Last month we blogged about how Scottish gamekeepers had been accused of making ‘misleading’ and ‘greatly exaggerated’ claims about mountain hares, according to SNH staff emails, uncovered by a Freedom of Information request from Scottish animal welfare charity OneKind (see here).
This has now been followed up by a superb blog written by James Silvey, RSPB Scotland’s Species and Habitats Officer. It’s called Myth-busting mountain hare management claims’ and the original blog can be read on the RSPB website here.
We’ve reproduced it here:
Myth-busting mountain hare management claims by James Silvey, RSPB Scotland
Certain species are synonymous with the uplands in Scotland: golden eagle, red grouse, ptarmigan and of course the mountain hare. But if you were to take a walk in some areas of the highlands you might struggle to see many mountain hare or in some areas, any at all. The reason? Years and years of large-scale culls on intensively managed grouse moors have reduced the numbers of this emblem of our mountains to catastrophically low numbers.
Recent media activities of some landowning and gamekeeping representative bodies have attempted to paint a much rosier picture of the status of mountain hare in Scotland. They suggest that decisions need to be made on the basis of recent evidence, and not ideology. The evidence they currently refer to is a recent piece of GWCT research that analysed data on hares gathered by estates from 2001-17 and found that mountain hare fair better on managed grouse moors despite large-scale culls. It is telling, though, that these interests wilfully exclude and ignore additional recent science, thereby contradicting their call for decisions to be evidence-based.
Last year two independently peer-reviewed reports provided compelling evidence that hare numbers had declined precipitously and that the range of mountain hares living in Scotland had decreased (Massimino et al. 2018 & Watson & Wilson 2018). Indeed, the evidence is crystal clear: mountain hares have declined across Scotland and in areas where red grouse management is the primary land use, these declines have been the most severe.
In 2015 and 2017 RSPB Scotland and a coalition of 10 other environmental organisations called on the Scottish Government to enact a moratorium on mountain hare culls and highlighted that the current guidance of voluntary restraint was not working and would continue to fail. Since then mountain hare culls have been documented across the Scottish uplands and on the 1st of August 2019 the mountain hare open season will begin again.
So what will change? Well, sometime in August we expect the Grouse Moor Management Group to deliver its findings on the environmental impacts of grouse moor management including the management of mountain hares. The person heading this review has given assurances that it will be strictly evidence based. As such, we trust that it will highlight the current unsustainable practise of mountain hare management and recommend better protections for mountain hares to ensure their long-term future as part of Scotland’s upland fauna.
RSPB Scotland agrees with those lobbying on behalf of the shooting industry and landowning sector that decisions should be based on evidence. We, however, believe that decisions should not be based on selective evidence, but should include all recent published science on the issue.
ENDS
Raptor Persecution UK 
Of course such decisions should be based on evidence, all the evidence. It seems based on the evidence so far presented that the utterances or even written words of those representing the “game lobby”, for want of a better phrase, cannot and should not be trusted, as to quote GW Bush they sometimes misspeak the truth ( for ordinary folk this means tell lies!) Then we already knew that.
Yet further evidence that the grouse shooting community is intent, indeed obsessed, not only with recklessly killing natural predators of grouse, but also attempting to eliminate other food supplies which attract predators. Gamekeepers try to pretend that intensively managed grouse moors are enhancing biodiversity, but who do they think they’re kidding? Indeed they love to boast to their peers about the numbers of hares, foxes, crows and raptors they slaughter. I have experienced this first hand when I worked in a Scottish Regional Park which also operated as a grouse moor. As a consequence of excessive muirburn, smaller animals like voles, reptiles and many invertebrate populations were decimated. Nature is simply treated with contempt, and despite the exaggerated claims made by the gamekeepers, grouse shooting moorlands are virtual deserts compared to their natural, undisturbed state. We need to remove this curse from the hills and allow biodiversity to flourish.
I saw a post on a Moorland Group FB page last winter containing a photograph of gamekeepers and representatives of the GWCT on the hill in darkness with torches allegedly counting the numbers of mountain hares. They claimed that the method was scientifically sound.
Personally I struggle to understand how this could be possible.
I’ve seen how the GWCT deal with the claim that pheasants are responsible for the huge upsurge in Lyme’s Disease and am singularly unimpressed. Their own scientist Dr. Andrew Hoodless, now Head of Wetland Research signed off a paper in 1999 stating,
“We conclude that pheasants are reservoir competent for Lyme borreliosis spirochetes and potentially play an important role in the maintenance of B. burgdorferi s.l. in England and Wales.”
Dr. Hoodless has never retracted.
To my knowledge no further research has been done in regards to the role pheasants play in the country wide spread of these birds which are the second most prolific vector for Lyme’s Disease next to the humble wood mouse. The difference being that 45 million wood mice are not released annually into our countryside.
My own personal opinion is that the policies of the GWCT inform how the science is to be presented rather the science being used to benefit a healthy ecology.
I wonder how their hare counting methodology will stand up to scrutiny. Not very well I wager.
There seems to be no legal or political barrier to the Scottish government imposing a moratorium on shooting hares. Public opinion would likely be overwhelmingly in favour and the science is pretty clear. It would be a realistic test of SG of SG intentions in the short to medium term and the least they could do.
When will our MSP’s listen to facts rather than fiction???? Is money the answer???
Funny I was listening to this podcast yesterday and the one thing that stood out for me was Duncan Orr Ewing’s frustration at the insubstantial nature of the GWCT’s ‘evidence’ for and results of the mountain hare cull – https://paceproductionsuk.libsyn.com/62-rsbp-gwct-face-to-face-hen-harriers-mountain-hair-illegal-persecution-grouse-moor-management-habitat-management-working-together