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Interview with Sir Ian Botham

The former first class cricketer is a passionate game shot and fisherman. Here he shares what he enjoys most about shooting and fishing, what changes he'd make at the RSPB and why the You Forgot the Birds campaign still has much work to do

Sir Ian Botham

Sir Ian Botham's ideas should be encouraged

Dunlin

If you ran the RSPB what changes would you make to the organisation?

We haven’t got long enough for that! I’d like to see some young blood within the organisation and maybe it would be a good idea to bring in someone from the outside with a different outlook rather than continuing to recruit from the inside.

I think they also need to be more honest. We had the story not long ago about a peregrine falcon being shot in Scotland and later being spotted alive. The RSPB made headlines and milked it when the bird disappeared but when it reappeared they swept it under the carpet. It shouldn’t work that way.