Press release from white-tailed eagle species champion Mark Ruskell MSP (19/4/18), following the recent suspicious disappearance of sea eagle Blue X in grouse moor dominated Glen Quaich, Perthshire:
WILDLIFE CRIME IS HIGHLAND PERTHSHIRE’S SHAME
Green MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife Mark Ruskell has branded Highland Perthshire a wildlife crime hotspot after a further disappearance of a White Tailed Eagle around the Glen Quaich area and called on the Scottish Government to finally act by bringing in a licensing regime for driven grouse shooting estates.
Raptor Persecution UK highlighted Perthshire North, as a hotspot for raptor disappearance. Six satellite-tagged eagles have disappeared in suspicious circumstances in what is a relatively small area. Green MSP Mark Ruskell called on the Scottish Government to face up to Perthshire’s shame and ensure those responsible for eagle disappearances face justice.
The individual eagle who recently vanished was named Blue X and was fledged in NE Fife. In his role as the Parliament’s White Tailed Eagle champion Mr. Ruskell last year visited the nest site where the bird fledged and spoke to volunteers who had spent hundreds of hours guarding the site from wildlife criminals. Mr. Ruskell also sits on the Scottish Parliament’s Environment Committee which last year agreed that a licensing regime for driven grouse moor estates should be put in place.
Mark Ruskell said: “Highland Perthshire is renowned for the beauty of the landscape and phenomenal wildlife, but this latest incident brings shame to the area. It’s quite clear from the satellite tags that these birds are disappearing around driven grouse moors. Some disreputable estates and gamekeepers have a bizarre Victorian attitude that wildlife should be exterminated, despite wildlife tourism bringing millions into the Scottish economy. Driven grouse estates in particular are attempting to deliver unsustainable levels of grouse populations which lead them to cull mountain hares for example.
It can’t go on; the Scottish Government is prevaricating over the setting up of a licensing scheme for driven grouse moor estates that would separate the good from the bad. Wildlife crime is notoriously difficult for the Police to track down and there is a wall of silence in communities, no-one wants to call out the illegal actions.
I’m particularly gutted to see this bird disappear, volunteers had spent months on end guarding its nest site in Fife and I even saw the bird myself from afar last year.”
ENDS
Well done, Mark, and thank you.
UPDATE 21 April 2018: Green MSP angers gamekeepers over missing bird of prey (article in The National, here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
The futures Green , Yes ?
the thing I don’t understand is some of the language used. Andy Wightman in reference to the golden eagle said “continues to thrive across Scotland” and now Mark Ruskell describes north Perthshire as having “phenomenal wildlife”.
Now I know Andy went on to say the eagle should return to parts of Scotland where it has been absent for too long, but I don’t know why the current situation is bigged-up. The current situation is impoverished and has been left like that for too long on the too difficult to fix heap by successive politicians (good for Roseanna Cunningham to have a go now). Is that because politicians really think its broadly all okay out there but for these hotspots. I think they need to be picked up on the language because it perpetuates the rogue and the bad apple narrative put out by the shooting lot.
Golden eagles should be described as not thriving, but having range expansion, even into non sporting land, constrained by a land use reliant on criminality widely practiced across eastern highlands. Who’s to say where golden eagles would be if they didn’t get rubbed out across the shooting hills. I love north Perthshire, but its wildlife is not phenomenal and its landscape is scarred by tracks and fencing and in the spring smoke plumes. North Perthshire should be a whole lot more interesting than it is.
What Mark more accurately could have said was, north Perthshire has some phenomenal wildlife, but not where there is intensive shooting, and not where the tentacles of that business model’s impacts spread the absence of hen harriers, red kites, and golden eagles.
Well said Bimbling. Politicians, even those who are on-side, want it both ways. It’s a sickness which pervades most of Scotland: “keep singing its praises, whatever you do!” Our TV screens are full of this stuff, whether it’s honestly-held or deliberate distortion, we’re constantly told “Everything’s wonderful up here!”
I honesty don’t believe some of you people , did you read the correct piece ?????
Yep , I read “beauty of the landscape and phenomenal wildlife” and I simply disagree on the description “phenomenal wildlife”. Look for example at the SNH report on the expansion of pine marten and the map of where they now are, and more importantly where they are not.
Its simply not as wonderful as it could be and describing its wildlife as phenomenal is incorrect. I’d say that many predatory birds and animals are much rarer than they could, or should be. That’s all.
Very good of Mark to speak up like that especially pointing out that an enormous amount of volunteer effort went into safeguarding the welfare of Blue X only now to be undone almost certainly by you know who. I do have to echo previous comments though – many of these grouse shooting areas are just shit to visit, drive through or to look for wildlife, they’re crap and need to go. He’s also spoken up about the dangers of waste to energy putting us on the path of less reduce, reuse, recycle and keeping up high levels of waste generation to ensure incinerators are ‘fed’ – a genuine green.