King Charles' new 'Finding Harmony' documentary is deeply hypocritical.

Protect the Wild explains why...

‘Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision’ is a glossy vanity project aimed at establishing King Charles’ legacy as a supposed defender of the natural world. Charles’ puff-piece, which didn’t even make it onto the BBC, has been consigned to fester on billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Prime platform next to the dismal ‘documentary’ Melania, about Melania Trump. But much of the UK’s mainstream media has, of course, fallen for it - playing into the King’s PR spin.

As Protect the Wild has pointed out time and time again, Charles’ image as some sort of guru promoting connection with the natural world and championing the fight against climate change just doesn’t ring true. Charles is an avid hunter, shooter and bloodsports advocate - an inconvenient truth that sits awkwardly alongside Charles’ presentation of himself as an eco-defender

‘Finding Harmony’ claims that Charles was “one of the first public figures to sound the alarm” about climate change and biodiversity loss. A bold assertion when you consider that the likes of Rachel Carson and Murray Bookchin were producing pioneering works a decade or more before Charles’s first speech on the environment in 1970. Whatever the timing, why has Charles never understood that his love of hunting and shooting does not sit well alongside his “championing” of the natural world? The phrase ‘cognitive bias’ could almost have been invented to describe our illogical monarch.

The film tries to portray Charles as a benevolent, paternal figure. The story is of a radical, campaigning monarch who, as celebrity chef Jamie Oliver once claimed, was “a bit of a hippy”.

The truth is that Charles is far from what the King’s Foundation paid celebrity narrator Kate Winslet to make him out to be. In fact, according to Protect the Wild’s Rob Pownall:

“The idea that Charles is a champion of biodiversity simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. You don’t get to claim environmental leadership while presiding over estates linked to intensive land management, shooting, and the routine persecution of wildlife.”

“What is the opposite of harmony?” Asks Winslett at the start of the movie. “We could argue it’s a disconnection… like being cut off from each other and from nature.” That’s probably true, but we’d argue that one of the surest ways to disconnect from nature is to fire a rifle at it.

A lifelong advocate for the cruelty of fox hunting

In the late 1990s Charles repeatedly made news headlines for taking his young sons William and Harry out fox hunting with the Beaufort Hunt in the middle of a national debate about criminalising hunting. Princess Anne was also a Beaufort regular.

In fact, Charles’ family practices a ritual called ‘bloodletting’. The practice, purportedly centuries old, involves smearing the blood of a hunted animal, usually a deer or a fox, across the young hunter’s face. William and Harry have both described going through this grim rite as teenagers.

A hunting family.

In 2002, Charles fuelled controversy when he was overheard saying: “If the Labour government ever gets around to banning foxhunting, I might as well leave this country and spend the rest of my life skiing.” At Protect the Wild we wish he had: British wildlife would have been a lot safer.

Meddling in government affairs from behind closed doors

Charles tried, although not too hard, to stay out of the furore and violent protests whipped up by the pro-hunt Countryside Alliance against the 2004 Hunting Act. Camilla Parker Bowles, Charles's then-partner and now wife, nailed her colours to the mast more publicly - attending the 2002 Alliance march. Camilla was still an active and “passionate” member of the Beaufort Hunt at the time.

In the run-up to the passing of the 2004 Act, Charles fed into pro-hunt rhetoric that the Labour government was victimising rural communities and that people who lived in rural areas overwhelmingly support hunting. This is a demonstrably false straw man argument that was as untrue now as it was then. That didn’t stop Charles from writing a distasteful letter to the then- Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, arguing that the government was “destroying the countryside” and that British farmers were being victimised more than “blacks or Gays”.

He went on to extol the virtues of fox hunting, waxing lyrical about “man’s ancient and, indeed, romantic relationship with dogs and horses.”

Is a bullet to the head ‘romantic’?

Charles’ pro-hunt lobbying didn’t stop after the Hunting Act was passed. Ten years later, he made representations to Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to legalise the bloodsport.

In 2021, an undercover investigation by Protect the Wild and the Hunt Investigation Team exposed the Beaufort’s shameful practice of shooting their hunting dogs when they were no longer needed by the hunt. Is that the ‘romance’ that Charles was talking about?

The controversy over the shocking footage apparently didn’t dampen Charles’ and Camilla’s love for the Beaufort. The Royal Family were out in force at the very public funeral in 2024 of ex-Beaufort huntsman and member of the Master of Foxhounds Association Ian Farquhar.

Royal immunity from prosecution highlights Charles’ hypocrisy

In Britain, the monarch is immune from prosecution in their public capacity. However, UK legislation is often drafted to specifically exempt the King in his private capacity too. The British Royal family directly own roughly 1.4% of the UK. Charles owns 615,000 acres of land via the Crown Estate and 44,748 acres via the Duchy of Lancaster. On top of this, family is estimated to have indirect/symbolic control of one-sixth of the world’s surface.

A 19th-century sketch of Balmoral by Queen Victoria. Victoria and her husband Albert were largely responsible for introducing Grouse shooting to Britain’s upper classes when they bought the Balmoral estate in Scotland in 1852

In order for the British authorities to prosecute crimes that take place on crown property, they need permission from the monarch himself. This has, for example, impeded the investigation of unlawful fishing at the Balmoral royal estate in 2013.

As Protect the Wild reported in July 2022, it has also shielded shooters who commit wildlife crimes on land owned by the Crown. To give a famous example, two legally protected Hen Harriers were shot from the sky from inside the royal estate at Sandringham in 2007.

Charles’s son Harry was shooting ducks at Sandringham that day with a friend, William Van Cutsem. Both were questioned after witnesses saw the birds shot while the pair were out shooting, but no charges were brought due to ‘lack of evidence’. No one (allegedly) saw anything, and no one knew what happened.

As we wrote at the time:

“We admit we don’t have first-hand experience of what happens when a firearm is discharged in the vicinity of a royal by a person unknown - but we’ve watched enough news reports to know that it isn’t typically met with a shrug. What tends to happen is that alarms go off, orders are barked, urgent phone calls are made, an enormous police presence turns up out of nowhere, and the VIP is bundled off to a safe room until the perp has been tracked down and taken into custody.

But not at Sandringham. A gun goes off - twice - near a 23-year-old Prince and the son of an English banker, businessman, landowner and horse breeder who is one of Prince Charles’s best friends, and nothing happens. Nothing. What are the odds?”

In fact, there is unlikely to be a serious investigation of any environmental or wildlife crimes that take place on royal estates. The royal family have made consistent efforts to make sure of that. In 2022, for instance, lawyers for Queen Elizabeth lobbied for the royals’ private interests in Scotland to be exempt from Green Energy legislation. There’s nothing to suggest that Charles, our supposed royal eco-guru, did anything to challenge his mother’s efforts on behalf of the family property.

Above the law

In 2022, controversy erupted over the drafting of the new Scottish Hunting Act. The Act was intended to close loopholes in previous legislation in much the same way as Labour’s current proposal for a ban on trail hunting promises to tighten the law in England and Wales. However, the draft included an exemption for hunts operating on land connected with King Charles. According to the Scottish Green party the loophole allowed:

“hunts on land linked to King Charles exempted from investigation by police, with the bill in its current form giving land managers a veto over evidence gathering on Crown Estate land.”

Lo and behold, despite the public anger over the planned royal exemption, when the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Act was passed in 2023 it stipulated that “Nothing in this Act makes the Crown criminally liable” and that the police would have to request permission from the Crown Estate in order to access Crown land for the purpose of investigating crime.

Dr Craig Prescott, who is a lecturer in constitutional law at Bangor University, has pointed out the hypocrisy of Charles positioning himself as a defender of the environment while exempting himself from legal accountability. Prescott told The Guardian:

“If you’re campaigning about the environment or conservation, and it turns out that certain laws relating to the environment or conservation – animal welfare at the very least – don’t apply to your private residences, then that doesn’t look good... particularly if you’re the only private residence in the country to which the law doesn’t apply.”

A legacy of murdering birdlife, not protecting birds

In ‘Finding Harmony’, Charles is pictured admiring Swifts and Penguins and watching birdlife from a hide. In reality, Charles has done far more to kill and maim birdlife than to conserve it. The royal estate at Balmoral has been a shooting estate ever since it was purchased by Queen Victoria in the mid-nineteenth century. The Sandringham Estate is the site of a well-known annual Boxing Day massacre of Pheasants by the aristocracy.

A Guardian investigation reported that Sandringham:

“...has been linked to the deaths and disappearances of a string of legally protected birds over the past two decades.

“The cases include the alleged poisoning, shooting and disappearance of some of the UK’s rarest birds of prey. One of the cases involved the mysterious loss of eastern England’s last breeding female Montagu’s Harrier, a critically endangered species whose future in the UK is now looking bleak.

The Guardian has identified 18 cases since 2003 involving suspected wildlife offences or the alleged misuse of poisons, linked to the royal estate and neighbouring farmland owned by the king.”

Not enough Pheasants to shoot

In 2025, Hello Magazine reported that Charles churlishly sacked Sandringham’s gamekeeper when he failed to breed enough Pheasants to satisfy the King’s festive bloodlust. Protect the Wild mused at the time:

“One of the world’s most privileged people firing a man on a low wage for not producing enough birds for him to kill on a Christmas shoot. A novel twist on the origins of Boxing Day, which is rooted in the tradition of the giving of gifts and a day off for servants…“

Companies advertising Pheasant shoots routinely promise prospective shooters that they will be able to kill up to 350 birds a day between them. However, if we are to believe their boasts, the royals regularly dwarf those figures - Charles’ father, Philip, reportedly killed 10,000 Pheasants during a week-long killing spree at Sandringham.

These horrifying statistics highlight the duplicity in Charles’ claim to care about harmony with nature.

According to British naturalist Chris Packham:

“I don’t believe that you can profess to love nature, the environment or our wildlife and support the shooting of huge numbers of non-native pheasants & partridges, known to some as ‘Gamebirds’.”

Grouse shooting, a royal obsession that fuels environmental destruction

Queen Victoria and her husband Albert were instrumental in the introduction of grouse shooting to Britain’s upper classes when they bought the Balmoral estate in 1852. Their purchase and influence paved the way to completely change the face of Scotland’s moorland.

‘Finding Harmony’ focuses on the King’s Foundation’s sustainability and wellbeing projects at Dumfries House. But the crown’s other Scottish properties have a very different purpose. The 50,000 acre Balmoral estate and its neighbouring moorland at Corgarff – owned by the King – are used by the family and their friends for private Grouse shooting parties.

In 2023 Charles and William went on a charm offensive, schmoozing Scottish National Party leader Humza Yousaf at Balmoral. Their goal, to convince the republican leader to grant them an exemption from legal restrictions on the shooting of Grouse. Surprise, surprise - Charles got it his way as usual, and a crown exemption clause was written in to The Wildlife Management and Muirburn Act.

Craigeach Moor from Craiglarie Fell.

Grouse, peatland and climate change

Peat moors store the largest amount of carbon in Britain, an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes. The release of this stored carbon is sped up by the systematic burning of heather on the moors. This is done for the benefit of the driven Grouse shooting industry, as burning heather encourages the growth of fresh vegetation that Grouse feed on.

According to campaign group Rewilding Britain, more than three-quarters of a million acres of Britain’s national parks are covered by intensively-managed grouse moors. Almost a third of the area of the six national parks containing peat moors is given up to driven grouse shoots. The royal family and their rich chums play a big part in promoting this bloodsport and building its profile.

Rewilding Britain’s Guy Shrubsole said in a press release:

“With over three quarters of a million acres of our national parks devoted to driven grouse moors, the parks are being held back from tackling Britain’s collapsing biodiversity and the climate emergency.”

Heather is set alight on peatlands in the North York Moors National Park for grouse-shooting - via Wild Moors.

Luke Steele, Executive Director of Wild Moors, said:

“Grouse moors fan the flames of climate change by setting carbon-rich peatlands ablaze despite this making it difficult, if not impossible, to protect and restore these important ecosystems to prevent them from collapse.”

So another of Charles’ sordid little hobbies is not only cruel but is contributing to climate change by turning the UK’s most significant carbon sink into a major source of released carbon.

Don’t believe the hype

Charles is the head of a family that is a huge landowner which promotes cruel and unsustainable practices on their land. He is a wealthy and powerful man who has used his inherited wealth and influence to pressure successive governments to allow hunting and shooting - practices that threaten biodiversity rather than protect it.

It would be a grave injustice if Charles were remembered as a defender of the natural world and biodiversity. Instead, he should stand as an example of another wealthy, privileged man who used his influence and position in society to lobby for the continuation of cruel bloodsports, whatever their effects on the natural environment. What’s more, he joined a long tradition of arrogant monarchs who wanted their families to be immune from the law.

If Charles’ version of finding harmony and connection with the natural world means tearing up foxes, gunning down countless birds and burning peat moorland, we’ll leave it, thanks very much.

Don’t fall for the expensive wrapping paper, ‘Finding Harmony’ is a legacy documentary aimed at masking a lifetime of using power and privilege to defend animal abuse, not biodiversity.

• Sign our petition calling for a proper ban on hunting with hounds.

• Use Protect the Wild’s automated tool to email your MP and demand that they ensure that Labour follows through with enacting a proper ban on hunting.

• At Protect the Wild we want an end to all bird shooting. Check out our dedicated End Bird Shooting Substack here.

Photo credits: Kate Middleton at a grouse shoot in 2009 via Ikon Pictures/REX/Shutterstock. Queen Victoria’s sketch of Balmoral via Wikimedia Commons. Pheasant image via Shutterstock. Picture of Craigeach Moor from Craiglarie Fell via Wikimedia Commons/David Baird. Picture of peat moor burning via Wild Moors. Grouse on moorland via Chris J Walker/Unsplash.

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