That landmark vote in the Scottish Parliament last night, in support of the general principles of the Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Bill, was a significant milestone in what has been a long and often challenging campaign.
And although it’s a long way from being over, we should all take a breath and take the time to celebrate this achievement, as well as contemplate the years of hard grind that brought us to this point.
At the heart of it, and indeed was the trigger for putting this proposed legislation on the table, has been the ongoing illegal killing of birds of prey on driven grouse moors, despite raptors supposedly having full legal protected status since the 1954 Protection of Birds Act, almost 70 years ago.
I’ve heard several MSPs in the last few months, and indeed in the Chamber yesterday, talking about how we all owe a debt of gratitude to the gamekeepers and their lords and masters in the grouse shooting industry. I’d agree to a point, because without that industry’s ongoing criminality against birds of prey it would have been even more difficult to achieve yesterday’s result.
I don’t believe that they’re all ‘at it’; I personally know a few who feel as strongly as I do about protecting birds of prey, but unfortunately they are in the minority and not enough of them were prepared to stand up against what has become a pantomime of denial, attempting to mask what can only be described as archaic savageness. The world has moved on and now that industry must, too.
There are indeed people to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude and foremost amongst them are the members of the Scottish Raptor Study Group (SRSG), not least to those who argued so persuasively when they presented their petition for gamebird licensing to the Scottish Parliament back in 2016.
But also to all those SRSG fieldworkers who have dedicated years, sometimes decades, of their lives to voluntarily monitoring the status of birds of prey across Scotland, whose hard-won data allowed many talented academics to join the dots and present a compelling argument that the scale of illegal persecution was so extensive it was having population-level effects on the distribution and abundance of a number of species across Scotland, notably the golden eagle, hen harrier, red kite and peregrine.
Without those data, and the subsequent scientific publications on which they’re founded, the Scottish Government would not have had the incontrovertible evidence it needed to be convinced that raptor persecution on some (many) Scottish grouse moors continues, even to this day.
There are many others who also deserve credit but I’m going to save that until we reach the end and the Bill gains Royal assent (I do wonder whether the bloke in the crown will be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, given his long-standing personal involvement in grouse shooting).
And yes, there is still a long way to go with this Bill but the bottom line is that a licensing scheme for grouse shooting, in whatever form it takes, will now become a legal requirement. I don’t think any of us doubts for one minute the struggles that lie ahead at Stage 2 against those who will seek to water down the restrictions as far as they can – representatives from the grouse shooting industry have made no secret of their intentions and judging by some of the comments made in the Chamber yesterday, they have the ear of not just the Scottish Conservatives to ease their way.
In the end though, only 32 voted against the general principles of the Bill and 82 voted to support it. Of the 32 who voted against it, 31 were Conservatives and 1 was the SNP’s Fergus Ewing:
But in the bigger picture, even if the industry succeeds in weakening the Bill and this new legislation turns out to be as unenforceable as all the previous attempts have been to make this industry accountable for its criminal and environmentally damaging actions, then it will simply make the case for a ban on grouse shooting all the more appealing, and, actually, achievable.
If you missed yesterday’s debate you can watch a video archive here and you can read the official report below (starts at page 31). The Tory contributions weren’t quite as dishonourable as those we saw on display in the Westminster debate on grouse shooting back in 2016 (here) but some were still decidedly unpleasant:
Raptor Persecution UK 