracy theories – they're established patterns that the RSPB refuses to acknowledge because they complicate the simple narrative of keepers-as-villains that Jones peddles so effectively.

Modern Gamekeeping Reality

Today's gamekeepers operate under extraordinary regulatory burden and scrutiny that Jones barely acknowledged. They're conservation professionals bound by multiple Acts, maintaining detailed records, undergoing regular training, and working with the knowledge that organisations like the RSPB are conducting surveillance operations against them. The vast majority take this responsibility seriously because they genuinely care about the landscape and wildlife they manage.

But in Jones's worldview, they're all potential criminals awaiting exposure. His "tip of the iceberg" diagram – pure propaganda unsupported by crime statistics – could indeed apply to any profession but is deployed exclusively against moorland management. When Police FOI requests reveal wildlife crime is relatively uncommon compared to other rural offences, Jones ignores it. When independent surveys show biodiversity thriving on managed moors, Jones buries it.

The Real Question

The lifelong birdwatchers questioning the RSPB's direction at evening's end asked the right question: is this organisation still primarily concerned with bird protection, or has it become a political campaign group sustained by urban members' subscriptions and Howard Jones's viral videos?

The answer grows clearer with every tendentious presentation. Jones isn't investigating wildlife crime – he's producing content to sustain an ideological crusade against shooting. Britain's birds, and the gamekeepers who actually deliver for ground-nesting species daily, deserve better than this shabby propaganda exercise masquerading as conservation work.