Category: Opinion

If you’d been at the Royal Highland Show last week you might have seen this SNH poster. You might also have seen Environment Minister Dr Aileen McLeod posing in front of it.

What is it?

It’s part of an SNH campaign called Scotland’s Natural Larder, being run jointly with BASC Scotland, and coincides with the Scottish Government’s Year of Food & Drink.

According to an article in SNH’s latest magazine (The Nature of Scotland, Spring/Summer 2015, page 10):

“The aim of Scotland’s Natural Larder project is to encourage people to eat natural produce that has been sustainably harvested or hunted” and “A key focus is helping people understand the close links between the health of the environment and sustainable management“.

According to SNH, ‘Game meat is healthy, natural and delicious’ (see here).

According to BASC, ‘Game meat is healthy, sustainable and delicious’ (see here).

So the key words being bandied about by the Government’s statutory nature conservation agency (as well as by BASC, which is less surprising) about shot red grouse (look at the poster) is that they are ‘healthy’, ‘natural’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘delicious’.

Forget about the word ‘delicious’ because whether grouse tastes delicious or not is entirely subjective and pretty irrelevant. But what about those other words? ‘Healthy’, ‘natural’ and ‘sustainable’? Really? Who are they trying to kid? How about ‘unhealthy’, ‘unnatural’ and ‘unsustainable’?

Unhealthy

Red grouse are shot with lead ammunition. Lead is a poison. Lead is highly toxic to humans. The health risk of lead poisoning has been well-documented and has resulted in the removal of lead from petrol, paint, fishing weights and water pipes. In 2012, the Food Standards Agency published guidance on eating game shot with lead ammunition:

“The Food Standards Agency is advising people that eating lead-shot game on a frequent basis can expose them to potentially harmful levels of lead. The FSA’s advice is that frequent consumers of lead-shot game should eat less of this type of meat” (see here, here and particularly here).

Red grouse on intensively managed driven grouse moors are also routinely exposed to chemicals in the form of medicated grit. The chemicals in this grit are used to kill the parasitic strongyle worm. This drug is highly persistent, according to SLE (see here). Moorland managers are advised to remove the medicated grit one month before the start of the grouse-shooting season. Who decided one month was a suitable period of time for withdrawal and who monitors whether the medicated grit is actually being withdrawn at that time? Is there any information about the effect on humans from eating red grouse that have residual levels of medicated grit still in their bodies?

There’s also a new disease spreading through red grouse populations – ‘respiratory cryptosporidiosis’, also known as ‘bulgy eye’. Apparently the protozoan responsible isn’t known to be infectious to humans (see here) and a prominent figure from the grouse-shooting industry claims ‘grouse are perfectly safe to eat if they are diseased [with bulgy eye]’ (see here). Hmm, sounds yummy. Wonder what his medical qualifications are?

Does any of this convince you that eating red grouse is a ‘healthy’ option?

Unnatural

Red grouse is frequently described as ‘natural’ by those with a vested interest in driven grouse shooting. It might be considered ‘natural’ if it has been killed by walked-up shooting but what about the grouse that have been killed by driven grouse shooting? Intensively managed driven grouse moors are anything but natural. Red grouse are found in artificially-high densities on these moors as a result of several unnatural management techniques, including the use of medicated grit (see above), the frequent burning of heather (see here for the environmental damage caused by this practice), the [legal] and unregulated annual mass slaughter of predators (foxes, stoats, weasels, corvids) and mountain hares, not to mention, of course, the widespread illegal killing of raptors.

What’s ‘natural’ about red grouse that have been shot on an intensively driven grouse moor?

Unsustainable

Concerns over the unsustainability of driven grouse shooting are growing – so much so that Marks & Spencer removed red grouse from sale last year (see here) because they weren’t able to guarantee their grouse had come from a responsible, sustainable source. There are plenty of other concerns, too (see here for a good overview).

So how does SNH justify its claim that red grouse have been ‘sustainably’ harvested?

What on earth is SNH playing at? Why is this statutory conservation agency actively promoting an industry with such shocking ecological credentials and claiming that eating this product (red grouse) is good for us and good for the environment?  Let’s ask them. Emails to SNH Chief Executive Susan Davies: susan.davies@snh.gov.uk

It took the GWCT quite a while to post anything on their website about the CBE that their Chief Executive, Teresa Dent, was awarded in the Birthday Honours’ List. Maybe they were as surprised as the rest of us.

Whilst RPS has nothing against Teresa Dent personally (we’ve never met), it’s a bit difficult to know quite what she and GWCT have done to deserve this ‘honour’.  After all, the emblem of the GWCT, the Grey Partridge, is at rock-bottom despite a pile of good research and a GWCT membership of large landowners who ought to be implementing all of the GWCT’s bright ideas on the subject. Not exactly the biggest conservation success story is it? I’d rather be in charge of an organisation with the Avocet as its logo (whatever cricketing legends might say about it)!

The GWCT spouts a lot about its scientific reputation but, as Mark Avery pointed out on his blog years ago, they seem to be resting on their past laurels rather a lot (see here and here). But they are still going on about how they are a (?) or the (?) ‘leading wildlife research charity’ (e.g. see here), a name-tag rarely given to GWCT by anyone else these days.  What science has GWCT contributed to the Hen Harrier debate recently?  They don’t even seem to believe the results of their own eyes and their own research at Langholm – rating the project as a failure (see here) when others rate it as a clear success (see here). GWCT really have lost the plot!

It’s difficult to know what Teresa Dent thinks about anything as she is rarely seen in public outside of shooting circles. It is much more common to hear the GWCT’s Andrew Gilruth spouting nonsense about Hen Harriers, brood meddling and re-tweeting YFTB nonsense on Twitter.

The GWCT news item about Teresa Dent’s CBE can’t even explain what she has done! It rather cryptically says she has told people things they don’t want to know. Could this possibly mean that she sits her chairman, Ian Coghill, down and tells him that lead ammunition ought to be banned and he ought to get used to the idea? Or maybe it means that she has a word with Hawk and Owl Trust Chair Philip Merricks and tells him that brood meddling is a daft idea? Or does she tell the Moorland Association (‘a sad morons’ coalition’, for you anagram fans) and Scottish Land and Estates (‘dated tactless shits, anon’) that their members had better start getting out of driven grouse shooting before land prices drop as a ban approaches? No? Probably not.

The news item seems to think that the GWCT Council were announcing something – the announcement was made a couple of days ago by Number 10 – we all noticed it then, but the GWCT spent the weekend dozing, or dreaming of days gone by when the world outside of shooting cared what they said, and cared a little for them too.

The news item sums up the GWCT these days: vague, self-congratulatory, wrong and late.

Imagine, if you will, a future government policy for raptor ‘control’ based on the biased, uninformed and unscientific opinion of someone like Robin Page.

‘Ah, that’d never happen’, you might say. ‘Government policy on biodiversity and species protection has to be based on peer-reviewed scientific evidence, not on the prejudices of those with a vested interest in game shooting, right?’

Well, not necessarily.

A new ‘study’ being carried out by Scotland’s Moorland Forum is seeking to use such prejudicial opinions to inform the debate around predator-prey interactions, which will lead, inevitably, to further calls for licences to ‘control’ (kill) raptors, particularly buzzards.

Certain members of the Moorland Forum have been pushing for licences to kill raptors for over a decade (because of the perceived impact of raptors on game birds such as pheasants and red grouse), although so far with little success. This time they’ve changed tactics. Instead of focusing on the (perceived) impact of raptors on game birds, they’re also looking to see whether they can make a case against raptors for their (perceived) impact on certain species of wader.

The ‘study’ has been named ‘Understanding Predation’ (see web page here) and it will combine a review of the scientific literature relating to predator-prey relationships, as well as the opinions of ‘stakeholders’. Incredibly, these opinions are to be given the same weight in this ‘study’ as the scientific evidence. Personal opinions are usually termed ‘anecdotal evidence’ and definitely not ‘scientific evidence’, and for very good reason. But apparently in this ‘study’ opinions are to be referred to as ‘local ecological knowledge’ – perhaps as a way to make them sound more scientifically credible. It doesn’t wash. Anecdotal evidence can be useful, no doubt about that, but to give it the same measure of importance and usefulness as peer-reviewed science is just laughable.

As an example, have a look at the comments that have been made on the Understanding Predation blog (see here). Each of these comments will apparently be used as part of the ‘study’. Apart from one or two exceptions, the majority of the comments made so far are by gamekeepers – some of them prominent members of the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association. Seriously, have a read and see the ‘quality’ of the comments that are going to be used to inform this ‘study’. If Robin Page chooses to post his ridiculously flawed article as a comment, then that, too, will be used as part of the study’s result.

There’s also a questionnaire for participants to fill in (see here). We have serious issues with the design of this questionnaire, not least because the questions are leading and inherently devised to place predation as an issue of concern. There’s also plenty of potential for the person filling in the questionnaire to lie. Information is sought about the individual’s interests, occupation and experience. What’s to stop gamekeepers filling this in, claiming to be scientists or claiming to be staff members of prominent conservation organisations, in order to create an illusion that conservationists are concerned about the supposed negative impact of raptors on other bird species?

It’s interesting to look down the list of organisations that have been invited to participate in this ‘study’. The usual suspects are all there, including Songbird Survival. We wonder whether they will be highlighting the results of a study they funded that found no evidence that an increase in predators was associated with large scale population declines in songbirds (see here).

The ‘study’ apparently welcomes input from members of the public so we’d encourage you to participate, either by adding a comment to the project’s blog (here) and/or filling in the questionnaire (here). We’d also encourage you to highlight any concerns you have about the study design – make sure the organisers are aware of your views, either via the comment boxes on the questionnaire or via the project blog.

In response to Robin Page’s idiotic rant against raptors that was published in the Daily Mail yesterday (see here), the Guardian has published a cracking retort.

When Page (Boring Ape) was asked why he hadn’t cited any scientific evidence to support his claim that raptors are causing population declines in other avian species, he said: “I don’t want to, why should I?“.

It’s a shame the grouse-moor-owning editor of the Daily Mail didn’t ask him the same question before deciding to publish.

The article in the Guardian, written by Karl Mathiesen, includes comments from Ben Sheldon (Professor of Field Ornithology, Oxford University), Jeff Knott (Head of Nature Policy, RSPB), Chris Packham and Mark Avery.

Well worth a read.

Guardian article here.

The Daily Mail has published an article today written by Robin Page (Boring Ape for you anagram fans) which claims that ‘do-gooders’ (that’ll be conservationists) are letting ‘killer birds’ (that’ll be raptors) ‘terrorise the countryside’ (that’ll be behaving as natural predators).

He doesn’t quite go as far as saying raptors will kill your children and bring a plague on your houses, but he does suggest that your pets aren’t safe while these ‘aggressive killers’ are on the loose.

The anti-raptor rhetoric is nothing new from the Boring Ape – he’s been at it for years (see here). Safe to say he’s not best known for his grasp of science, ecological principles, and especially predator-prey relationships. He is quite good though at cherry-picking data and presenting them out of context. He implies that the hen harrier population doesn’t need to be increased, using national (UK) population figures to support this claim but omitting to mention that (a) the UK population overall is in decline and (b) the English population is on its knees, thanks to the illegal persecution it suffers at the hands of gamekeepers on driven grouse moors.

No surprise, either, that his latest offering has been published by the Daily Mail; editor Paul Dacre just happens to own a grouse shooting estate in Scotland.

Daily Mail article here

The Boring Ape will be taking part in a debate on raptors next weekend (assuming he hasn’t been carried off by one of those frightening sparrowhawks), pitted against Mark Avery at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival (see here).

UPDATE 12th May 2015: Robin Page’s anti-raptor rhetoric torn to shreds (see here).