Here we go again – the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association is calling on the Scottish Government to issue licences to ‘control’ one of Scotland’s rarest mammals – the pine marten. Why? Because they claim the pine marten (along with other predators such as raptors, foxes and badgers) are having a major impact on the declining population of capercaillie.
According to the BBC, RSPB Scotland says the SGA’s position is “riddled with basic inaccuracies and sheer prejudice“. Nothing new there then.
BBC News article here
Information on the pine marten from The Mammal Society here
Raptor Persecution UK 
No mention of overgrazing (loss of a main food source, i.e. bilberry) then, nor the effect of high deer fencing, wetter weather (loss of chicks), and the lauded new forests being totally unsuitable dense Sitka and Norway Spruce rather than open Scots Pine (send them for a look at Finnish forests) – another major food source. No; of course, it has to be those damned opredators again – my only surprise is that they haven’t (so far) claimed that Pine Martens have reached ‘plague proportions’ – give them time! One last question for the SGA ‘spokesman’ (let’s guess who that might be!) – “how come the main stronghold of the Capercaillie in Europe is Scandinavia – where Pine Martens are common?
I saw two pine martins rob a sea-eagle of the child it had stolen for dinner…….very fiendish!
Well said Tony, but this is Scotland and with a heavy kill attitude towards most wildlife especially on Sporting Estates.
The poor old reintroduced Capercallie I’m afraid, persecution apart has very little chance of suvival in the wild today. Its 35 years since I last saw one living in Speyside where they are still in trouble.
First shot out when they were quite plentiful by so called sporting folk of the past and now on a rapid decline because of mainly suitable habitat loss and dare I say possible effects of “Global Warming”.
This must be a first for Scottish keepers wanting to use the natuirtal decline of a fully protected animal to apply for a license to kill another equally protected animal that their forebares tried hard to wipe out is pathetic. ( Read David Stephen’s book introduction “The world outside” the absolute carnage is staggering)…we are just looking at what’s left but there are people today that would happily try to kill anything that’s left in the wild …Why not leave nature to its own devices and conclusions. Leave animals to sort themselves out in the wild and stick to what you make a few bob at killing without affecting other wild ceatures that thousands of other folk enjoy watching and photographing as in my case. Pheasants are pretty tame these days and the exotic image of the colourful Chinese introduced pheasant went out of the window as soon as modern day factory methods of producing them in their millions arrived. Tesco’s frozen jobs are very similar and fly just as well.
The modern day shoot system of turn up up and pop as may as you can….at a price of course, is what its all about and a big money spinner for many a hard done by Scottish estates these days. However…
The Capercallie probably may well hang on for years to come here in Scotland, but its no good pointing the finger at another species such as the wonderful Pine Martin that obviously in other parts of the world gets on perfectly well side by side in a truely natural balance, without any shooting control that is? Scandinavian environments and habitat management should be admired…what do we do?, try to kill everything? .
Any excuse to kill here in Scotland is no excuse, leave the wild animals alone and just stick to shooting what you farm. and make a small allowance for predation…but is that really too tame even for you? Time to admit it….all you want is a permit to kill everything that moves anywhere near you other than the target species that you are paid to look after. Sad, very sad, but very little has changed since the gamekeepers of the all tweed clad of Victorian times who obviously had their day… Why would anyone one want this image again? Even today, I have always said, Wear their tweed …and they own you from the socks up.
Your time has come… this is after all the enlightened 2012’s is it not?. Read Dave Dicks Book “Wildlife Crime”
and hang your heads. Nothing has changed other than the easy availability of extremely dangerous chemicals.
This is undoubtedly a very tricky conservation conundrum, but the RSPB’s dismissive approach is very odd in light of the persuasive findings of their own recent research at Abernethy, where of 20 nests which were monitored by video or digital cameras 65% were lost to predation. The only predator that was identified was the pine marten. Taking account of variables due to the use of cameras, it was established that pine martens were responsible for the loss of between 33 and 57% of capercaillie clutches. (Summers et al, Wildlife Biology 15(3): 319-327. 2009)
Furthermore, recent research commissioned by SNH and published in 2011 has established that since 1995 pine marten distribution has expanded and the mean abundance index has increased 3.7-fold.
(http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/commissioned_reports/415.pdf)
It’s perhaps worth quoting from the Summers paper itself, just to indicate how persistent and destructive this predator can be:
“At eight nests where all details could be observed, the pine martens removed the eggs one at a time in their mouths. The average interval between visits was 5.2 minutes and at all nests the pine marten returned to the empty nest for at least one further inspection. At one nest, the predation event was different from those described above. The pine marten took the first egg and, while still at the edge of the nest, the egg-shell broke in its mouth and a chick tumbled out. The chick clambered back into the nest. The pine marten proceeded to remove other eggs and at the fourth visit took the hatched chick, before removing the last eggs.”
There are frankly too few caper left in Scotland now for this to be just another battleground for glib attacks by conservationists against gamekeepers and other members of the shooting community. It is about the survival of one of Scotland’s most iconic species which, despite the millions of European money spent on the Life recovery project, including significant steps to improve the bird’s habitat, remains gravely vulnerable. Any measures that can encourage an improvement in its productivity and breeding success should be considered as a matter of urgency.
Might a possible solution be for Pine Martens to be trapped, under licence, in areas where there is a proven Capercaillie presence, but otherwise for eradication to be banned. I confess to being sceptical about “blanket licence” provisions as I feel these simply provide an open door opportunity for complete mayhem!! As for open licences on a whole list of species to legitimise SGA’s usual ” kill it , solve it” approach, then forget it! Such restricted licences would, in effect, also limit control activities to given areas, given estates and given , named keepers, all of which could be very closely monitored. All such should be accompanied by parallel research , commencing in the second season, showing that concomitant benefits were being realised by the Capercaillie population. After five years the matter should be turned in for review.