Hypocrite: Prince William issues 'urgent call' to 'make peace with nature'

Royals one of the UK's most wealthy and well-known shooting families

The Royals are one of the UK's most wealthy and well-known shooting families. And so new calls from Prince William to "make peace with nature" stink of hypocrisy.

The mainstream media has reported William's plea - made in a video message played at the General Assembly of the United Nations - without any hint of irony. The prince said:

"If we are to keep this planet liveable for our children and grandchildren, we must act urgently...

We can and must change our relationship with the natural world."

The prince had the gall to call for economic changes,

"realigning financial flows from destruction to regeneration".

He went on to urge world leaders to take steps

"to halt the unsustainable production and consumption of natural resources".

This is coming from a man with the title of not only Prince of Wales, but also Duke of Cornwall, a title he took when Charles became King Charles III and which transformed him into a billionaire. The entire family has a net worth £21.3 billion.

Duchy of Cornwall

William owns the lucrative Duchy of Cornwall, a 135,000 acre estate which is worth more than £1 billion, but isn't a company so pays no corporation tax. The estate includes the Isles of Scilly, Highgrove House in Gloucester, Oval cricket ground in London, one third of Dartmoor national park, forests, rivers, quarries, coastline and more. The estate apparently exists to give an income to the prince and rakes in millions for William through its investment portfolio, as well as through commercial and residential rents and property developments. The Duchy's annual report shows that the estate generated a surplus income of £23.6 million, which came from rents and investments, between March 2023 and March 2024. On top of all this, William received millions of pounds of inheritance when both his mother and great-grandmother died.

Will ultra-capitalist William realign his own "financial flows" as he calls for others to do the same? Will he commit to giving away much of the £23.6 million that the estate says is used to meet their costs as royals? Or is it all just a PR strategy, crafting an environmentally-conscious image, already tried and tested by his father?

Housing developments

The prince can be called out for his hypocrisy as his estate builds new housing developments across the country. The Duchy of Cornwall states in its annual report that

"significant new housing is being delivered at our main developments of Poundbury and Nansledan [established by Charles when he was prince]... We have a planning application running for a development at Faversham in Kent, which has been the subject of much consultation locally over the last six years and which, if consented, will provide much-needed innovative sustainable housing and employment."

Nansledan, an extension of Newquay in Cornwall, is a project lasting decades. It is expected that when complete, more than 4,000 homes will be built, along with shops, cafes, restaurants and schools. Poundbury, meanwhile, is an extension of the Dorset town Dorchester, and currently houses 5,000 people and 250 businesses, and is due to be completed in 2026.

The Duchy likes to harp on about sustainability and affordable housing as part of its PR ploy, but has been accused of acting like any other developer. According to Rightmove, properties in Poundbury had an average price of £397,093 over the last year, with detached houses selling for £563,951. Profits from the land developments, will, of course, go towards the very essential funding of "the public, charitable and private activities of the Duke of Cornwall and his family."

The Duchy's Faversham housing development in Kent is set to build 2,500 new homes, increasing the population of the town by more than a quarter, and has met resistance from locals. Despite claims from the estate that the development will be sustainable, residents are outraged that 320 acres of grade 1 farmland will be concreted over. Grade 1 means that the land is of the highest quality, produces excellent yields, and should - in theory - be more protected from development. On top of this, residents of the Faversham project will need to rely on their cars, contributing to more air pollution and traffic.

In 2022, campaigners argued that the new development would wreak havoc on wildlife, with one Faversham resident pointing out:

"The farmland is so rich in biodiversity and this scheme will destroy habitats. So many protected species will be lost - there are bats, lizards, butterflies and wild orchids. It's so sad."

The Duchy states that it will establish new habitats within the housing estate, and that it will

"facilitate the seamless transition of existing wildlife to these new habitats, in accordance with their seasonal patterns."

It doesn't say how it will achieve such a seamless transition, likely because that would be absolutely impossible, and is yet another false narrative in the world of PR spin. With any housing development there is a danger to wildlife, which can be harmed and killed during construction, by traffic due to increased roads, and by pollution created. Wildlife will be disturbed by light, traffic and noise, both during the building of the project and once it is finished - and is likely to need to seek new habitats, travel further to find food, and compete with others for resources.

Rifle-wielding William and Kate

Of course, the most obvious reason to call out Prince William's UN speech is because he is from a family of shooters. Let's not forget that as he appeals to us to change our relationship with the natural world, the Royal Family fulfils its bloodlust by targeting mammals and birds at home and abroad. The Windsors are infamous for their “traditional” Boxing Day shooting spree at Sandringham - an estate owned personally by King Charles and site of numerous incidents of wildlife crime, including the murder of birds of prey.

As for William, Charles introduced the prince and his brother Harry to shooting at a very young age, with the boys being dubbed the "Killer Wales" by their mother Diana. In turn, William and Kate introduced their son George to grouse shooting when he was just seven.

Kate has been dubbed “a keen markswoman” according to the Daily Mail, and has been photographed on a number of different shoots over the years. She has also been captured on camera collecting dead pheasants and deer stalking.

William, Kate and their children were reported to have visited Balmoral to participate in the Inglorious Twelfth in August: that time of year when the industry celebrates the start of the grouse slaughtering season. The Daily Beast reported that a friend of the royals said:

"It is an important ritual for Kate and William to take their children there for the Glorious Twelfth and that is the goal this year.”

William has, ironically, been the patron of the British Trust for Ornithology since 2020. Protect the Wild previously wrote of this appointment:

"It is beyond belief that, though this patronage, the prince purports to care for birds, yet guns down grouse (as well as other birds). William would likely make the claim that grouse shooting helps with conservation on the moors, that he is helping to keep a balance in the ecosystem. But there is nothing noble about an industry that meddles with said ecosystem by keeping a native population of birds artificially high, just so that they can be murdered for profit and kicks."

Dartmoor

In 2021, the grassroots group Wild Card launched a campaign, calling on William to rewild his Dartmoor land. As the largest private land owner of Dartmoor National Park, the prince has a great opportunity to regenerate the peatland he has inherited. Wild Card's petition, calling on him to restore Britain's temperate rainforests - of which only tiny fragments remain - attracted 75,000 signatures.

The group said:

"After intense pressure from campaigns like The Lost Rainforests of Britain and from our own petition, the Duchy of Cornwall (an ancient estate owned by Prince William) made the headline grabbing commitment to double in size one of Britain’s most famous rainforest fragments, Wistman’s Wood.

Sounds great right? If only. Wistman's Wood is only 3 hectares in size. This amounts to a seriously underwhelming 0.01% of the total land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall on Dartmoor. Whilst we desperately want to celebrate this positive gesture we have to call this out for what it is: small potatoes."

In early 2024, the Duchy stated:

“Having commenced the expansion of Wistman’s Wood last year, we are now working closely with Natural England on a plan to further enhance Black-a-Tor Copse."

One of Wild Card's main objectives is:

"To persuade the UK's largest landowners to rewild 50% their lands by 2050."

But the Duchy of Cornwall estate currently has a tree coverage of just 6%, which is less than half the national average. The prince has a long way to go to meet campaigners' demands. Expanding small slithers of woodland is a start - but it isn't nearly enough.

Meanwhile, in its annual report, the estate writes in its 'nature-related risk' section:

"On Dartmoor, peatland restoration activities carried out by the South West Peatland Partnership are restoring bog habitats..."

The Duchy has said that it will restore 800 hectares of peatland. According to the estate, "most of the 27,300 hectares [of Dartmoor] have been owned by the Duchy since its creation in 1337". 800 hectares is, therefore, just 2.93% of its Dartmoor land, and, many might argue, a token gesture to keep campaigners happy. Thousands of acres of the estate's Dartmoor land are used to graze cows, sheep and ponies. According to The Guardian, over-grazing on the moor, particularly by sheep,

"is destroying habitats and putting rare birds at risk of local extinction. Breeding populations of moorland birds such as golden plover, red grouse and ring ouzels have gone or are on the verge of being lost."

Wild Card hit the nail on the head when it stated in 2023:

"what [the Duchy] are doing does not match the scale and pace of the climate and nature emergency that we are in.”

One year later, it seems little has changed.

William could do so much for biodiversity and for the environment but has so far failed to do so. The sentiment in his speech is laudable, but he has some audacity in expecting world leaders (as well as the public) to take his call for action seriously. A great deal will have to change for his words and small-scale actions not to be seen as cynical or simply PR spin.

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