Further to the news that Scottish Natural Heritage has issued a multi-year licence to allow the mass culling of ravens in Highland Perthshire just ‘to see what happens’ (see here), RSPB Scotland has just published a blog in response.
Here’s a short excerpt:
“Now – to this research licence. In the first instance, we doubt very much that the proposal in this case has anything to do with the given reason for the research licence request – ostensibly to ‘improve understanding of factors affecting key wader species’. In light of previous loud complaints by estates in this and other grouse shooting areas about raven predation of red grouse, we and many others see this raven research proposal as simply a rather transparent mechanism whereby a perceived pest species can be removed to benefit red grouse, with the conservation of wading birds as a by-product.
We would have hoped that, on receipt of such an application, the location for the study would have set some alarm bells ringing amongst SNH staff, since this area has been clearly identified by the Scottish Government, the police and other authoritative commentators for many years as a raptor persecution “black hole”, where golden eagles and other protected raptors suspiciously disappear without trace or explanation”.
To read the RSPB Scotland blog in full, please see here.
For those who oppose the raven cull licence, please consider sending an email to SNH Chair Mike Cantlay: chair@snh.gov.uk
Please also consider signing this petition HERE
UPDATE 27 April 2018: ‘No justification’ for raven cull licence, says RSPB Scotland Director (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
Well, the RSPB is unequivocal!
Good to see such a robust response from the RSPB. Robust and accurate.
Delighted that the RSPB is so decisive and robust in its stance.
Has anyone had a response to an email to SNH Chair? I sent mine the same day you broke this news, and so far zilch.
You can just hear the GWCT shills saying “Now if you made it about waders……..”
I have sent the following email to Chair at SNH. If Chair is a person and not a piece of furniture I await an answer.
My email:
Some of my following questions are seeking “Freedom of Information” answers. I do hope you will comply with this request.
1. Ravens are now going to be killed in an awful and unnecessary experiment. Please provide the scientific reports that show this is necessary?
2. If your only information that killing ravens is necessary, is based on “say so” from non-scientific sources, please state these sources in your answers?
The SNH have such a bad record on conservation. You seem to issue licences to kill protected wild life at the whim of the shooting estates. All to conserve overpopulation of red grouse, or worse, pheasant, an alien species.
The SNH are so keen to eradicate alien species from Scotland. One notable case is the wallabies of Inchconnachan, on Loch Lomond.
3. Do the SNH ever investigate the need for killing precious wildlife? It appears not.
4. Why does the SNH kowtow to the whims of a shooting industry that is stuck in outlawed Victorian attitudes?
5. Why does the SNH continue to ignore the criminality that is rife within the shooting industry? If they cannot comply with the law then close them down and apply severe penalties.
Too often through the wealth within the shooting industry, they can circumvent the law, making crucial and indisputable evidence inadmissible.
The SNH should be the protectors of Scotland Natural Heritage and not merely stand by, allowing the shooting industry to wipe out animals and birds without scientific proof that their evil deeds are necessary.
I look forward to your answers.
Doug……
Well said , Doug . Let’s hope you get a truthful and transparent answer but I won’t hold my breath.Theres a bad smell about SNH just now and I hope internal disquiet. Their credibility is gone. Not fit for purpose..
Mr Carbo, I have seen SNH doings over the last 20yrs and I do not have any respect for them. They are often clearly in the hands of the shooting industry and like them will put on shams to cover their failings.
The only quibble I have with RSPB’s response is that they appear to imply that the conservation of breeding waders is a serious objective of the consortium. I’m sure most of us are highly sceptical, to say the least, that the Raven killers collectively care a toss about the status of waders. It’s simply a fake pretence at a conservation aim designed to pull the wool over SNH’s eyes. The only other alternative I consider feasible is that someone from or associated with SNH could have suggested the inclusion of benefiting breeding waders. I suggest this due to personal experience in other cases, also involving SNH. Whatever the background, Scottish Natural Heritage is rapidly approaching the point of losing all credibility. It’s already lost most of it.
‘The only quibble I have with RSPB’s response is that they appear to imply that the conservation of breeding waders is a serious objective of the consortium’
I read it as the exact opposite Iain.
anandprasad. I should probably have said that the wording of “with the conservation of wading birds as a by-product” was ambiguous. I was imagining how the licence applicants might choose to interpret it as an admission by RSPB that the cull would have a positive outcome.
They probably do care about waders, well at least some – they enjoy slaughtering Snipe as well.
Ravens do not normally predate adult waders and so presumably the alleged raven impacts would be predicted to be on wader chicks. Detailed ecology work on practically all breeding upland and lowland wader species present in proposed Perthshire raven cull area show the importance of food availability, vegetation structure and cover from predators which explains the habitat preferences of wader chicks. An area is poorly managed for waders if it has most/all of its untidy, wet features drained for example through intensive farming or grouse moor management.
When tracking Golden Plover families in northern England, scientists (Mark Whittingham et al) found that chicks selected the edges of marshy habitats (never the middle of them). They recommended that drainage ditches should be blocked, in order to provide more suitable feeding habitat and shelter from aerial predators. Similar findings have been found for curlew, redshank and lapwing. The provision of wet features, particularly foot-drains, is crucial to the successful fledging of species in a more open landscape like lapwings.
In my own case I have worked (and published on) the breeding biology of whimbrel in Shetland. The chicks of whimbrel, like most waders, are precocial and forage independently of their parents within a few days of hatching, so need cover to hide in when their parents are not there to look after them. The whimbrel chick habitats were characterised by small, wet and often linear features within homogenous blanket bog habitats. The habitat differences between adult feeding/nesting locations and chick foraging locations were very striking and suggested that the presence of both types of habitat were important to whimbrel on Shetland. The differences in adult and chick habitat usage was attributed to the chick needs with respect to food, mobility and importantly, cover from aerial predators. Looking simplistically at breeding adult waders in open landscapes and presuming they prefer these habitats fails to account for their chicks needs.
In Perthshire there are a range of aerial predators and what all the wader species need is cover for their chicks and not fewer in number of one potential predator. The question for those seeking to ‘help waders’ in this ‘experiment’ is how they will account for the crucial wader chick habitat requirements outlined above in their study area and disentangle them from alleged raven predation?
If people want to see, all the paper work SNH possess on this matter, a Freedom of Information request been made. If to you want to join it, Google , <https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/perthshire_raven_cull. You should go to the FOI page and register to "Follow". SNH are saying they will provide the material by the 22 May.
It depends on the wader species slightly; some have high levels of egg predation; eggs smashed in nest as opposed to entirely taken as in case of fox or other mammalian predator. Golden plover have high levels of egg predation so do Lapwing.
Peter Plover, where on earth did you come up with these ‘facts’? It seems contradictory to state that “It depends on the wader species slightly”, followed by “some have high levels of egg predation.” In my research on Ravens, during which I spent many hours observing foraging behaviour of both breeding pairs and large groups of non-breeding immatures, I found very little evidence that the Ravens were impacting on wader eggs or chicks. The cohorts of Ravens, during the breeding wader season, focused their attention on scavenging sheep carrion (including dead lambs) and afterbirths in lambing fields, interspersed with foraging in rough grassland supporting high densities of field voles (and presumably also feeding on invertebrates). It was not possible to observe whether such foraging birds were also feeding on wader eggs and nests, but I saw very little distraction behaviour by breeding adult waders to indicate this was happening to any great extent. I did feel that with Meadow Pipits nesting at densities of approximately 100 pairs per hectare in heather moorland, they would probably have their nests occasionally predated by the vole-foraging Ravens, but annual censuses did not indicate breeding numbers significantly affected by anything apart from poor weather and/or muirburning. Unless you can provide credible statistics, I think it’s dangerous and misleading to spread the belief that waders experience “high levels of egg predation” by Ravens.
Email sent and petition signed and shared.
Ravens and waders have co-existed for ever; SNH have been suckered !
I don’t like to see any creature shot for any reason at all. Please leave nature alone .
There is an interesting post from Alan Stewart’s blog on the cull, the missing eagle and the Bleasdale case.
https://wildlifedetective.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/the-bleasdale-estate-case-and-other-frustrating-news-comment/
JR?
The more I read about this wretched business the more I find myself thinking that it’s the UK’s version of Japan’s “scientific whaling” …. and just as convincing.
Some background info on Mike Cantley.
https://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/dr-mike-cantlay-appointed-chair-scottish-natural-heritage
It appears that he worked for Visitscotland for which he received his OBE ‘for services to tourism’. Then he became the chair of Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd.
You would think the tourist aspect of this cull would be something he would be concerned about. I saw at least one comment on a cull petition of someone having second thoughts about having a holiday where i live.
Personally i am sceptical about anyone who gets to be a chair of just about any organization. Interchangeable mass manufactured chairs comes to mind.
He is also chair of Scottish Funding Council
http://www.sfc.ac.uk/news/2017/news-62824.aspx
Anandprasad. Landowner get “support”, cash – great lumps of it for promoting tourism, so an ex-boss of visitscotland could well see grouse, as attracting tourists and raptors as putting them off. The question is, where does he see the balance.
In the past the Chair and the CEO of SNH were often scientists, he is not. Nor is Francesca Osowska, the CEO.
Holyrood says Francesca Osowska, “was educated in Cumbria and at Cambridge University where she obtained an MA in economics. She also received an MA in European economics from the College of Europe in Bruges. She was principal private secretary to Alex Salmond as First Minister between 2007 and 2009, then in December 2009 moved to become director for Culture, External Affairs and Tourism.
Osowska was appointed director for Housing, Regeneration and the Commonwealth Games in the Scottish Government in January 2010 and subsequently moved to the post of director for the Commonwealth Games and Sport in January 2013. She was appointed as director for the Scotland Office in the UK Government in January 2015. Osowska was awarded an OBE for services to Government and the Commonwealth Games in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours in January 2015.”
https://www. holyrood.com/articles/news/francesca-osowska-appointed-scottish-natural-heritage-chief-executive
That is, the Scottish Government prefers managers to scientists.
Career civil servant