They are being massacred in their thousands. Eggs are crushed, chicks trampled, nests smashed, baits poisoned, birds trapped and shot – and all to line the pockets of the landowners. The shocking extent to which Scotland’s totemic birds of prey are being routinely killed to protect the sporting estates of landowners – and how perpetrators have tried to cover up evidence of their crimes – are exposed today by a Sunday Herald investigation.
An authoritative new report for Government advisers shows thousands of rare and beautiful hen harriers are being illegally persecuted across huge swathes of the country. But publication of the report has been blocked by the landowning lobby. However, a copy has been leaked to the Sunday Herald.
At the same time another expert study, due to be unveiled in the next few weeks, suggests as many as 50 golden eagles are being illegally poisoned, shot or trapped every year in Scotland. This is far higher than previously suspected.
The birds of prey are being killed to protect lucrative grouse moors on estates owned by some of the country’s richest men and women.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, large numbers of these birds are being persecuted throughout Scotland,” said Mark Rafferty, a former police officer who now investigates wildlife crime for the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
“To suppress a whole population takes a huge amount of organised effort, and that’s what’s happening. It is the grouse industry that is responsible. They simply won’t tolerate birds of prey on grouse moors.”
Arguments over birds of prey have raged for decades, but they are now coming to a head. A new wildlife law is being finalised by the Scottish Parliament, with fierce accusations and counter-accusations about what it should do.
The owners of sporting estates are keen to control the numbers of birds of prey, because they eat or scare grouse. This leaves fewer to be shot by paying visitors, many of whom come from abroad. But environmentalists argue the birds can happily coexist with thriving grouse moors, if the land is well managed.
Successive Governments have tried to crack down on illegal persecution, with tougher penalties and laws. Despite this, however, the killing has continued, and, some would say, increased. Official figures show that the number of confirmed incidents in which animals have been reported as being poisoned – mostly birds of prey by bait laced with pesticides – has risen from 35 in 2001 to 84 in 2010 (see table overleaf).
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because poison is relatively easy to detect in carcasses found. Instances in which nests and eggs have been destroyed, chicks killed, or birds trapped and shot, are much harder to track – especially if they happened in the dark, there were no witnesses and evidence has been removed.
So scientists use other ways of quantifying the destruction. They work out how many birds should naturally live in an area, then compare this with the number actually there, and allow for other possible causes of death.
In the leaked report on hen harriers, this has resulted in some startling conclusions. Across large parts of the Highlands and the Borders, it says: “Illegal persecution is causing the failure of a majority of breeding attempts.”
The Scottish population of hen harriers is reckoned to be about a third of what it should be. That means that up to 2,300 birds are missing because they are being killed, or otherwise prevented from breeding.
As a result, Scotland has failed to achieve “favourable conservation status” for hen harriers, the report concludes. If “persecutions” were halted, it points out, more areas “would achieve a favourable status, as would Scotland as a whole”.
Areas where the birds are illegally killed include the Central Highlands, the Cairngorms, the Northeast Glens, the Western Southern Uplands and the Border Hills. The report highlights the fact that the killings nearly all take place on or near grouse moors belonging to sporting estates.
Entitled A Conservation Framework For Hen Harriers In The UK, it was written by scientists for Government wildlife advisers Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), and was to have been published on December 17. But this was halted at the eleventh hour after the landowning lobby formally complained, claiming they were not properly consulted.
Landowners were accused of “a deliberate sabotage attempt” by the Scottish Raptor Study Groups, which monitor birds of prey. “It is disgraceful that publication of this expertly compiled report has been delayed for so long,” said the groups’ secretary, Patrick Stirling-Aird.
Labour MSP Peter Peacock says landowners are deliberately delaying the report to stop it from influencing the Wildlife and Natural Environment Bill.
“It is further damning evidence of what appears to be a group of serial offenders in the shooting fraternity, persisting in destroying iconic species,” he said.
“This is why we need to toughen further still the wildlife bill going through parliament, to give powers to remove from landowners the right to run shooting estates where there are persistent problems.”
Landowning groups agreed they had delayed publication of the hen harrier report, but denied this amounted to sabotage. They disputed its methodology and conclusions, and said they were only given eight working days to comment.
“Our organisations have raised directly with SNH the issue of why the consultation process was delayed for a year and there was then an attempt to rush it through at the last minute,” said Tim Baynes, on behalf of the Scottish Rural Property and Business Association.
SNH accepted it had mishandled the consultation. “We do not believe that any organisation is willfully trying to delay the publication of this report,” said SNH’s policy director, Susan Davies. “The final consultation stages were inadequate and we are very willing to address these by meeting again with key stakeholders to consider their concerns. The document shall be published in early 2011.”
The Sunday Herald can reveal SNH is also about to publish an expert study that concludes up to 50 golden eagles are illegally killed each year in Scotland. More than 20 expert ornithologists take this view, backed by scientific calculations. This compares to an estimated population of 880 birds, and is by far the highest number ever alleged to be victims of persecution. There are just two or three prosecutions a year over golden eagle deaths.
Along with the hen harrier report, the eagle report is bound to inflame deep-rooted disagreements over the use of the countryside and attitudes to wildlife. Landowners will insist wildlife crime is not as widespread as is claimed, and that only a few rogue estates are to blame.
They will highlight the difficulties of proving who is responsible for persecution, and continue to urge their peers not to break the law. They will also point out the many economic benefits that sporting estates bring to rural areas.
But raptor enthusiasts like the RSPB will keep attacking landowners and gamekeepers for illegal persecution. They will argue eagles and hen harriers are magnificent sights that attract thousands of visitors to the Highlands.
Gamekeepers, meanwhile, will insist that they are just doing their job protecting game, which is more difficult if there are more birds of prey. And they will keep lobbying for legal ways to control those birds of prey.
The modern voices of conservation are coming up against the age-old traditions of the countryside. At the root of the problem, as the land reform campaigner Andy Wightman argues on these pages, is the historic, overweening power of landowners. This is an issue no Scottish Government seems keen to confront.
Holyrood Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham has attempted to crack down on wildlife crime, and is thought to share the frustrations about the postponement of the hen harrier report.
“Official levels of raptor poisoning remain unacceptably high,” her spokeswoman said. “That’s why we’re proposing to introduce a new vicarious liability offence to target those who control or manage others involved in criminal bird persecution.”
The vicarious liability law was last week backed by MSPs in the hope of making landowners responsible for the wildlife crimes committed on their estates. But, like previous laws, there are doubts whether it will be possible to enforce.
Few believe that it will be enough to stem the relentless killing.
‘This is not just about a powerful elite ...’
By Andy Wightman, Scottish land expert
" Historically, Scotland’s landed gentry have secured their private interests because they effectively made the law. Even following the reform acts of the 19th century, they ruled in the House of Lords. Locally, they had control of county administration – police, roads, justice – as the Commissioners of Supply up until 1890, and their role was not abolished until 1930.
So long as laws were being made in the corridors of Westminster, Scotland’s landowners remained adept at spiking unhelpful legislation and promoting causes advantageous to their vested interests. However, devolution was a bit of a shock to the system, and caused some angst as issues such as land reform, public access and wildlife crime were exposed to greater public scrutiny.
Suddenly representatives of the Scottish Landowners’ Federation were being invited to give evidence in front of MSPs and, like everyone else, make their case and defend their position. Their performance in this environment has not been impressive.
Old habits die hard though, and some may have reverted to nobbling civil servants behind closed doors and trying to suppress inconvenient truths about sensitive topics such as wildlife crime.
Last summer hundreds of landowners signed a letter addressed to Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham stating their condemnation of illegal poisoning and their utter dismay at the practice.
The initiative was widely welcomed but the credibility and sincerity of those same signatories is now called into serious doubt by these latest revelations.
But this is not just about the power of elites, it is about land laws that vest so much power in the hands of an elite so few in number most of their names can fit on a few pages of a letter.
With vast tracts given over to private hunting reserves, it is time to bring an end to the charade that our wildlife is best managed by this distorted form of landholding. The solution to wildlife crime is to bring wildlife management under greater public control.
In August I visited Norway and saw how a community has managed a 197,000 hectare common for over 200 years. There is public access and profitable hunting regulated by national hunting laws. No-one dreams of committing wildlife crime and if they did so, the rest of the community would quickly stamp it out.
Scotland’s private game reserves and the dysfunctional relationship between gamekeepers, shooting clients and owners are the problem. We could do things very differently if we chose to.......‘These actions are utterly wrong ...’
Andy Wightman’s new book, The Poor Had No Lawyers, is published by Birlinn.
Herald Scotland
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