In an astonishing act of short-sighted stupidity, the Scottish government, backed by Scottish Natural Heritage, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, has announced that licences to kill protected raptor species such as buzzards will now be issued to gamekeepers who can demonstrate that 10% of their gamebirds have been killed by birds of prey, according to an article in The Times.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7134049.ece
Roseanna Cunningham (Scottish Environment Minister) and SNH – you should be ashamed of yourselves – we expected better from you. Ministers claim that the new licensing scheme will help to prevent illegal raptor persecution. Just how thick are you? The illegal killing will continue, and its effects on the raptor population will be further magnified because ‘legal’ killing will now also be allowed.
Chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) Alex Hogg has been campaigning for licences to kill raptors for over ten years now. His latest statement that “growing buzzard predation is causing serious welfare issues” is nothing short of delusional. This is not about “welfare issues” but is all about financial issues. If Alex was so concerned about the welfare of gamebirds, he & his fellow gamekeepers wouldn’t be releasing over 43 million of them into the countryside each year, just so that commercial hunting parties can come along and blast them from the sky! Buzzards and other raptors have taken about 100 years to recover from the effects of Victorian persecution, and now this legal persecution is set to begin again. Have we learned nothing from our past mistakes?
Roseanna Cunningham, Environment Minister? You’re having a laugh. And this, the International Year of Biodiversity.
This blog will be monitoring which estates are issued with these licences to kill our protected species and will report the findings here.
Raptor Persecution UK 
I’m ashamed to be Scottish.
This is a savage blow against the conservation community of this country – and beyond…we have held the line on this for decades…only to be let down by our own parliament…now watch the Westminster Govt and Welsh Assembly follow..
Mr Blogmeister,
Please don’t remove that section. Your words are an appropriate response to what is a vile and obscene move by the Scottish government and it’s sycophantic idiots in SNH. If I was writing this blog I would have used even stronger language because I am furious about what has happened.
Keep up the excellent work, this blog has been long overdue.
SecretScooby
So the precedent that has been set here is if you want to get the law on your side, just commit criminal acts for years on end and then blackmail the authorities by saying that if you don’t get what you want, you’ll continue with the criminal acts, in this case illegal raptor persecution.
The same tactics that terrorists use.
JS
It appears that the Sunday Times article was erroneous…SGA are being blamed…
Someone trying to test the public reaction?….
Hopefully from sites like this they will have learned just that…
and …by the way…chaps…the anti-raptor apologists are watching you…which is fine, as long as you keep things factual.
Agree with all the other comments
But I do think we have to moderate the language a bit. Im know we are all angry but we have to be better than the Gamekeepers etc show we are educated and beat them by not voting for the Scottish Government at the next election which is next year, hurt them where they will notice. Roseanna Cunningham will only pay attention to people not voting for the SNP it’s “THE ONLY THING THEY CARE ABOUT. IE STAYING IN POWER.” All parties are the same, so don’t vote for them and tell them why. Just in case you think this is a rant against the SNP I have voted for them since I was 18 and I’m 61 now but won’t be voting for them again. Also when we are out birding and walking on moorland we have to be more observant as to what gamekeepers etc are up to and let them see us watching them. Not all of them are at it but this law has to be shown to be wrong and needs to be challanged. It will not stop just with Buzzards.
I so very sorry to hear such stories. Are the scottish gamekeepeers still living in the dark middleages. During the next 100 years a third of all living species are going to vanish from this earth because of the human population and its acts. So please dont start now by shooting birds of prey. Please.