You would think the folks over at Exeter University’s pheasant ecology and cognition group would be studying, well, pheasants — but, no. They are in fact playing 3D chess on Twitter, and they are studying you and me. In so doing, they shine a light on the division in the British countryside, a divide we must bridge before it becomes a chasm. 

Almost everyone agrees that the global state of nature is perilous. Most, but not all, agree that the state of nature in the UK is even worse than the global average. We are one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth, an assertion that tears the environmentally-aware into two camps which then vie for the attention of the concerned citizen. 

On the one side, we have the countryside camp. Overalls, wax jackets and wellies. Farmers, gamekeepers, landowners, fans of the working landscape. They are likely to argue that things are either not as bad as all that, or that they were as bad as all that but now they are getting better. They will point to areas of exceptional practice as evidence that good farming and gamekeeping can boost biodiversity.

One the other, we have the green camp. Goretex, screen-printed gilets, hiking boots. Environmental NGOs, ecologists, journalists, activists and not a few celebrities. They emphasise the urgency of our predicament, see vested interests in any attempt to suggest things are already improving, and will brook little compromise with the need for radical, immediate action. 

Social media is fertile ground for the green message

The latter is rather more successful in persuading the populace. They have purity of purpose, singularity of voice, simplicity of message and David of Attenborough. The veteran broadcaster is the closest thing this country has to a national voice of conscience, and it is a voice that is sounding the environmental alarm.

The comparative persuasiveness of the two camps was underlined by the Exeter pheasant researchers. They published a pair of tweets highlighting the ecological impacts of releasing pheasant for shooting. One of the tweets highlighted the positive effects, complete with smiley emojis. Another pointed only to the deleterious effects, with sad emojis. Some of us spotted the ad hoc experiment immediately, but others did not and began sharing the one that bolstered their particular bias.

The following day the caper was revealed, and the researchers shared their findings. The negative portrayal of game shooting travelled 3.6x further across cyber space than the positive, measured by number of “impressions”. A clear loss for team countryside.

Social media is fertile ground for the green message, and that is a very good thing. There is a climate crisis. There is a biodiversity crisis. We do need to act now. It is the simplicity of these messages that play so well on Twitter — they can be comprehended and shared in an instant. This puts great power in the hands of the well-followed green advocate, but with great power comes great responsibility. Whilst awareness is good, all the likes and retweets in the world will not repair our planet. Change can perhaps be achieved through forceful regulation and revolutionary land reform, and we may need a dash of that radical spirit along the way. Yet a more fruitful, realistic approach might be to work with the people already on the ground, the countryside camp at whose expense most of the likes and retweets are generated.

The environmental cause sometimes feels so urgent that the niceties of diplomacy can seem a distraction or a luxury, which is perhaps why the tensions between the two camps can feel like they are getting worse. Prominent rewilders have recently been lauding the practice of “beaver bombing”, which counter-intuitively is not the explosive elimination of invasive beavers but rather the unlicensed releasing of the species into areas where they might once have lived. Countryside camp members point out that this is in fact a wildlife crime, which has drawn the extraordinary comparison between illegal reintroductions and civil rights activism, and the uncharitable assertion that those opposed would have been pro-Jim Crow. 

This sort of online dialogue has real world consequences. Drawbridges go up, landowners and farmers take a defensive posture and “rewilding” becomes a toxic brand amongst the people empowered to deliver it. Worse, anointing one variety of wildlife crime in the name of conservation risks the moral authority needed to condemn other wildlife crimes, which less scrupulous individuals might seek to justify with conservation-based arguments of their own. 

Other activists go so far as to use social media not only to promote lawbreaking but to broadcast their own offences. One such advocate posted about an act of trespass during which they released a crow from a trap and damned the land they were walking on as infested with non-native pheasants released for shooting. The initial tweet was seen by 99,000 people, whereas only ⅙ of that number saw the reply from the estate’s gamekeeper. The gamekeeper spotted the accusation and responded that the land in question was in fact a leading conservation site, replete with abundant rare corn bunting, grey partridge and lapwing and no pheasant releases in the previous three years. 

We risk inflicting cruelty as a sticking-plaster on our own failure

The thing is, I suspect many would agree that the wandering activist did the right thing. The trap they disarmed is a very unpleasant piece of equipment. There is a serious conversation to be had about what lengths we should go to in order to protect the species we have left. Many in the green camp, as per our activist, argue crow traps, like fox snares, are simply too cruel to use no matter the justification. Yet the countryside camp would say this is a dereliction of the greens’ commitment to conservation, and without these devices many of our ground nesting birds would be gobbled up by over-populated predators. Ah, yes, the greens reply, but why are these predators over-populated in the first place? Because of land use driven by, you guessed it, the countryside camp. Round and round we go. 

This is a complicated, difficult issue. The answer probably lies in a regretful, well-regulated use of these traps, purely in the interests of preserving endangered species, whilst we work on long term shifts in land use to make such measures redundant in the fullness of time. If we neglect the latter, we risk inflicting cruelty as a sticking-plaster on our own failure to steward the land. If we neglect the former, there may be no rare birds left to populate the land once we have reformed and repaired it. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the countrysiders are wrong; maybe the greens are. Without serious de-escalation, though, we can’t even start the conversation.

The tension has even bled into green-on-green discourse. Chris Packham is a dazzling advocate for conservation, similar to Attenborough in his ability to reach the neutrals and convert them to the environmental cause. He is also the bete noir of elements within the countryside camp, yet it was not countrysiders whose ire he provoked with a recent broadside against hen harrier brood management. It was noted environmentalist and Chair of Natural England Tony Juniper. 

The brood management scheme is an attempt to unblock conservation conflict in the uplands. Grouse moors are a favoured habitat for rare hen harriers, but once there they can make a dent in the grouse populations. This has led to illegal killings, which are preventing the species’ recovery. Brood management allows for eggs from these birds of prey to be taken from the grouse moors, reared in captivity and released elsewhere. Those who think the killings should stop before these measures are taken refer to it as “brood meddling”, and Packham recently tweeted that the whole initiative was a sop to organised wildlife criminals. 

Juniper was not named in the tweet, yet he felt moved to respond. His message nailed the problem with this entire social media tarpit: “It is easy to polarise this space, making progress more difficult.” 

I don’t feel I belong in either camp, but I sympathise with the greens. They are right to feel the sting of urgency, and they are right to call out bad practice. It is difficult to make common cause with communities that shelter individuals who are doing undoubted environmental harm. I also see the need for bridge building, however. The hour is too late for purism and perfection; we need to de-escalate the tensions, tone down the rhetoric and get on with the messy task of conservation in the countryside we have now, whilst we work towards the countryside we need. This will require enormous change of the countryside camp, and change is scary enough without feeling under siege.