Letter from Michael Hudson
Formerly Regional Officer successively of North East and South West Regions.
Within days of my joining The Nature Conservancy on 1st January 1961, as Warden-
Naturalist at High Halstow on the North Kent Marshes I encountered two wildfowlers
on the sea wall near St Mary’s Bay. One of them had shot a Curlew, which had
fallen injured to the ground inside the sea wall. Just at this moment a walker
appeared on the scene and proceeded to upbraid the wildfowlers for what seemed to
him to be an unsporting and illegal action. I was challenged as to what I was going to
do about it. As a new recruit to The Nature Conservancy I was by no means confident
concerning the rights and wrongs of the situation and I was not at all sure that there
was anything that I could or should do.
The unfortunate bird had suffered a broken wing and lay flapping helplessly and it
was clear that it should be put out of its misery. The wildfowler fired a second shot
and went to retrieve the bird.
I discovered that the walker was John Hillaby who was clearly no supporter of
wildfowling and he later wrote a half page article for “The Guardian” including his
account of this meeting. He described me as the “local and ineffective representative
of the Nature Conservancy”.
The article aroused considerable interest in Belgrave Square and I was summoned to
the Director General’s Office to give my version of what had occurred.
In 1961 wildlife conservation issues received scant coverage in the media so the
Guardian article caused infinitely greater concern than it would do today.
In reporting the involvement of John Hillaby I unwisely described him as ranting and
raving like a Socialist agitator. While this occasioned no adverse comment from
Max Nicholson himself my Regional Officer, Peter Gay. advised me to refrain from
making party political allusions in future
What had taken place on the seawall was not illegal as wildfowlers were and are
entitled to shoot over the intertidal zone bordering the Thames. Moreover the land on
which the Curlew fell was not part of any protected area over which I had any
jurisdiction and it was quite legitimate for the shooter to retrieve his bird.
As far as I recall my inability to take decisive action occasioned no sort of reprimand.
However the experience was salutary in demonstrating that despite a fearsome
reputation for impatience when things went wrong Max Nicholson was not unfair in
his dealing with the cause of unfavourable publicity.
