The controversy surrounding changes to Scotland’s new grouse moor licences continues (see here, here and here for background) and is now being picked up by mainstream media.
The Guardian‘s Scotland editor, Sev Carrell, wrote about it yesterday and he included quotes from two wildlife charity directors who refer to the situation as a “shambles“.
Anne McCall, Director of RSPB Scotland, is quoted:
“We believe that these changes completely undermine the primary intention of this legislation to tackle raptor persecution and will only give comfort to those who intend to keep killing our birds of prey.
Leaders across the rest of the UK are looking to Scotland and this legislation to show them the art of the possible, with an example that they might soon follow. But the promise of a real deterrent to criminality on Scotland’s grouse moors has been allowed to descend into a shambles“.
Robbie Marsland, Director of the League Against Cruel Sports (Scotland & Northern Ireland) is quoted:
“Deliberately killing a protected bird of prey was a wildlife crime before the new legislation was enacted, and remains so, despite this shambles.
But any suggestion that ‘grouse moor management’ only applies to a small area around the shooting butts is clearly ludicrous. For example, when the league conducted an 18-month survey of six shooting estates we found traps and snares littered across the entire estates“.
An unnamed spokesperson for NatureScot says the revised licences “were robust“. They’re clearly not!
The article also states that, ‘The Scottish government and NatureScot said they were considering amendments to the act, but refused to specify what would be done’.
You can read the article in full, here.
UPDATE 24 January 2025: NatureScot capitulated on grouse moor licensing after legal threats by game-shooting industry (here)
UPDATE 10 February 2025: Parliamentary questions lodged on grouse moor licensing shambles in Scotland (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
Naturescot are clearly not fit for purpose. For years the senior people in the organisation have been in the pockets of the organised criminals who have been killing birds of prey. I despair if they are the body who are in charge of determining the implementation of the legislation. The organisations who realise the issues have little or no say in correct implementation.
A disgrace to animals and nature, however what goes round comes round. Mother natures revenge hopefully a bleak outlook and lots of bad luck on its way.
I’m pleased this is in the mainstream media – hopefully people (voters) who may not be particularly interested in land management will correctly identify that this is as much an argument about democratic values of the Scottish Government as anything else. To me it is a measure of the extent to which the institution is master of its own house, or is merely on the leash at the discretion of landed interests & grouse shooting establishment forces both inside and outwith Scotland.
Was also good to see LACS get across the point that “vermin control” to produce grouse regards is estate wide. In fact once a moor is established as productive and is ticking over nicely (i.e. all of the resident / breeding ‘vermin’ have been wiped out*) then most of the work = killing action takes place on the boundaries – especially a boundary onto a neighbour that does not employ gamekeepers. Remember, you have created a prey-rich predator-free vacuum and it is on the boundary that the young of all the predators in the district will try to travel in to try and establish territories.
*not easy to wipe out all of the resident breeding stoats, but highly territorial & obvious species like ravens, foxes, buzzards, harriers – the locating of which is much easier – can all be dealt with by a motivated team of keepers within a couple of seasons, even if they are a new team starting anew on a ‘shite infested’ moor.
If these selfish & entitled arseholes are adamant that the licence should only apply to tens of metres around the butts, then fine – as long as all of the keepering activity is also restricted to tens of metres around the butts!
I imagine you caught the BBC Radio 4 program Rare Earth this lunchtime on raptors and raptor persecution? I though the presenters cut off the RSPB person and no mention was made of the fact that there will be major under-reporting of UK unlawful raptor deaths whereas the Grouse moor spokesman made much of supposedly small numbers of such crimes . Not very accurate or balanced conclusion to the piece when the BBC insists it is always balanced
This is truly shocking news, however should I be surprised by the Scottish Governments policies…….
Drugs Death Debacle, Botched Bottle Banks, A9 Duelling Duplicity, Gender Recognition Relapse, Ferries Fiasco and now Grouse Licensing Liability.
I wish the ambiguous headline “Scottish conservation agency accused of undermining law to protect birds of prey” read this, instead:
‘Scottish conservation agency accused of undermining law which protects birds of prey’
Nevertheless, on the issue at hand, MSPs get help in drafting new legislation, from the Parliamentary Counsel Office:
“Our purpose is:
It appears they have spectacularly failed.
Or… did some legal ‘expert’ fudge it deliberately?
How about, for example, limiting each estate to just the one license?
Surely a sensible definition of a grouse moor is any land from which grouse are driven towards waiting guns. Applying this would help to close the loophole, adding a large e.g. 1km zone around this land would catch out estates involved in wildlife crime on land close to grouse moors.
I understand your thinking but to me your suggestion offers them an almost equivalent massive loophole. To me I’m 100% certain that the definition has got to be the entire landholding where gamekeepers operate or the thing just won’t stand a chance of working. Keepers would just do the dirty work outside of any internal invisible line, which may be a bit of inconvenience or more costly in time to catch up with the bird(s) in question, but is still easily do-able.
Think of the recent RSPB / Channel 4 video – let us pretend that it was Scotland and the area they were sitting out on became a week later a “licensed area”. In your scenario, I think that all they would do (yes, perhaps an inconvenience) is to relocate their Black Ops to the next-best fruitful location they could think of that is outwith the “licensed area”. Much like fishing, it might not be their favourite spot but they will get them sooner or later. Likewise with any dodgy cage traps that by ‘happy accident’ catch buzzards, they would be relocated to outside of the licensed area and perhaps increased in numbers to compensate & keep up the catch rate.
The only possible deterrent that your suggestion might offer is regards poison baits, as they know there is a risk the victim(s) might consume it where they placed it (ie outside the “licensed area”) but could fly off / glide to a crash landing and expire within the licensed area and corpses may be found & reported.
For me its got to be every bit of land that keepers operate over that is licensed or the thing is dead in the water – lost in corruption & bad faith. If that happens then the best thing for everyone to do would be help move the train on down the track to a complete ban.
Matt – the entire estate needs to be covered by the land covered in a license because estates often extend into areas where other land uses operate and tenant farmers can easily be persuaded to help the land owner out by allowing game keepers to carry out ‘vermin’ control activities on their rented land.
As things stand, I can’t see how the law could be applied in a consistent and fair way to all license applicants without a clear definition in the terms of the license of the word ‘land’.
And for that definition to be decided in a fair way, all parties who have contributed to the decision-making process need to be consulted on a similar scale and level of detail as those shooting interests appear to have been involved with NatureScot.
Hopefully this is an opportunity for us to nail this legislation and ensure it fulfills the intended aim of the bill.
Call me skeptical but, this was probably the plan all along by NatureScot. They will probably come back with a little more land around the butts to try to appease us and the darkside.
If this wasn’t real it would be funny!
NatureScot are little more than peacemakers. Anything for a quiet life.
“Call me skeptical but, this was probably the plan all along by NatureScot.”
NatureScot did not draft the wording of the legislation.
This isn’t the first time a piece of legislation which was supposed to protect nature has failed. The original Hunting Act 2004 which was supposed to prohibit fox hunting with dogs also contained loopholes which have been fully exploited by those with a mind to continue hunting foxes with hounds.
This then raises the question, were inherent flaws in the legislation deliberately included, or were those who drafted the legislation just incompetent?
It would seem that in both cases it was parliaments intention to try and introduce legislation to prohibit activities which the vast majority of the public find abhorrent (killing foxes with dogs, and the illegal persecution of raptors). So just what is going wrong? Are there dark forces at work to protect the interests of a wealthy elite who won’t allow anything to interfere with their activities? Or is the parliamentary legislative process just not fit for purpose?
I really hope enough of the public write to their SMP’s expressing outrage at what has taken place, and SMP’s challenge the Scottish government to ensure the legislation is amended to make it do what we were all led to believe it would do- provide a means to rid the countryside of the shooting estates which engage in criminal activity.
Dark forces I would say, otherwise just known as the Establishment. Our very own better educated and more cultured (and older) version of the New York Mafia. Its maybe panned out a bit like the recent P&O thing – i.e. one or more grouse shooting devotees among the international finance houses or global banks on which UK Government relies will have spit the dummy and metaphorically “unfriended” the Scottish Govt. And some Sir Humphrey Appleby type character will have been wheeled in to make a suitable fudge of this offensive new legislation, the significance of which will be missed by most people. Probably the same people that managed to justify why convoys of vehicles packed with Guns, Loaders & Beaters could safely travel around the moors during COVID, while ordinary plebs were restricted in seeing dying relatives / attending funerals, etc (and gave out billions to friendly companies running useless Track & Trace.)
Moments like these are a reminder of who really runs the show for all of the countries within the UK.
The only positive to take from this is that at least our friends in the grouse shooting industry have highlighted a seemingly fatal flaw within the drafting of the legislation…It’s far better this is known now than that the first Prosecution cases fail or a year or two later are overturned in the higher courts. If it’s poorly drafted legislation it will it never be made good in the courts – only by a good ammendment in Parliament.
if the shooting industry want the licence to only cover the area they shoot over then the predtor control licence should also only be valid in this area.