Month: March 2016

Following on from last weekend’s news of the mass slaughter of mountain hares on grouse moors in the Cairngorms National Park (see here and here), today sees an accusation that hares have also been massacred on Balmoral Estate, the Queen’s royal residence within the Park.

According to the article written by journalist Rob Edwards (here), two culls involving three estates were witnessed towards the end of February, one of which was said to have killed 500 hares.

The Royal household has apparently not responded to requests to comment, but others have. The article has several quotes from interested parties including one from Bill Lobban, vice-convenor of Highland Council who said:

“People who visit our national parks do so for many different reasons but I would suggest that few, if any, do so to witness slaughter on the scale that has been evidenced recently“.

Indeed.

News of recent mountain hare massacres are undoubtedly a PR disaster for the grouse-shooting industry. It’s very, very hard to defend and justify this level of slaughter (some of us say it’s wholly indefensible and unjustifiable) but bless them, the landowners’ lobby group Scottish Land & Estates is trying it’s best to explain. There’s an hilariously desperate blog on their Gift of Grouse website (here) which claims hare slaughtering is done in ‘accordance with best practice’ (eh?!) and is ‘informed and balanced’ (yes, really). It’s also claimed that hare populations are ‘assessed’ prior to the cull, although so far we haven’t seen any population figures either pre or post-slaughter, we’re just expected to take their word that these massacres are sustainable. Strange, isn’t it, that SNH and other scientific bodies have for years acknowledged the difficulties of accurately assessing mountain hare population densities, and yet these Gift of Grouse gamekeepers claim to have it sussed.

Here’s one for you anagram fans: Gift of Grouse = To fog figures.

Talking of PR disasters, this week was Scottish Tourism Week and was promoted on Twitter using the hashtag #STW2016. Many businesses within the tourism sector have been tweeting about what they have to offer to visiting tourists so we and some friends thought we’d join in and show visitors some images of dead wildlife, such as heaps of shot hares and some poisoned red kites, peregrines, buzzards and eagles. It was pretty effective. Lots of people who were previously oblivious to what goes on behind the scenes on some Scottish sporting estates were re-tweeting these photographs and expressing their outrage.

This didn’t go unnoticed by the game-shooting industry and the Head of Shooting at the Countryside Alliance accused us of being ‘bigots’ (eh?) and the CEO of Scottish Land & Estates accused us of being ‘distasteful’ (no Doug, what’s distasteful is what some of your member estates do to our wildlife). Amusingly, a Police Chief Superintendent re-tweeted one of our photos of a poisoned golden eagle. We asked the Countryside Alliance bloke and SLE’s CEO if they were going to accuse the Police Chief Super of being a ‘distasteful bigot’. The response? Silence from the Countryside Alliance and SLE’s CEO blocked us!

Following yesterday’s blog about the recent massacre of mountain hares on grouse moors within the Cairngorms National Park (see here), and the subsequent outpouring of public anger on social media, the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) has published a statement on its website (here). We’ve reproduced it below:

Our [CNPA’s] statement in response to the mountain hare cull which was reported in the media at the weekend.

Hamish Trench, Director of Conservation and Visitor Experience said  “CNPA has previously set out concerns about the balance of moorland species and habitat management and the need for better data on mountain hare populations is part of this. Observation suggests there is a good population of mountain hares in the Cairngorms and the managed moorlands provide a good habitat for them. We back the current research project which is working with estates in the National Park to establish better counts.

In this case we understand the hare cull was part of a planned annual management cull. We recognise the public concern about the scale of culls and this emphasises the need for good information on populations and restraint in line with SNH’s advice in the meantime. In particular we expect moorland managers to ensure any culls do not threaten the conservation status of mountain hares.”

END

It’s really a non-statement. They had to say something, as a lot of people have been asking questions about how such a wildlife massacre can be allowed to take place inside the National Park. We thought the CNPA would come out strongly and condemn it, especially as we know they’ve previously expressed concern about how some elements of driven grouse moor management (i.e. the illegal persecution of raptors) “threatens to undermine the reputation of the National Park as a high quality wildlife tourism destination” (see here). Indeed, some people on Twitter have been saying they won’t visit the CNP while this level of wildlife killing continues.

However, far from condemning the latest mountain hare massacre, the CNPA’s statement almost suggests that this level of killing is acceptable because it was “part of a planned annual management cull“. Eh? Planned by whom? And is the use of the words ‘planned‘ and ‘management‘ supposed to imply that this wasn’t just a gang of gamekeepers off on another unregulated killing-spree but rather was a carefully-thought out cull, with mountain hare population figures rigorously and accurately assessed to ensure the cull was sustainable? If so, where are those figures, who collected them, and can we all see them, please?

Take out the words ‘planned’ and ‘management’ and you get: “The hare cull was part of an annual cull“.

The CNPA says: “We expect moorland managers to ensure any culls do not threaten the conservation status of mountain hares“. Really? Why would anyone expect moorland managers to voluntarily act in this way? This is an industry well-known for not adhering to some statutory wildlife and environmental legislation, let alone voluntary adherence to requests, as we’ve discussed before (here). How can the CNPA be so naive? Or is it just easier to put out a bland statement that really says nothing of any use than it is to properly investigate the circumstances of these mountain hare massacres?

It’s not very impressive. In fact it’s as unimpressive as SNH’s view, as reported in Rob Edwards’ piece in the Herald (here):

‘SNH agreed that it was difficult to judge whether the cull was excessive or not. It was aiming to improve its population estimates of mountain hares by 2017, and reiterated its call for “restraint on large-scale culls of mountain hares“‘.

In other words, SNH doesn’t have a clue about how sustainable this cull was, has no intention of trying to find out, is asking (not telling) the landowners to show some restraint, but don’t worry folks because there’ll be a better way of assessing mountain hare numbers by 2017. So until then lads, fill your boots.

Of course, these large-scale mountain hare killing-sprees should now have ended (temporarily) as we’ve entered the closed season which is supposed to prevent the lawful killing of mountain hares during certain periods of the year (1st March – 31st July). Whether the closed season will be adhered to is another matter – who is monitoring this? The same organisations monitoring the ‘sustainability’ of mountain hare massacres (i.e. nobody)?

If you’re as unimpressed with the CNPA’s reaction as we are, you might want to send an email to Hamish Trench, Conservation Director of the CNPA, to tell him what you think: hamishtrench@cairngorms.co.uk

You might also want to have your say on the future of National Parks, as suggested by Mark Avery last week (here). If the CNPA and SNH aren’t going to speak out against mountain hare massacres, you can!

Recently we published some photographs of a load of dead mountain hares with some people lined up behind the corpses, grinning at what they’d done (see here).

These photographs caused quite a reaction, both from the general public, who were appalled at such scenes, and from the grouse-shooting industry who generally said the photographs were old and large scale hare culling no longer took place.

They were lying, of course.

We were recently sent some photographs taken by someone who wishes to remain anonymous. The photographs were taken on 25th February 2016 in the Cairngorms National Park. On first glance, it looks like some blokes out with their vehicles in the snow:

But when you zoom in, you see exactly what’s been going on:

That’s a truckload of dead mountain hares.

This photograph was taken from the Lecht road (the A939 Cockbridge to Tomintoul road). According to the grid reference we were given, these vehicles were parked on the Allargue Estate. Now that doesn’t mean that the hares had been massacred on the Allargue Estate or indeed that Allargue Estate staff were in any way involved. We’d be surprised if they were because the Allargue Estate was one of the first fully accredited members of the Wildlife Estates Scotland initiative and a gamekeeper here won the Purdey Gold Award in 2014 for Game & Conservation. According to the Purdey Awards website this estate “works tirelessly to uphold the Wildlife Estates Scotland high standards of wildlife management”.

Grouse-shooting estates have been slaughtering mountain hares for a long time. They do it because they believe mountain hares carry a disease (Louping Ill virus) which can affect their red grouse stocks (i.e. the number of red grouse available to be shot, for fun, during the grouse-shooting season). We, and others, have been writing about this for some time. Here are some previous blogs we’ve written about mountain hare massacres on grouse moors in the Angus Glens (here and here), Aberdeenshire (here) and the Lammermuirs (here).

Last year, SNH called on landowners to practice “voluntary restraint” and try to reign in their lust for slaying mountain hares (here). We said it was a pointless call (here) and clearly we were right judging by the photograph above. Last year, ten conservation organisations asked SNH to impose an immediate three-year ban on hare culling (here) to allow an assessment of how these large-scale and indiscriminate culls were affecting the conservation status of the mountain hare. Landowners reacted strongly against this proposal (read the link!) and SNH refused to impose the temporary ban because the evidence for action was lacking, apparently.

Marvellous. Welcome to Scotland and especially to the Cairngorms National Park.

Rob Edwards has covered this story today (here) as has Mark Avery (here).

UPDATE 11.30hrs: Scottish Land & Estates has issued a statement in response to Rob Edwards’ article in the Herald. You really have to read it. Bear in mind it’s not a spoof. See here.

UPDATE 14th March 2016: A few more blogs covering this atrocity –

The Ferret (by Rob Edwards) here

ParkWatchScotland here

Another one from Mark Avery (#HelpingItHappen) here

Scottish Greens here

UPDATE 14th March 16.00hrs: Cairngorms National Park Authority responds here