River CC Kingsteps debate 1 - Alexander Brodie intro and debate with a wildfowler.

Over the next few days we hope to bring you reports of what was said at Tuesday night’s River CC meeting when Alexander Brodie took to the floor and introduced himself and took questions on all aspects of the situation at Kingsteps and his intentions. Please bear in mind that we will not be publishing everything due to time constraints, so thus some points raised may not be there for those not at the meeting to consider. The Inverness Courier and the Nairnshire were there too however and since the Courier has show quite an interest in this issue this observer would anticipate coverage from them on Friday and full coverage by the Leopold Street Thunderer available in the Co-Op on Monday night as usual.

Alexander Brodie began:

“I do apologise for the way things have happened. I have been in constant contact throughout the whole proceedings with council members, I’ve been in Inverness speaking and explaining the problem and addressing the issue as much as I could. I’ve seen about ten people. I’ve made countless telephone calls, e-mails. I’ve explained the situation. Everyone I’ve spoken to said yes we understand the situation.
I came to Nairn and in Nairn  I got telephone calls from them. I went to see them, I went to see them, I explained the situation. I thought everything was understood so when the press article happened I was very surprised. I rang up the press and explained the situation and said I didn’t want anything else in the press, that there was another side and I didn’t want any article and I told them not to print anything I’d said. There was another press article and that’s why I wrote a letter because I realised the situation was getting a little out of hand. As far as I was concerned I was trying to make a little place private to reduce the number of people, I realised it was getting out of hand. So I wrote the letter to the press and called this meeting to address and issue, any problems you might have to explain the situation. “

A wildfowler then questioned Alexander: “As I understand it you have expressed the opinion that you do not want to have wildfowling on your land?”

“That is exact.”

“Do you not realise that you do not have the right to stop wildfowling within the range that is known as the marsh. The low water to high water medium? That right has been with  public of Scotland for hundreds of years. What right do you have to deny people that.”

“The way we tried to deny it was that it was set up by my grandfather to try set up a wildfowling reserve in order to stop it.”

“Your grandfather was our president. I’m one of the committee members
of the Forres and Nairn wildfowlers and he was our president.”

“Then you are aware that the region is actually a wildlife reserve.”“The RSPB has no right and I know this because I know Stephanie Elliot and I deal with her on the Findhorn Bay open nature reserve all the time and she is fully aware that the RSPB have no right to abrogate any right of wildfowling within the RSPB reserve.”“Exactly, I have been in touch with the RSPB to find out what is going on. They are aware that people are wildfowling, much to my surprise. The reason I thought it couldn’t be done is because I own all the land around the region . So it is actually very different for wildfowlers to get there. I thought the whole thing was preventing it from anyone actually would have to trespass across my land to actually shoot the birds.”“Can I deal with that point, trespass?”“No wait a second, that will actually come up. I will admit that you now have a right since 2003, which I was unaware, they changed the law, so that you have the right if you walk across the land as a rambler, you gun is enclosed in a case and that your gun is not loaded and you get to the low water mark. You can actually go through anyone’s property in that situation until you arrive at the low water mark. I am very much against wildfowling but I will respect the situation as it stands.”