Author: RaptorPersecutionUK

Press release from RSPB (8th December 2020)

New analysis shows that burning of moorlands is the biggest threat to England’s most important places for wildlife

• New analysis of Government data by the RSPB shows that the burning of moorlands is the biggest identified threat to England’s Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).
• The analysis also shows that no reason has been identified for half of England’s SSSIs that are in poor condition.
• These findings have been hidden in the data published by Natural England, which is only based on a small subset of the SSSIs that are in poor condition.

A new analysis of Government data by the RSPB shows that the burning of moorlands is the biggest identified threat to England’s most important places for wildlife, known as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs).

[Grouse moor managers set their moors alight every year, like this one in northern England, at huge environmental cost. Photo by Ruth Tingay]

The other major finding in the analysis is that Natural England has not identified any reason for half of all the English SSSIs that are in poor condition. This means that we do not know why 316,167 hectares of England’s SSSIs are in poor condition, an area roughly the size of Gloucestershire.

Without this information, it will be impossible for Government and Natural England to put in place the actions needed to achieve the target to restore 75% of SSSIs to good condition.

Whilst burning is the largest known cause of SSSIs in poor condition, the analysis also identifies overgrazing and water pollution (especially from agriculture) as being important contributors to the parlous state of these sites.

Moorlands are burned to create habitat for grouse for shooting and also to make them more productive for grazing. This causes long-lasting damage to highly sensitive peatland habitats and the loss of threatened species. It also results in the release of carbon to the atmosphere (adding to climate change), reduces the quality of drinking water (increasing water bills), increases water run-off (exacerbating the risk of flooding) and adds to air pollution.

Natural England publishes the reasons why SSSIs are in poor condition on their website. However, this data is incomplete and misleading. 61% of SSSIs in England are in poor condition. Natural England’s published data only includes the reasons for the poor condition of 8% of SSSIs. It excludes the reasons why 53% of sites are in poor condition because Natural England considers that these are ‘recovering’.

The RSPB’s head of site policy, Kate Jennings said “Many of these ‘recovering’ sites are not recovering at all. Natural England put many SSSIs into this category a decade ago because it assumed that entering into a plan or agreement with the landowner would automatically lead to the restoration of the site, without considering whether the plan was being funded, implemented or proving effective.

A decade on, the evidence clearly shows that this was a mistake. The little SSSI monitoring that Natural England has carried out in recent years shows that ‘unfavourable recovering’ sites are being downgraded to ‘unfavourable no-change’ or ‘unfavourable declining’. This is despite large amounts of public money being spent on agreements which were never going to drive recovery, including some which allow moorland burning to continue and so perpetuate damage to these precious places.”

SSSIs are the best remaining places for England’s wildlife. Studies show that without SSSIs our wildlife would have suffered much worse over the past 50 years. They only cover 6% of England but, if restored, these sites can drive nature’s recovery, contributing to the 30% of land the Government has pledged for nature.

Alongside their role conserving wildlife, protected sites deliver benefits to society of around £1 billion, 9 times the amount of public money spent on them. This includes improving water and air quality, reducing flood risk and storing carbon. They also offer us all a place to access nature, benefiting our mental and physical health.

Natural England’s budget has been slashed by around two thirds over the last decade. As a result, spending on SSSI monitoring fell from nearly £2 million at the start of the decade to £700,000 in 2019 and more than 70% of SSSIs have not been monitored in the last 6 years.

Kate Jennings concludes, “A ban on peatland burning would be a ‘quick win’ in helping to achieve the Government’s target to restore 75% of SSSIs to favourable condition by 2042 (see Note 3), and is also an essential step towards tackling the climate crisis. This is a critical next step in protecting and restoring our internationally important upland peatlands. The Government has repeatedly promised a ban but has not yet done so.

It is also essential that SSSIs are regularly monitored, so that we know what state they are in, what is causing damage to their wildlife and what actions need to be taken. Without this, achieving the Government’s target will be impossible.”.

Case Study – Bowes Moor SSSI, Durham

Bowes Moor SSSI is an extensive tract of moorland in south-west Durham. It has been given international protection for its fragile peatland habitats and diverse moorland bird communities, which include some of our rarest birds of prey – merlin and short-eared owl.

In a 2011 report Natural England used Bowes Moor SSSI as an example of a site that was on track to being fully restored. Almost 10 years on, Natural England’s data now shows that its condition has deteriorated. Parts of the site have been downgraded from ‘unfavourable recovering’ to ‘unfavourable no-change’ due to grouse moor management. The reasons state “Vehicle access damage was evident on the wetter areas of bog, related to the positions of the grit stations and traps (for grouse). Burning has also occurred in the sensitive no burn areas, across a watercourse and on blanket bog where there is an almost continuous cover of sphagnum with frequent bog pools”. This has led to “the exposure of bare peat in places”, resulting in irreversible damage to the habitat and locked up carbon being lost to the atmosphere.

ENDS

Press release from Scottish Government (6 December 2020)

Tougher penalties for animal and wildlife crime

Animals and Wildlife Act comes in to force in Scotland

New measures to increase the maximum available penalties for the worst cases of animal cruelty have come in to force.

Taking effect from 30 November, the Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Act 2020 increases the maximum penalty for the most serious animal welfare and wildlife crimes to five years imprisonment and unlimited fines.

These tougher penalties will be available to courts when convicting those who are involved in animal fighting, causing unnecessary suffering to animals or committing a wide range of serious crimes against wildlife.

[An illegally poisoned buzzard, found on a notorious grouse moor in the Scottish Borders. Nobody was prosecuted for this crime, or any others that have been uncovered on this estate over a period of many years. Photo by RSPB Scotland]

In addition, the new ‘Finn’s Law’ will prevent those who attack or injure service animals in the course of their duties from claiming they did so in self-defence. The law is named after a police dog called Finn who was injured whilst pursuing a suspect with his handler in England in 2016 and sustained serious injuries.

Other parts of the Act will create flexible new powers to allow various Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) regimes to be developed for a wide range of less serious animal health, animal welfare and wildlife offences, outwith the court system. These will be introduced in future secondary legislation.

Changes to restrict the licensed killing of seals are due to take effect from 1 February 2021.

The Scottish Government is also preparing a report to be laid before the Scottish Parliament by 1 March 2021 on the use of acoustic deterrent devices on fish farms.

The reclassification of mountain hares as endangered animals, which will protect the species from being killed, injured or taken (except under licence for certain limited purposes) at any time of the year is expected to come into force on 1 March 2021, subject to certain permitted exceptions.

The introduction of new powers to deal more quickly with animals seized to protect their welfare will be brought forward at the earliest opportunity in 2021.

Rural Affairs Minister Mairi Gougeon said:

“We take animal welfare and wildlife crime very seriously, and we are committed to ensuring Scotland’s animals have the best possible protection, including our dedicated service animals.

“The vast majority of people in Scotland treat animals and wildlife with respect and care, however the small minority who don’t will be held accountable with consequences that reflect the severity of their crime.”

Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) Chief Superintendent Mike Flynn said:

“As Scotland’s animal welfare charity, the Scottish SPCA has long campaigned for harsher sentences for animal and wildlife crime and it is fantastic to see these come in to effect. Sentencing must act as a deterrent and we are hopeful increasing sentences and fines will achieve this.

“A number of the proposals due to come in to force will be transformational. We seize thousands of animals for welfare reasons every year, so the prospect of new powers to get these animals in to a home more quickly is welcome. Currently, animals can spend months or even years in our care and we look forward to working with the Scottish Government to implement the reforms as soon as possible. The Act will enhance Scotland’s position as a global leader in animal welfare standards.”

ENDS

The Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Act 2020 was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 17th June 2020 and it’s been a long time coming. Seven years, actually.

In 2013, the then Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse commissioned a review on whether penalties for wildlife crime should be increased, as a direct response to ongoing illegal raptor persecution. Professor Mark Poustie submitted his report and a series of recommendations, including a penalty increase, in 2015. The then Environment Minister Dr Aileen McLeod broadly accepted those recommendations in 2016 and the Scottish Government committed to progressing them in its 2017/2018 Programme for Government.

The usual foot-dragging exercise followed until 2019 when suddenly the Scottish Government got serious and drafted the Animals and Wildlife Bill, with a public consultation and a number of evidence sessions to bash out the details (e.g. see here).

The new legislation increases the penalties available to a court for a wide variety of animal cruelty and wildlife crime offences. Custodial sentences of up to five years and significant fines are now available for some offences and these include crimes relating to Section 1 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act (Protection of wild birds, their nests & eggs), Section 5 (Prohibition of certain methods of killing or taking wild birds), Section 6 (Sale, possession etc of live or dead wild birds, eggs etc), Section 11 (Prohibition of certain methods of killing or taking wild animals) and Section 15 (Possession of pesticides). NB: Not an exhaustive list, just of significance to this blog.

With this five year custodial threshold comes the re-defining of some of these offences as ‘serious’ (i.e. they attract a custodial sentence of three or more years), which should close some loopholes in relation to the collection of video evidence and its admissibility in court. Effectively it means that Police Scotland now have the authority to apply for permission, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Act 2000 (RIPSA), to install covert cameras on private sporting estates for the purpose of detecting wildlife crime. For anyone interested in further detail it was discussed in an earlier blog (here).

The new legislation also widens the use of vicarious liability in relation to wildlife crime. Vicarious liability, where a landowner/sporting agent etc can be held legally responsible for the criminal activity of an employee (e.g. gamekeeper), was introduced on 1st January 2012 for certain crimes against birds of prey. Under the Animals and Wildlife Act, it now also applies to offences under Section 11 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act (Prohibition of certain methods of killing or taking wild animals) and this essentially refers to the use of snares and traps.

To date there have only been two successful prosecutions for vicarious liability for raptor persecution. That’s hardly an indication of success and there have been many cases where vicarious liability might have applied (e.g. see here for most recent case) but for reasons it refuses to divulge, the Crown Office has failed to pursue a prosecution.

However, according to this recent blog by legal firm Brodies, there’s an increased appetite for prosecutions for vicarious liability in wildlife crime cases and conviction rates are expected to increase.

Let’s see.

The Financial Times published an interesting article a couple of days ago, with the header, ‘Scotland’s grouse shooting licence scheme fuels fears of wider curbs’ (see here).

You’ll note the sub-header includes the oft-repeated-but-not-yet-evidenced claim of ‘threats to the economy’, which seems to be the industry’s go-to response at the first hint of regulation (e.g. see discussion here).

And then there are the usual denials about the extent of illegal raptor persecution and its association with driven grouse shooting. This time the chief denier is Dee Ward, vice chair of the landowners’ lobby group Scottish Land and Estates (SLE), owner of Rottal Estate in Angus and Chairman of the Angus Glens Moorland Group. According to the article, Dee claims that ‘while a few estates might still be breaking the law, growing numbers of golden eagles and other raptors across Scotland showed the vast majority would these days never kill birds of prey’.

Now, whilst Dee is undoubtedly overseeing some great conservation work on his own estate and hosts some breeding raptors that struggle in some other areas of the Angus Glens, his suggestion that ‘a few estates might still be breaking the law‘ is a good example of why the Government’s patience has run out and a licensing scheme will be imposed.

There’s no ‘might be‘ about it. The evidence is irrefutable – some estates are most definitely still breaking the law, with impunity, and while golden eagle populations are increasing in some areas, they are still absent from core parts of their range which just happens to be managed for driven grouse shooting. The same for hen harriers, the same for peregrines, the same for red kites. Scientific reports have shown this for years and years and years and current police investigations reflect the ongoing criminality.

I would suggest that the ‘fear of wider curbs’ is actually a fear of getting caught and losing the right to shoot grouse. Those who manage their grouse shooting estates within the law, as Dee Ward does, have nothing whatsoever to fear from a licensing scheme. It’s those who continue to flout the law, in pursuit of large grouse bags at any cost, who will have the most to fear.

A week ago the Scottish Government finally announced that it had run out of patience with the grouse shooting industry and that it would begin work immediately to bring in a licensing regime for grouse moor management (see here).

[Grouse-shooting butt on a burnt Scottish moor, photo by Ruth Tingay]

Many of the details of the proposed licensing regime are yet to be thrashed out and consultations will need to take place but the commitment has been made that, if the SNP is re-elected in May 2021 then this licensing regime will be enacted during the next Parliament.

The Scottish Greens reacted to last week’s news with a healthy scepticism (see here) and that is reflected in these very welcome Parliamentary questions lodged two days ago by Mark Ruskell MSP:

Here’s some more positive media coverage of the Scottish Government’s announcement last week that it is to introduce a licensing regime for grouse shooting in the face of ongoing wildlife crime directly associated with the ‘sport’.

Have a look at this from renowned author and journalist Jim Crumley in yesterday’s Courier, reproduced below:

Well, that didn’t take long. Last Tuesday, I was explaining why politics and nature didn’t mix well, what with the Scottish Parliament’s failure to endorse a motion to declare a nature emergency, and side-stepping the implementation of mountain hare legislation.

But then two days later, the Scottish Government announced the introduction of a new licensing scheme for driven grouse moors – not five years hence, as suggested by the Werrity Report it had commissioned, but with work to begin now.

All this from Minister for the Natural Environment Mairi Gougeon, Dundee-born and an MSP for the constituency of Angus and the Mearns, a landscape with something of an iffy record in these matters. It may have taken a year since the Werrity Report was published, but the Scottish Government came to the right conclusion. Suddenly, I have to admit, for once politics and nature mixed rather well.

Unless, of course, there is nothing you like better than killing wild creatures with guns. That cacophonous outburst you may have heard more or less immediately afterwards was the sound of the usual suspects – (deep breath) – the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the Scottish Countryside Alliance, the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, the Scottish Association for Country Sports, and Scottish Land and Estates, all voicing their collective outrage in a joint statement. All guns blazing, you might say. They called the minister’s decision “a damaging blow to fragile rural communities” and that it “interferes with legitimate business activities and threatens to engulf the sector in a blizzard of red tape”.

Let’s take these one at a time. The idea that grouse shooting is a financial godsend for rural communities is both an urban and a rural myth. If the Scottish Government were to choose to be really radical in its reform of nature protection legislation and decided to ban all grouse shooting tomorrow and give the red grouse as a species Schedule 1 protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act; if it also insisted that all grouse moorland be re-designated as nature reserves that could revert and be encouraged to return to a mixed landscape of woodland, forest, moorland and wetland; if it also replaced thousands of miles of bulldozed roads with walking and cycling paths – the following would happen.

Benefits to rural communities

Firstly, there would be a huge expansion of biodiversity. That much is perfectly predictable. Secondly, nature would respond to the changes in unpredictable ways that would astound us. Thirdly, the landscapes that were the preserve of rich people with guns (and traps and poisons and medicated grit and widespread contempt for existing legislation), would transform in terms of the possibilities they would present to rural communities. These communities would cease to be fragile simply because they would no longer be beholden to the oppressive regime of the grouse shooting industry.

Instead of being constrained by a land-use system invented by the Victorians before the concept of nature conservation was invented, and which physically abuses the land as a result, the reborn land would be wide open to new employment opportunities in green tourism, nature conservation (a singularly labour-intensive phenomenon when it’s done well), forestry, outdoor education and rural arts and crafts.

But there is a further consideration here, and it is this. As a government and as a people, we cannot make every decision we are ever faced with about the future of our land on the basis of whether or not it is good for the economy. Sometimes the debt we owe to our land is too great for that, and we must do what it takes to heal wounds that have been inflicted by our own species over centuries, and which are still being inflicted. Sometimes the land itself comes first.

Illegitimate activities

The second complaint of those who like to kill things with guns is that the minister’s decision interferes with legitimate activities. No it doesn’t. It interferes with illegitimate activities, activities which are specifically a by-product of the shooting industry. The problem for that industry is that we have got a lot better at detecting the crimes against wildlife. Activities that the estates have got away with for far too long are now being identified. The industry has only itself to blame for the government’s licensing decision.

The process began when what was then Scottish Natural Heritage (now NatureScot for reasons best known to itself) found that a third of all tagged golden eagles in Scotland had disappeared in suspicious circumstances on or near grouse moors. The estates were careless, even as the technology improved, and this is the result.

It is a short step from where we are now to ending the national embarrassment of grouse shooting once and for all. Enlightened nature conservation will surely seize on the momentum this moment has provided to push the case for the extinction of the grouse moor and the liberation of the grouse, the extinction of all thoughtless shooting in Scotland and legal protection for all birds, all mammals, all wildlife.

The widespread presumption of letting wildlife manage wildlife would usher in a new enlightenment of the landscape.

The Scottish Government just had a very good day indeed.

ENDS

Definition of ‘draconian’: excessively harsh and severe

Can I just ask you to spare a few minutes and offer your thoughts and prayers to the private owners of intensively-managed grouse moors in Scotland, who, after decades of ‘magnanimous public service‘ (ha ha!) as ‘custodians’ of the uplands, are now facing what they’re calling ‘draconian’ grouse moor licensing proposals thanks to an ungrateful Government and public.

The news last week that the Scottish Government is to introduce a grouse shooting licensing regime (see here) has been met with fury from revolting gamekeepers and spluttering indignation from the landowners.

Here’s the response statement published by Scottish Land & Estates, the landowners’ lobby group:

It’s just more hysterical scaremongering, as discussed in this earlier blog (here) and the result of years and years of brazen denial in the face of overwhelming evidence about what goes on on some of those grouse moors, as discussed in this earlier blog (here).

Why is it ‘draconian’ to expect grouse moor owners and their gamekeepers to face sanctions if caught breaking the law?