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14 April 2003
When even Mother Nature finds it hard
to cope with man's interference
Magnus Linklater
Scotland on Sunday, 14 April 2003
(Filed 14 April 2003)
www.land-care.org.uk
I AM unmoved by the plight of Mrs Tiggywinkle.
I remain dry-eyed as the men from Scottish Natural Heritage go about
their extermination on North Uist. The ethnic cleansing of hedgehogs
on the island does not upset me. If the population of these creatures
has, as Scottish National Heritage assures us, grown out of control,
then steps should indeed be taken to give the rare birds whose existence
they threaten, a chance of survival. The waders, curlews, plovers
and lapwing were there long before the hedgehogs were introduced.
Man created the problem, so it is right that man should step in
to sort it out.
As it embarks on its cull, however, SNH will have
to accept that it is creating an ethical precedent whose dimensions
will be hard to contain. For if it is right to kill hedgehogs because
they threaten one species, why should it not also be right to intervene
on behalf of another? Will we, for instance, stand back and watch
the beloved red squirrel, a species native to Great Britain, being
driven off the map by the voracious grey squirrel, an interloper
from North America, which always seems to have the upper hand when
it comes to competing for territory? Should we step in to protect
the songbirds that are rapidly disappearing from our bird tables
and are being killed off at an appalling rate by the apparently
unstoppable magpie? What about the cormorant, a seabird which has
begun invading inland waters and rivers, and whose appetite for
trout is insatiable?
Last week there was an outcry from radio listeners
when they heard a housewife from Bearsden explaining how she had
carried out a single-handed cull of more than 100 magpies because
they had been systematically destroying local bird-life. Lesley
Mackiggan has been trapping and killing the magpies because, in
her words, "they are vicious and have decimated the population
of song-birds. Since I started this, the song-birds have started
to come back to life." Her story prompted protests, but also
support, because others have watched these interlopers take over
at the expense of smaller birds.
The people who are charged with making these decisions
are not only SNH, but all the other bodies whose task it is to protect
our environment. The problem is that they are far from even-handed
when it comes to doing so. While SNH is responsible for all countryside
issues, others, such as the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds, have a more specific interest and they are hugely influential.
The RSPB, as its name suggests, is in the business of campaigning
only for birds. It will not countenance the killing or removal of
any feathered creature, except for those, like crows, that are classified
as vermin. It will happily encourage the control of foxes, stoats
or other furred creatures if they threaten a rare species, but it
draws the line at predator birds, especially the ones with the hooked
beaks and the fearsome talons.
Its view is that nature should be left to create
its own balance, that in the long run, provided human beings do
not interfere, the relationship between predator and prey will stabilise,
and a wide range of bird-life will emerge. But this utopian view
foundered many decades ago. For man has always interfered, and never
more so than in the present era. Fifty years of modern farming,
with its accent on production of food at all costs, has meant the
wholesale decline in Britain of some once familiar species, and
the sad reduction of others. Pollution, pesticides, fertilisers,
drainage, modern harvesting methods, all have conspired to make
life difficult for birds. When even the once common house sparrow
comes to be regarded as an endangered species we are confronting
a major crisis. The bio-diversity that every environmental agency
subscribes to, is simply no longer there.
In these circumstances, new thinking is needed
to encourage bird-life when it is seriously threatened. Some of
that thinking has begun, with the reining back of intensive farming
methods, and the switching of grants to support eco-friendly agriculture
rather than intensive farming. But these new approaches must also
include a reappraisal of our wildlife protection laws. At the moment
those laws are hopelessly skewed - against the songbirds and in
favour of their killers. No matter what the evidence against the
predators, the RSPB and other wildlife agencies will never allow
any hawk to be culled, removed, or otherwise interfered with. The
buzzard, for instance, now ubiquitous in the Scottish countryside,
preys on the nestlings of curlews and plovers as well as the relatively
rare grey partridges and other smaller birds. In many moorland areas,
larks and meadow-pipits are in rapid decline while the cruising
destroyers which prey on them steadily multiply.
For they are protected by law, and are therefore
deemed untouchable. Similarly the hen harrier was allowed to expand
dramatically on the Langholm Moor in Dumfriesshire, with the result
that the whole place, once full of bird life, is now an ecological
desert. Even the hen harrier itself, deprived of food, has gone
into decline. The much-vaunted balance of nature is nowhere to be
seen.
Both the RSPB and SNH are in denial when it comes
to confronting this kind of evidence. Their view was summed up to
me by one of their members, to whom I was complaining about the
decline of the lark and the meadow pipit. "Oh," he said,
"but birds like that are simply a larder species." That
is, small birds are only there to provide food for the hawks. That
is not only arrogance of the highest order, it is as short-sighted
an attitude as I can think of. By this token, our smaller birds
are simply there to be served up as fodder until a species is approaching
the edge of extinction - and by then, of course, it is too late.
That kind of thinking has to change. Just as the
hedgehogs of North Uist are being culled to protect the island’s
bird-life, so, equally, tough action may have to be taken when,
from time to time, a killer species emerges within the bird population
to threaten another. Leaving it to nature is no longer good enough.
Man created the mess in the first place. It is up to him to interfere
again - this time to clear it up.
Magnus Linklater
Further Reading Recommended by Land-Care
Editorial. Hedgehogs on Uist - SNH in More Trouble.
(Filed 27 January 2003, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
Scottish Gamekeepers Association Petition to Scottish Parliament.
The Impact of Predatory Birds, January 2002.
(Filed 25 March 2003, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
Gamekeepers’ Association Official Joins Growing Row over Hedgehogs.
Oban Times, 9 January 2003.
(Filed 13 January 2003, www.land-care.org.uk,
click
here to view).
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