THE BRITISH people lined the towpath and cheered for the whale, and wept for the whale when it died. Now let us celebrate that British taxes could pay for the extinction of the northwestern grey whale. The consolation is that this will help out poor old Shell, a company that on Thursday announced annual profits of £13.12 billion.

It is possible that the idea of spending your own money on helping Shell and at the same time wiping out a species of whale seems a poor idea. I shall explain. Shell is looking for retrospective environmental and social approval for their already notorious Sakhalin II project.

This is a gas and oil extraction project that involves three offshore platforms, pipelines, an onshore processing plant, a liquid natural gas facility and an oil and gas terminal: in short, a pipeline the length of England with a huge chunk of industry at either end.

This all happens in the summer feeding areas of the critically endangered northwest grey whale, now down to 100 animals. It is reckoned that if normal mortality rates are accelerated to the extent of losing one additional female a year for the next three years, the species will not recover. A bit delicate, then. Experts consulted by Shell have explained that the project is likely to wipe the whales out. Shell, it seems, has chosen to go ahead anyway.

And so they are seeking loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and also from the UK’s Export Credit Guarantee Department: ie, your taxes and mine. WWF are fighting a corner for the whales, and for taxpayers.

If we care about a lost whale in the Thames, then by simple logic we also care about an entire species of whales off the eastern edge of Russia. Or is our money better spent making sure Shell shareholders don’t become extinct?

• I WAS standing on one of the highest eminences in Norfolk, a good metre or so above sea level, and looking out over a place about as remote as you can get in lowland England. And I stood there for a couple of hours watching it get dark, and taking in a quiet. unmistakable series of miracles.

  The place was Hickling Broad, a wild and rambling place run by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust. And I was there to look for birds of prey. For some reason, mostly to do with the remoteness of the place, it has become, if you like, an inner-city area for birds of prey. In winter they come to this wild and wacky spot for the night, spreading out each morning to hunt and forage over the Broads.

  So if you stand there of an evening, you get to see them coming back for the night. And you will see birds of prey in astonishing numbers.

  Up to 70 marsh harriers have been seen at once this year: not bad for a bird that was reduced to a single breeding pair in this country. (Note for whale watchers: conservation works. All it needs is public and political will.) As the evening marched on and the afternoon melted away, I had the rare sight of 25 harriers all in the air at once: big birds with long, wide, square-edged wings, held above their backs in a shallow vee. Most were marsh harriers, though a single hen harrier was claimed by another observer on the eminence.

  And among them, a kestrel, a merlin — a tiny, super-dashing falcon — and a peregrine, while in the foreground the rough grass and sedge was crisscrossed by three barn owls, clearly in sight for a couple of hours, sometimes all in the same binocular-view. This is a special place, beautifully maintained, and a pilgrimage spot where, if the harriers outnumbered the birdwatchers, I was able to take that in stride. Conservation, as I said, works.

• AND THE following day, I had a garden tick. That is to say, a bird seen for the first time from my own place: a buzzard, flying over, burly and purposeful, a common bird in the West of England, still an unusual sight in Suffolk. That made it seven species of birds of prey within 24 hours: not bad going, even if I shouldn’t have counted the hen harrier.

  Birds of prey in this country were hammered by pesticides in the 1950s and 60s, and were facing disaster. Good, timely reforms and solid conservation work have brought them back to decent numbers. If we don’t let people like Shell get away with things, we can get our wildlife fighting back.

  Should our taxes be spent on conservation? Or should we just give them to Shell?

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