RECENTLY I was in conversation with my sister, a member of the National Trust who dislikes the way the organisation is killing wild goats.
She felt she ought to continue with the Trust because if people cancelled their memberships, land would be bought up by developers.
I argued this was just scaremongering and that protest was better than staying mute.
I continued to argue my point by quoting a well known animal rights’ saying - all it takes for evil to win, is that good people do nothing.
“But we like our holidays at places owned by the Trust,” she said.
Ah, I sighed - I see!
Never mind the fact it was the Trust that put a herd of 18 goats on to its land in Dorset, then had them killed because some of them had jumped the 6ft fence to go on the “rampage”.
In reality, they damaged two apple trees in a woman’s garden. Two apple trees? Not really deserving of a death sentence, is it?
Certainly left a sour taste in my mouth, and I’m not talking about the apples.
It seems the NT has finally realised it has goats on its land! Never mind that goats have lived happily in Snowdonia for centuries - until some bright spark decided it was time to cut their numbers.
It is thought by many people (not just me) that it’s not just goats that have reduced some parts of Snowdonia to moorland
Sheep have certainly played their part. It’s a shame the region’s goats are getting all the blame.
It doesn’t surprise me really, because goats are wild and, like all wildlife, receive little in the way of protection.
Sheep, on the other hand, provide a good living for farmers (which is probably why no-one dare criticise them), whereas goats only generate interest for tourists.
But why kill the goats at all? We surely live in an age where it’s possible to put nanny goats on the pill, or so I read.
Goats on the Great Orme were once considered enough of a threat to be considered for birth control, so why not goats in Snowdonia?
Unfortunately killing seems to come easily to the National Trust; why consider birth control when you can use a bullet?
It can also be no coincidence that Countryside Alliance representatives were at a National Trust meeting last year when the decision was made to allow exempt hunting on Trust land.
All this I relayed to my sister tucked safely inside her town house in Yorkshire, which might as well be a million miles from where the goats are killed.
On the other hand I live just 45 minutes away - Snowdonia is my second home. It’s where I spend all my leisure time, unwinding and recharging my batteries.
Now when I think about the National Trust and how some their more questionable new members can make decisions on whether animals should live or die, it has sullied the place for me.
The Trust, like so many other conservation groups, are proof that man cannot co-exist with nature and must always interfere.
The RSPB are another case in point! They want the ruddy duck dead, because it threatens another species of duck it is mating into extinction.
In the scheme of things, does it really matter that two species of duck are merging into one? Nature has always been on the move, which is why we should be trying to compliment her, instead of playing God all the time.
Like it or not, we too are drifting towards a time when interference by man could mean we end up like “Smith” androids, devoid of emotion.
Okay, some of us already are a bit that way - but kidding aside, unless we stop interfering, we are all doomed.
