Analysis of a page from the "Roots of Blood" website, as it was on 4 Nov 2002.


The page from "Roots of Blood" which I have analysed below is largely derived from material gathered by the defender (creator of "Roots of Blood" and other websites and publications) during the court case which the Woodland Trust won in August 2002
"For interdict against the defender or anyone on his behalf from publishing (including, without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, publishing (i) by means of advertisement in any medium, (ii) by means of letter or other correspondence, or (iii) by means of posting text or other material on any website or database on the Internet) (A) any statement or statements that, or tending to suggest, whether by use of expressions such as 'massacre' and 'butcher' or otherwise, that the pursuers either (a) undertake indiscriminate slaughter or massacre of deer or other wildlife; or (b) are guilty of deliberate or indiscriminate cruelty to deer or other wildlife; and (B) any statement or statements that, or tending suggest that, the pursuers intentionally and dishonestly mislead members of the public with regard to the uses to which donations received by them will be put; and for interdict ad interim."

Material from "Roots of Blood" appears as originally presented, on a dark green background, my comments in blue, technical notes in green.

Admissions by the Woodland Trust

First point to note is the use of the word "admissions". In this context it clearly doesn't mean "people admitted to Woodland Trust properties", but must be understood as the slightly milder synonym for "confessions", implying guilt. A neutral word such as "statements", or even the more precise phrase "statements in court" could have been used without any particular implication.

The Scottish Operations Director of the Woodland Trust has admitted the following:

"Admitted" for "stated"- see above.

The Trust kills deer if it considers they are a threat to saplings or ground flora such as oxslip, bluebells in circumstances it considers to be of good woodland management.

The statement as quoted in the official judgement summary of the court case is actually:
"With no natural predators, however, deer populations can and do fall out of balance with the habitat on which they depend. Deer browsing prevents the growth of young trees, results in the loss of woodland species such as bluebell and oxlip, and damages neighbouring farm crops. Eventually when more deer exist than can be supported by their available habitat, poor health and suffering ensue. When that happens, some sort of action is necessary."

As it happens, that passage itself needs to be subjected to critical analysis. Read without thought, it seems to imply that "action is necessary" only when "poor health and suffering ensue", whereas on closer inspection the final sentence is clearly intended to relate to all the previous statements in the paragraph.

With the restoration of the material not quoted in "Roots of Blood", the WT statement in court was clearly aiming to indicate the wide variety of damaging effects which result from deer overgrazing, including the threats to saplings and ground flora among others. And there's more; the next paragraph of WT statement in court describes the actions the WT would consider in the above circumstances:
"Where there is evidence of damage by deer to our woods and the wider woodland habitat, the trust seeks to minimise that damage by changing the way we look after our woods. For example we postpone coppicing, a traditional practice which creates new tender tree shoots which deer love to eat. We may attempt to exclude deer from vulnerable areas by fencing or by preventing damage to individual trees through the use of tree guards. If these measures are not effective or not practicable or have a negative impact on other wildlife then we will undertake culling in the most humane way. Different circumstances around the UK mean we undertake a mixture of these actions dependant on factors at each site."

In other words, the WT indicates that it uses culling as a last resort, preferring non-lethal control measures. Did you get that impression from the "admission" in "Roots of Blood"?

Some readers may not be familiar with the term "culling". In the context of control of animal populations, it means "killing some but not all of the population in a given area".

The Trust considers that protective fences for trees and flora might prove to be barriers to other species such as badgers or rabbits which it wishes to encourage in its woodlands.

The statement given in the court document is actually:
"Consideration was also given to whether deer might be excluded, but fencing might not always be practicable. And if fencing were practicable it might exclude deer in their entirety, whereas the pursuers wished to have deer within their woodlands provided the population were not so big as to endanger the survival of other species or seriously affect biodiversity. The witness also pointed out that fences might prove to be barriers to other species such as badgers or rabbits, which they also wished to encourage in the woodlands."
Again, as with the reference to wild flowers above, "Roots of Blood" has missed out the main text of the WT statement in court, to make one detail appear more significant than it really is (even a direct quotation of the relevant sentence, including the word "also", would have been less deceptive than the wording that actually appeared in "Roots of Blood").

The Trust does not include any references to the killing of deer in its "Woodland Management Principles" document or "Glossary of Woodland Terms" because it doesn't consider it necessary.

(Not from the court document, though probably referred to during the proceedings) The omission from the "Woodland Management Principles" document is understandable precisely because the document is about principles, not details of practice. It can be argued, however, that at least the word "culling" should be defined in the "Glossary of Woodland Terms".

The Trust uses a number of contractors to kill deer including the sports hunting agency Game International.

(Not from the court document, though referring indirectly to the witness Calvert McKibben) A very ingenious sentence, written in apparently neutral terms but, because of that word "admissions" at the top of the page, made to seem sinister. The first point to note is the reason why the Trust uses contractors- because it wants the deer to be killed instantly, not suffer a lingering death- which means hiring expert marksmen. This leads us to the implication in the second half of the sentence: Game International is indeed a "sports hunting agency", but what the Woodland Trust is doing is hiring Game International's staff to use their personal skill and experience- there is no question of them bringing sport hunters to shoot at deer on WT properties.

When the deer are killed they are bled and disembowelled with the blood of the animal soaking into the ground of the woodland.

(Not from the court document, though referred to therein by the defender) This sentence seems to have been included largely to justify the use of the title "Roots of Blood", but one could equally say that the roots would get bloody when a stoat or a pine marten had a snack. Anyway- the process described is called "gralloching". It's done because the deer are usually taken away for human consumption as venison, and removing the guts as soon as possible reduces the risk of food poisoning.
I haven't yet been invited on a deer stalk, but in the meantime, here's a rabbit, partly gutted by carrion-eaters; you can see pictures of "gralloching" in progress elsewhere.


That's the last "admission"; the rest of the page is all Roots of Blood opinion:

The Woodland Trust presents itself as a warm and caring organisation by promoting events such as tree planting days with a strong emphasis on family education that appeals to middle-class urban and suburban families.

This seems in part to be an attempt to gain sympathy from those who don't consider themselves "middle class". Also, as it happens, I would dispute the claim of a "strong emphasis on family education"- having attended several tree planting events, I can state that they had little or nothing to do with education, but a lot to do with community spirit (and cutting straight through class divides). In general, specifically educational events in WT woods, such as guided walks, have often been organised by others.

Nothing illustrates this more than the latest edition of the Trust's Broadleaf Magazine where it uses photographs of little children planting trees.

Technical website authoring note- this should be reworded to indicate a specific issue of the magazine, otherwise it might become out-of-date when a new issue appears which happens not to include any such photographs.

This and other literature sends out the message that everything is beautiful in its woodlands. This attracts members and donations from the public.

No argument with that, except to point out that pretty much every individual and organisation does the same. When we fill in job application forms we don't mention our occasional tendency to turn up ten minutes late after lunch in the pub. When supermarkets promote their meat counters they don't show pictures of the slaughtering process. Manufacturers of £60 trainers may or may not be paying a wage which you or I would consider acceptable. etc.

What would be the reaction of many children and their families if they were shown a deer with its guts blown out by a regulation soft nosed bullet, and being bled and dis-embowelled with a knife in the Trust's woodlands? They would be horrified!

Yes they probably would, but a hundred years ago they might well not have been. We are increasingly sheltered from the realities of life and death, which makes things more and more difficult for those who have to deal with those realities. Perhaps when parents read Beatrix Potter books to little children, they should explain the truth behind some of her hints- that the natural world is not entirely nice.
  Another point to note about this sentence is that they would be most unlikely to see a deer "with its guts blown out" because
(a) the aim is to kill as instantaneously as possible, which a shot in the "guts" would be most unlikely to achieve (and that's why a soft-nosed bullet is used, to inflict a massive, instantly-fatal wound) and
(b) a gut injury would also probably spread faeces around the carcass, making it rather dodgy to eat

That is the image the Woodland Trust wants to hide and why it objects to this website.

There could just be enough material for a new court case in that one sentence. To quote the court document again:
"The pursuers do not challenge the defender's freedom to question, in appropriate terms, the policy of managing the deer population in the interests of that population and the interest of other fauna and flora but they object to the false description of their policy and activities pursued in accordance with that policy."
Bear in mind that the Trust won its court case against the old version of "Roots of Blood" and related websites etc. on the above basis.

If the public are being asked to support the Trust financially they are entitled to know the full facts of what happens to deer in the Trust's woodlands.

Yes they are- but the "full facts" would have to include all the background of research and experience in conservation management worldwide. The WT is not hiding the fact that it kills deer (and other animals) but what members of the public should really be trying to find out is "what other organisations are achieving sustainable conservation land management on a reasonably large scale without killing any animals, and what is the Woodland Trust's response to their success?"

Angus Macmillan, the creator of "Roots of Blood" has read the above, and describes it using terms such as "ramblings" and "pedantic tedium". He is entitled to his opinion (although I have suggested elsewhere that when confronted by attempts to present unbiased truth he seems rather at a loss, and has to resort to cheap jibes) and I await his own detailed analysis of the court case.