How odd, we sit there listening for months and months about how the deer population in Scotland needs massive culling to encourage rewilding, yet as soon as anybody goes out and kills anything else its an ‘unjustified slaughter’
I particularly like the included photo of hares being put into a game larder (from whence they will go into the food chain – remarkable – a sustainable source of clean, green nuclear free meat supply that doesn’t involve anything like the level of cruelty seen in intensive chicken and pig farming, hurrah!)
Hare populations are cyclical, but known to be high on grouse estates because it creates ideal habitat (due in no small part to predator control) – studies have shown no changes in the distribution of hares over many years, and the fact that the populations are high enough to have permitted such a cull in the first place, and that this cull is a large scale one over several estates, for the first time in years, underlines the weakness of the accusations being made.
http://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/groups/ecological-sciences/landscape-and-spatial-ecology/mountain-hares
In other news, the National Trust for Scotland et al seem to have discovered that countryside management costs money, and that if you get rid of all the stalking, shooting and sheep farming, there’s nobody left to pay for it!
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14209152.National_Trust_for_Scotland__to_ask_people_to_pay_towards_wilderness_upkeep__for_first_time/
