Elena Whitham MSP visits Tarras Valley Nature Reserve to watch breeding hen harriers

Well done to the Scottish Raptor Study Group who hosted Elena Whitham MSP this week when she visited the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve at Langholm to see breeding hen harriers.

Elena is the Scottish Parliament’s Hen Harrier Species Champion, an initiative set up by Scottish Environment LINK to encourage MSPs to champion threatened and iconic species and habitats.

She was lucky enough to see a food pass between the breeding adults during her visit.

Strangely, the chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, Alex Hogg, recently told a parliamentary committee that the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve was a “species desert” and “there is nothing there at all” [now that it’s no longer being managed as a driven grouse moor].

I’ll return to Hogg’s parliamentary evidence session in a separate blog because it was quite something and it even prompted the RSPB to write to the committee to correct his false claims.