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| Conservation is not just a question of protecting rare birds | Conservation is not just a question of protecting rare birds |
| (10 days later) | |
| Friday 12 August: the opening of the grouse-shooting season, known to shooters as the Glorious Twelfth. This year, it arrived with some ironically glorious weather: perfect for guns alive to the beauties of the purple-clad heather moorland. | Friday 12 August: the opening of the grouse-shooting season, known to shooters as the Glorious Twelfth. This year, it arrived with some ironically glorious weather: perfect for guns alive to the beauties of the purple-clad heather moorland. |
| I write “ironically” because the cold and wet during the spring, when the grouse were breeding, means that there are precious few birds to be shot. Some moors have cancelled altogether, at severe financial loss to their owners. But grouse are like that: the population booms for a few years, then collapses. When conditions are right, this completely wild bird, which bursts suddenly over the guns, with a fast, jinking flight, is regarded as one of the supreme sporting challenges, hence the thousands of pounds aficionados around the world will pay to have a pop at it. | I write “ironically” because the cold and wet during the spring, when the grouse were breeding, means that there are precious few birds to be shot. Some moors have cancelled altogether, at severe financial loss to their owners. But grouse are like that: the population booms for a few years, then collapses. When conditions are right, this completely wild bird, which bursts suddenly over the guns, with a fast, jinking flight, is regarded as one of the supreme sporting challenges, hence the thousands of pounds aficionados around the world will pay to have a pop at it. |
| For the moor owner and his staff, a whole year’s work culminates in just a few days of shooting. The success of these days will determine whether the gamekeepers have jobs next year. They are under intense pressure to present a large number of grouse to the guns and while most estates are scrupulous in observing the law that protects the birds of prey that eat young chicks, one or two rogue keepers break the law. That’s what conservation charities think, anyway, when protected birds such as sea eagles disappear and they may be right; it’s hard to be certain, because of the difficulty of finding corpses over a vast terrain and difficult to prosecute. [See footnote.] | |
| These cases perpetuate the antipathy between moor owners and the public at large, dating at least to the mass trespass on the Duke of Devonshire’s moor at Kinder Scout in 1932. | These cases perpetuate the antipathy between moor owners and the public at large, dating at least to the mass trespass on the Duke of Devonshire’s moor at Kinder Scout in 1932. |
| Obviously, the destruction of protected raptors is deplorable. And yet it illustrates an interesting point about the countryside. Because the magnificent sea eagle, otherwise the white-tailed eagle, Britain’s largest bird of prey, hasn’t lived in Scotland continuously; its numbers plummeted across Europe in the 19th century and died out in Scotland altogether. The sea eagles we now have were reintroduced in a programme that started in 1975. While many people would be thrilled to see one in the skies, they were a source of controversy in Suffolk when the idea of re-establishing them was mooted there some years ago. Farmers worried about their lambs. One person’s natural marvel can be a threat to someone else’s livelihood. | Obviously, the destruction of protected raptors is deplorable. And yet it illustrates an interesting point about the countryside. Because the magnificent sea eagle, otherwise the white-tailed eagle, Britain’s largest bird of prey, hasn’t lived in Scotland continuously; its numbers plummeted across Europe in the 19th century and died out in Scotland altogether. The sea eagles we now have were reintroduced in a programme that started in 1975. While many people would be thrilled to see one in the skies, they were a source of controversy in Suffolk when the idea of re-establishing them was mooted there some years ago. Farmers worried about their lambs. One person’s natural marvel can be a threat to someone else’s livelihood. |
| More controversy will be on its way if rewilding takes hold. On the 23,000-acre Alladale Wilderness Reserve in remote Sutherland, Paul Lister dreams of reintroducing wolves, as well as bear, lynx, wildcat and wild boar. Wolves would provide a natural solution to the deer problem; an overpopulation of red deer has nibbled much of the Highlands into a biodiversity desert. Any seedling that succeeds in pushing a leaf above ground in what used to be the Caledonian forest is immediately eaten. A wolf pack would give the deer a run for their money, but ramblers, determined to make the most of Scotland’s right to roam, fear that they’d have to put on a turn of speed too. | More controversy will be on its way if rewilding takes hold. On the 23,000-acre Alladale Wilderness Reserve in remote Sutherland, Paul Lister dreams of reintroducing wolves, as well as bear, lynx, wildcat and wild boar. Wolves would provide a natural solution to the deer problem; an overpopulation of red deer has nibbled much of the Highlands into a biodiversity desert. Any seedling that succeeds in pushing a leaf above ground in what used to be the Caledonian forest is immediately eaten. A wolf pack would give the deer a run for their money, but ramblers, determined to make the most of Scotland’s right to roam, fear that they’d have to put on a turn of speed too. |
| And few farmers are likely to welcome the return of a predator that was driven to extinction in the 18th century, precisely because of the toll it took of young animals. Perhaps, post Brexit, the CAP budget will be reprioritised, meaning that agriculture becomes more intensive in parts, using a panoply of new techniques, and wilder in others. But that’s a big perhaps. | And few farmers are likely to welcome the return of a predator that was driven to extinction in the 18th century, precisely because of the toll it took of young animals. Perhaps, post Brexit, the CAP budget will be reprioritised, meaning that agriculture becomes more intensive in parts, using a panoply of new techniques, and wilder in others. But that’s a big perhaps. |
| One of the most successful reintroductions has been the red kite, after the first releases in the Chilterns more than 20 years ago. Now a dozen may be in the sky at any time over the M40 in Oxfordshire, since the first releases in 1989. They’re not the fearsome predators that they appear (and which the Victorians thought them): they eat carrion. One tried to snatch a pomeranian dog a couple of years ago but not necessarily to eat; they’re known to like toys, not to mention, as Shakespeare reminds us, scraps of laundry, of the kind worn next to the skin: “When a kite builds, look to lesser linen.” Its foraging habits may encourage it to join urban foxes around the bins on city streets, not an attractive prospect to those who have done battle with gulls in coastal towns. | One of the most successful reintroductions has been the red kite, after the first releases in the Chilterns more than 20 years ago. Now a dozen may be in the sky at any time over the M40 in Oxfordshire, since the first releases in 1989. They’re not the fearsome predators that they appear (and which the Victorians thought them): they eat carrion. One tried to snatch a pomeranian dog a couple of years ago but not necessarily to eat; they’re known to like toys, not to mention, as Shakespeare reminds us, scraps of laundry, of the kind worn next to the skin: “When a kite builds, look to lesser linen.” Its foraging habits may encourage it to join urban foxes around the bins on city streets, not an attractive prospect to those who have done battle with gulls in coastal towns. |
| Often, the rule of our delicately balanced countryside is that success for one species spells disaster for another. Grey squirrels, able to digest unripe nuts, out-eat their red cousins. Water vole numbers have collapsed since the escape or release of mink from fur farms. Throw a lump of bait into the upper waters of the Thames and you’ll pull up a fistful of crayfish, but they’ll be signal crayfish from North America; those brawny Yanks have reduced our white-tailed natives to endangered status. Hundreds of hedgehogs, descendants of those introduced in the 1970s to reduce garden slugs, have been removed from South Uist, where they were eating the eggs of wading birds. They were trapped and relocated. A more rugged approach has been adopted in New Zealand where the government hopes to eradicate all the country’s rats, ferrets, stoats and feral cats and dogs in coming decades. Evolution didn’t equip flightless birds such as the kiwi to survive them. | Often, the rule of our delicately balanced countryside is that success for one species spells disaster for another. Grey squirrels, able to digest unripe nuts, out-eat their red cousins. Water vole numbers have collapsed since the escape or release of mink from fur farms. Throw a lump of bait into the upper waters of the Thames and you’ll pull up a fistful of crayfish, but they’ll be signal crayfish from North America; those brawny Yanks have reduced our white-tailed natives to endangered status. Hundreds of hedgehogs, descendants of those introduced in the 1970s to reduce garden slugs, have been removed from South Uist, where they were eating the eggs of wading birds. They were trapped and relocated. A more rugged approach has been adopted in New Zealand where the government hopes to eradicate all the country’s rats, ferrets, stoats and feral cats and dogs in coming decades. Evolution didn’t equip flightless birds such as the kiwi to survive them. |
| Let’s not get into badgers and the controversy over bovine TB. It’s worth remembering, though, what they’d do with those hedgehogs, lovingly transported form South Uist. Their strong claws can unroll a curled-up hedgehog, which then screams as its insides are torn out. Badgers aren’t solely responsible for the hedgehog’s precipitous decline but some blame lies with the well-meaning Badger Protection Act. For the countryside isn’t a wilderness – humankind keeps the balance. Many wildflowers, for instance, only survive in combination with farming practices, whether the grazing of chalk downland or the turning of soil by the plough. | Let’s not get into badgers and the controversy over bovine TB. It’s worth remembering, though, what they’d do with those hedgehogs, lovingly transported form South Uist. Their strong claws can unroll a curled-up hedgehog, which then screams as its insides are torn out. Badgers aren’t solely responsible for the hedgehog’s precipitous decline but some blame lies with the well-meaning Badger Protection Act. For the countryside isn’t a wilderness – humankind keeps the balance. Many wildflowers, for instance, only survive in combination with farming practices, whether the grazing of chalk downland or the turning of soil by the plough. |
| Which brings us back to grouse moors. I visited one in Yorkshire and it was teeming with lapwings, plovers and curlews, as well as young grouse. Grouse moors don’t have many foxes or stoats – the keepers see to that. Which produces ideal conditions for many species, along with the one that makes the income to pay for it: grouse. Whatever you think of shooting, that’s worth bearing in mind. | Which brings us back to grouse moors. I visited one in Yorkshire and it was teeming with lapwings, plovers and curlews, as well as young grouse. Grouse moors don’t have many foxes or stoats – the keepers see to that. Which produces ideal conditions for many species, along with the one that makes the income to pay for it: grouse. Whatever you think of shooting, that’s worth bearing in mind. |
| Clive Aslet is a former editor of Country Life | Clive Aslet is a former editor of Country Life |
| • Readers’ editor’s footnote: The number of rogue gamekeepers is a matter of controversy. Successful prosecutions of gamekeepers or, vicariously, of their employers, over deaths of birds of prey are rare. Law-breaking resulting in deaths of birds of prey is less so. And bird of prey fatalities, whether or not resulting from proven law-breaking, are considerably less rare. Data differs, and is not always readily comparable. | |
| • Comments will be opened later today | • Comments will be opened later today |
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