CONSEQUENCES.

Every Action has a reaction.

Action and Reaction, Part 1

ACTION

So yesterday 18/09/24 I posted a blog, attempting to sum up the 2024 season to the best of my knowledge, covering all the monitored nests within the UK. Also within the Blog I attempted using information gleaned from public sources to inform on private Nests in Rutland Water, The Lake District and Wales, limiting that to non sensitive information.

I expressed the view that it is a shame that those projects that choose to keep information private were not not more open with general information.

REACTION

A series of Messages from Welsh Osprey/ Darren Moore asking me to remove the information about the Friends of the Osprey Nests, saying I had no right to use Private information and what I had posted was inaccurate, although I asked he was unprepared to offer corrections.. I explained that all the information had been obtained from public sources. Darren also said that I was not helping Ospreys purely helping myself using their work for my own benefit. I explained the underlying Ethos of UKIO and invited Darren to join the group so he could see what we do and could control the sharing of his information. He kindly (his word) rejected the offer.

In the Blog other people contributed to some of the nest information,for which they were credited, their contribution has also reaped a consequence, One of the contributors has been thrown out of the Love of the Poole Harbour Ospreys FaceBook Group, a group which I am told Welsh Osprey posts information in. Why ? you might well ask, the answer is I do not know other than the Admin of that group, has made an erroneous assumption and reacted in a vindictive manner. I am not a member of any Groups within which Friends of the Osprey publish information, I do follow live chat on some of the Camera nests and that is where my information came from.

Darren also said that I criticised them for not sharing information. Can I clear that point up as well, I have huge respect for all the projects and the work they do. I expressed the view that it was a shame they did not share information more openly, that is a view and not criticism.

Finally With regard to Throwing someone out of a FaceBook group for contributing to a blog on UKOI, is in my opinion an unacceptable abuse of power and suggests insecurity and low self-esteem, which prevents whoever took the action from discussing the situation rationally.

UKOI will continue to share information found in the public arena, however, I will ask all contributors to ensure they have permission before sharing from other Social Media Groups. If you make a mistake when posting to UKOI, you will NOT be thrown out.

Jeff

18/09/24

Action and Reaction, Part 2

Members of this group may recall a few months ago a post by Jeff entitled “Every action has a reaction”.

In that post, which was prompted by the reaction of a Welsh osprey project leader to a Season Summary blog Jeff posted, Jeff mentioned that there were other people who had suffered consequences from the blog. One of those people was me, as I was removed and blocked without notice or explanation from the Love for the Poole Harbour Ospreys Facebook group within a couple of days of the blog being published. Why?

Well, the truth of the matter is, I do not know the actual reason I was removed, or whether it has anything at all to do with the blog, because although I have tried to contact the administrator of the group in question, Valerie Webber, privately on Facebook messenger five times to ask her, politely, to explain the reason why she removed and blocked me from this group, and to request that she reinstate me, I have had not had a reply to a single one of these messages, nor even a basic acknowledgement of them, despite Messenger indicating that they were delivered to the recipient.

Is that reasonable behaviour? Personally, I do not think so. If one asks someone a reasonable question in a polite manner, I think it is fair at least to expect a reasonable response.

So when I recently noticed that Valerie was commenting on on a live stream chat, I commented, tagging her and again, very politely, made a very similar request for an explanation as to why I was removed from her group and to have my membership restored. I had hoped that this might prompt her to respond to my private messages.

Instead, within minutes, my messages were deleted and it seems that the chat administrators had been told, I suspect by Valerie, to remove them. I was later informed that apparently the comments had broken the chat rules, but on reviewing the rules (which cover the usual issues with abuse, rudeness, swearing, etc.), I could not see where I had broken any of them.

I will post the chat messages I made in the comments and would appreciate people’s views. If people think that I have broken a chat rule with these comments, then fair enough. If it is clear that I am the one in the wrong, then I am more than happy to offer an apology.

However, if this is not the case, I can only draw the inference that Valerie knows full well that her behaviour is unreasonable and has insisted on the deletion of my comments in the chat because she does not wish others to know about it. That is a shame, but as such, I feel it is my duty to call it out and make it known.

As an aside, may I politely request that if anyone saw the chat messages I refer to, please not to mention the name of the chat stream, as I have a lot of respect for the people who run this live stream chat. I recognise that they do a difficult job and often have to respond to complaints and reports of impropriety very quickly and I do not wish to implicate them in any way in this incident.

However, I would like to make the point that surely we should ALL be working together for the good of the ospreys, and it should not be the case that a small number of people are instead deliberately and unfairly dividing watchers, chat admins, and project volunteers and workers alike, and forcing them to take sides in personal issues which have nothing whatsoever to do with them.

On that subject, and linking back to the reaction to Jeff’s blog, I will have more to say about that in due course.

Caroline Woodley

19/01/25

Action and Reaction, Part 3

Action and Reaction

In a recent post in UKOI, I mentioned “a small number of people are […] deliberately and unfairly dividing watchers, chat admins, and project volunteers and workers alike, and forcing them to take sides in personal issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with them”. I would like to address this issue further.

I first had an inkling of this soon after I started watching the Dyfi Osprey Project livestream during the pandemic, when I became frustrated by the secrecy surrounding some of the Welsh osprey nests, particularly relating to birds hatched at or with a connection to the Dyfi nest. When I started to find out more about what was going on, I was shocked, deeply saddened and angered by what I discovered.

In short, almost all the secrecy in Wales is related, not to reasons like nest protection or landowner requests for privacy that rightly should be respected, but to a very long running personal feud between the manager of Friends of the Ospreys (which runs those nests) and a couple of other people (including a well known Facebook administrator who runs the only groups he posts in) close to him, and the manager (and maybe a few other people, I do not know) at the Dyfi Osprey Project.

I do not know the full story of this dispute. I do know it is very long running and has deep roots, but I do not know who, if anyone, is “in the wrong”, or if there is any justification for the level of personal enmity which clearly exists between them. And to be clear, I have no intention of dragging up old arguments about the “rights” and “wrongs” of these projects’ conservation methods or staff, and I would respectfully ask that anyone responding does not do so either – that is not what this post is about. I am quite happy to respect and acknowledge that both projects, in their own very different ways, have done a huge amount for the conservation and recovery of ospreys in Wales.

However – what truly saddens and angers me about this situation is the fact that people on the FotO “side” of this dispute seem to think it is acceptable to target members of the public who follow the Dyfi nest, deliberately withhold from them information about birds with a Dyfi connection, spoil their enjoyment of watching and following the birds, and use their resulting hurt and frustration as a weapon with which to punish the people at DOP they personally dislike. And that they consider it perfectly OK to co-opt photographers, birdwatchers and other people interested in ospreys into channelling any information, particularly about birds with a Dyfi connection, only through them, and then once they have that information, aggressively control what is released and to whom, limiting it only to members of private Facebook groups which they control (and will ruthlessly block and remove people from) who they believe will keep quiet and not challenge them about their behaviour. 

Whilst I recognise that landowners and projects do not have any obligation to share information, it is worth pointing out that in the past, Friends of the Ospreys was quite an open project that was happy to share a lot of information publicly, including breeding pair and chick ring numbers. However in 2020 a bird from the Dyfi nest started breeding on one of its nests, and it was at this point that the project became extremely secretive and the behaviour I have described above intensified.

Some people, quite understandably, have decided that the best option is to ignore those groups, nests and birds. That’s a perfectly valid and reasonable response, and if this is what works best for those people then fair enough; but why is it fair that those people, or anyone else with an interest in the Dyfi birds, who have no connection with or interest in a personal feud, are the ones who feel they have to block and ignore these nests and deny themselves the enjoyment of following birds they have watched hatch on the live stream, or keep quiet about clearly unfair and unjust behaviour to access the information, and not the small number of people on the “other” side of the dispute who think it’s OK to spoil that enjoyment? 

Irrespective of whether the personal enmity of these people towards DOP and its staff and followers is, or is not, justified – and even if it clearly were – in my opinion, using the withholding of information deliberately to ruin the enjoyment of innocent members of the public whose only “crime” is to follow a certain live stream and birds is unforgivably cruel and never justifiable, and it is high time it was openly called out and challenged. It is quite clear from some of the comments on my post in UKOI that plenty of other people feel the same way and now just want things to move on.

On a more general level, and just as importantly, this is also behaviour which serves no purpose other than to create division and rancour, as it forces nest watchers, members of the public, conservationists, volunteers, staff at other projects and others with a professional or practical interest in ospreys, who need to interact with these people, to take sides or turn a blind eye to what is going on, whatever their views of it. 

How is that actually helping the cause of osprey conservation and recovery in Wales, or indeed anywhere else? Surely the best way forward is collaboration, and fostering an inclusive atmosphere where everyone feels involved and part of a wider effort to help the birds we all love and cherish? I would like to think so, but sadly it seems some people are doing their utmost to destroy that. What a shame this is for us all.

As I have mentioned certain people in this blog, I would invite those people to respond and give their point of view, or if others have a different point of view, or feel I have misunderstood or misrepresented anything or anyone, you are welcome to respond. I recognise that this is a controversial subject so can I please request that all discussion is kept polite, civil and respectful, thank you.

Caroline Woodley

20/01/25

Replying to this Blog.

If you are able please reply in the comments on the UKOsprey Information Group. For Those who are not Members of UKOsprey Information, you can reply to this Blog, all replies/comments will be shared to the post within the Facebook Group.