THE WILDFIRES which have continued around Scotland this past week – and in much of England too – are as much a signal of human stupidity as they are of climate change. To blame it solely on climate change is disingenuous – climate change didn't start the fires, daft people did.

That aside, it serves to show yet again that people are increasingly treating the countryside as a playground with which they can abuse at will. If humanity is really serious about a better environment – 'yes we are', we hear the bleatings of those self-righteous eco warriors currently disrupting the traffic of working people in London, Edinburgh and other centres – then it's about time that it began looking after it better itself.

Rather than disrupting the economy, protestors should instead turn their attention to finding out what is really happening in the 'environment' – and not the spoon fed rubbish rammed into them by single issue gurus, with a great big Tomahawk to grind. Then, they should wage war on the idiots who start these fires and who allow dogs to roam unhindered to attack livestock – that would be a better use of their time.

Sir David Attenborough has always been a hero of mine, a totem of meticulous attention to detail, but in his TV programme last week – 'The truth about climate change' – 'experts' twaddled the same old hogwash that livestock are bad for the environment. It has been proven, time and again, that the grass-based systems favoured in the the UK and in Scotland, in particular, are actually very good at carbon capture. To paint the livestock industry with a broad brush that assumes the American feedlot is the norm, with that of Highland, Angus or Beef Shorthorn and their crosses from the hills of Scotland is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

Then along comes Attenborough's heir (as many, apparently believe him to be), the BBC presenter Chris Packham who has engineered a ban on the issue of 'general licences' for the control of some of the vicious corvids that are the scourge of livestock owners, by threatening Natural England with legal action on the issue. Oh how that bastion of solidity caved in! Many of these birds, controlled by this licence, are guilty of colossal collective damage at lambing time.

This man has such a hatred of farming, that it oozes out of him – but this is a step too far and one which might just be the biggest foot-shooting exercise he has ever done. Not only will these birds – the likes of crows (including the hoodie), jackdaws, jays, lesser black-backed gulls, magpies, some pigeons and rooks – be free to wreak havoc on sheep stocks, but they will plunder the nests of other birds.

Then, in a 'big boy did it and ran away' tirade when the smaller birds go into terminal decline, the farming industry will be blamed yet again for that.

It is the industry's fervent hope that Scottish Natural Heritage does not get caught up in the legalities, or the emotions of all this and remains ready to fight for the rights of farmers to protect their livestock and crops.

(PS: there is a change.org petition to campaign for the BBC to sack Chris Packham. It's at https://www.change.org/p/bbc-bbc-to-sack-chris-packham)