We are slowly winning this

Now we have someone who understands conservation in charge of this and who is strong enough to stand up to not just the shooters but their supporters in Holyrood licensing will come, the criminals will be put out of business and the most harmful practices reined in.  along with more enlightened landowners coming in and community buyouts in various forms

A part of the jigsaw has to be employment tho.  The highlands must have year round employment for folk and the land needs some commercial usage or else the highlands just become a park / playground for tourists

Sort of related is the artificially high price of venison – if I go to a butchers it costs more per kilo that farmed beef. Around here they’re culling the deer and leaving the carcasses to rot / carrion on the hill as they say the cost of transport and butchery doesn’t warrant the effort.  This doesn’t stack up as there’s no cost in raising or keeping them in comparison to farmed animals. Due to the sheer numbers of red deer here, they’re a bit of a nuisance, they destroy a lot of the natural vegetation, leaving gorse and bracken to take over – we had virtually no orchids this year.

Our local co-op is selling venison meatballs cheaper than beef (£3.00 vs. £3.50) so we’ve happily been enjoying these with our pasta.

@tjagain I take it that’s in Scotland? Coffey is in charge down here and is a clown.

@dovebiker The bigger worry is demand for venison driving deer farming rather than culling wild. And as previously discussed, the wild deer population is sufficiently overborne that they’re often malnourished and grazing everything flat.

ratherbeintobago – yes.

@dovebiker there is a shortage of lardering availability which means production costs of venison from carcass are high and there is no capacity for processing in some areas resulting in deer being left to rot on the hill.

Talking about employment, TJ have you seen what Trees for Life have achieved at Dundreggan?  Something like 3-4x the number of employees are now on that estate compared with when it was in use previously for ‘sporting’.  I know that it’s only one example but then go on to look at the Cairngorms.  Outdoor sports and activities generate more turnover within the limited park area than all field sports activity across the whole of Scotland.  More jobs, a much wider spread of benefit, no animal cruelty, environmental degradation, predator persecution…  Change is coming but it is desperately slow!

Thats really good to hear

I just get a bit concerned sometimes that the highlands could just end up as a park with few poorly paid jobs.  It certainly seems that sometimes the need for jobs is forgotten

The biggest piece of the jigsaw is employment and investment.

And it’s easy to look at Cairngorms and say ‘look, this works’, when in some forgotten corner of Sutherland, Harris or Galloway a landowner is thinking ‘I cannot draw in that many people to create a business’. See the closure of Cream of Galloway recently or Balblair’s demise

I would also say there are cultural and educational pieces of the puzzle not yet sorted.

And there’s big risks with alternatives – from energy to mining, forestry and agriculture. There is still a lot to juggle with and play for. I do think things are changing though.

Looks like we are going to get  full ban on the use of snares in Scotland.  good.  Teddies getting chucked everywhere by the shooters lobbies

Gamebird shooters furious at Minister’s proposed snare ban in Scotland

I’d have thought that game bird shooters are a small number of people who aren’t going to vote SNP.

Would be better if they’d combine it with a licensing scheme and say any snares on your land risks your licence though.

Licensing is coming in Scotland.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/wildlife-management-scotland-analysis-responses-consultation-exercise-analysis-report/pages/3/

Custodians of the countryside are at it again, this time a missing Golden Eagle to the north of the Golfie.

https://www.scotland.police.uk/what-s-happening/news/2023/november/appeal-for-information-on-missing-golden-eagle-in-scottish-borders/

The bird was last seen in the area to the west of Fountainhall, between Heriot and Stow on Thursday, 12 October

Oh, you mean on the massive driven grouse moor that dominates that whole area……?

I’m sure it is a coincidence but that area also includes Raeshaw Estate which previously had its licence revoked by SNH after Police Scotland found evidence of raptor persecution.

Criminality hiding in plain site, just nearly impossible to find evidence. But hey, they protect the Lapwings!

Yup – more in the highlands as well including a golden eagle.

Still – the bill for licensing is going thru parliament right now.  Its going to happen.  Then the criminals will be put out of business

I agree the bill will change a lot. And it will go through – speaking with MSP about it and he said there is proper majority in support of the bill and being seen to support it.

However, the funding for SNH and police to enforce, that is missing.
As are the transition funds and support to help communities.

However, the funding for SNH NS and police to enforce, that is missing.

NS are currently all hands to the pumps replacing their Deer Licensing system. Even with a bucket load of cash there’s no quick way of securing the skills needed to build the systems needed to administer the licences.

As are the transition funds and support to help communities.

Very little if anything needed.  shooting provides little employment.   the real effect on communities will be very small. 

I think the reality will be that a lot of land owners will give serious consideration to selling off the land to the large number of investors buying up plots for rewilding / carbon off-setting. This is a growing business with great opportunity for local communities if they engage properly. 

I think a large number of them will actually cleanup their acts – because the land is worth a lot less without the grouse shooting license.  thats my hope anyway.  ~Anyone losing their license will be put out of business and the land will then be worth very little

If you’re angry about the loss of golden eagle Merrick, here’s something you can do

A Scottish grouse moor-owning baron, an illegally pole-trapped peregrine and a Ministerial post in DEFRA

Davesport – its truely absurd.  Douglas Miller also has conservation awards if you can believe that.  At least his remit will only be in England and we got rid of our equivalent – Fergus EwingWe are slowly winning on the issue of grouse moors but its all a bit two steps forward one back and this is a huge backward step.  At least he should not have much power for long and there are good folk monitoring the situation

Slightly interesting situation where he’ll be responsible for grouse moors but not his own?

@TJ,

I cycle through his estate regularly. When RDM bought the Hopes Estate he initially tried to close off the whole of the access road which also services the Hopes reservoir, dam & water treatment plant. Despite this being a public road that is maintained by the council; it took time to get the road reopened. More recently he decided to remove the legitimate right of vehicular access to the estate by preventing people using the water authority car park by putting his own large and intimidating signs on property that didn’t belong to him. His justifications for this would have been laughable if the consequences hadn’t been so far reaching. He built his own car park in an attempt to soothe the Ire of those who’d previously enjoyed access. Permission was sought for this & granted in the face of strong opposition. There was a retrospective catch however. Access to his new car park was limited by the purchase of a valid permit. There were only 20 of these at any time & I’ve not spoken to anyone who had one. His car park ended up full of contractors equipment & with his signs leaving people intimidated at the prospect of parking in the water authority car park he’d effectively managed to exclude people arriving in cars that wanted access to the hills. Three years after he put these measures in place the illegal signs he erected in the water authority car park are gone & believe its safe to park there again without the anonymous goons/flunkeys putting large stickers on peoples car windows. It has taken a lot of uphill struggle to get things this far.

Anyway; I digress. “That this House congratulates Robbie Douglas-Miller who has been awarded an OBE for services to wildlife conservation in Scotland; recognises his contribution to conserving and improving the biodiversity of East Lothian and further afield; and wishes him continued success in his important work in addressing the climate emergency.”

Yes’ he’s an OBE. This in itself probably not worthy of consideration but the reason he was given this leaves me dumbfounded considering the decimated wildlife I’ve seen on his property. In a remote valley on his estate off the beaten track, my wife & I cycled through a maze of carcasses. Hares, rabbits, corvids & pigeons. So many we had to steer the bikes round them. This area was well away from the butts & tracks used by the gun-bus to get the shooters up the hill. Not being versed in grouse moor or driven shooting estate management I’m guessing that his estate is managed along similar lines to many others. I’m not seeing anything that’s been referenced above.

In a chance meeting and conversation with a local British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) ranger I asked him directly about raptor persecution on an estate close to my house where there are ongoing problems with access. His head fell & he said “I’m afraid there’s no good news” :o( He had personally witnessed birds of prey being shot & disposed of. Some reported through the correct channels & at least one dead owl being located by the police. Getting sufficient evidence to stand a good chance of prosecution is very difficult as the legal bar is high was what I understood from our conversation.

So yes, as you point out; it’s absurd & beyond the comprehension of most including me that this appointment has been made.

My own opinion is that he can do pretty much whatever he likes up there & there’s little to be done to change things. I can cite plenty of good examples of land management & consideration given to maintaining access. Unfortunately this isn’t one of the good examples & it exists purely as a monoculture to protect grouse at the expense of everything else including access.

Oh yes – the lammermuirs are mainly a “green desert”  Licensing gets round the difficulty in getting prosecutionswhat I meant was he cannot set policy for Scotland and he will be subject to the same rules as all Scottish landowners once licensing is here – and if he continues to behave like a shit he will lose his license – hopefully.  grouse moors are a huge criminal conspiracy.

Schrodinger’s pheasant.

Shot gamebirds and ducks dumped in a car park in Scottish Borders

The bill is wending its way thru parliament and the committee has rejected weakening amendments and strengthened in some areas. Looking good for raptors

Wildlife Management Bill – stage 2: further restrictions on grouse moor management agreed

the fresh hell of trying to make shooting look glam (wtf is going on with those purple sunglasses!?), it’s unusual for shooters to admit so candidly that predator control is so import to their hobby

Pheasants aren’t wildlife or livestock. They are an invasive non native species.

Chickens in a party frock

The bill is thru its 3rd reading with all the gutting amendments removed.   Final debate should bea formality.  Great news for wildlife

Well, based on the number of fires in the Angus glens last few weeks; the laws will be ignored.

Then they will lose their license.   The fires are probably getting it done before the bill becomes law

Indeed, even with a better law around this there is a culture of carrying on and, more importantly, the cost of bringing prosecutions will not be met by current budgets or staffing levels from police and Nature Scot.

Fires are still allowed. It’s just that there are a few more restrictions. It’s common to see them around this time of year.

I’m not normally a fan of Parks Watch Scotland, but this one seems to reflect a few pieces I’ve read and someone I’ve spoken to.

TLDR: current forestry grants as part of reforestation / carbon sequestration fails on so many fronts, mainly focussed on tree numbers. Seems huge public funds are put towards schemes which ultimately fail on so many fronts, and easily manipulated by businesses for thier gain

https://parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2024/04/14/brewdogs-dead-forest-and-the-dead-hand-of-scotlands-forestry-grants-system/