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"Enhancing our environment; holistic management
Vs single species priorities."
Part 3: Session 2b
SCA conference "Getting the balance right:
rural Scotland 2005"
12th April, Edinburgh.
Alex Hogg
Chairman, Scottish Gamekeepers Association
This paper is a transcript of the
presentation he made at the above conference
and was provided courtesy of the speaker and Scottish Countryside
Alliance.
Photography is by Kimpton Graphics
Filed 21 Apr 05
Transcript of Alex Hogg's paper - Click
Here
Further reading recommended by Land-Care - Click
Here
Alex Hogg
Alex Hogg.
Chairman Scottish Gamekeepers Association
delivering his address at the
Scottish Countryside Alliance conference April 2005
(©Kimpton Graphics)
To enlarge Click Here
The following information was provided
in the conference press pack.
"Alex is head keeper on the Portmore Estate, Peebles-shire
and has been Chairman of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association
since 2000.
Under his chairmanship the SGA has grown into a formidable force
whose successes include convincing the Scottish Executive that
an amendment to the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Bill
was necessary to enable foxes to be driven through forestry and
other habitats to waiting guns to help protect the capercaillie.
Married with three grown-up children Alex is a well-known face
both on television and in the press and of course in both the
Scottish and European Parliaments."
Enhancing our environment;
holistic management Vs single species priorities.
Alex Hogg
Chairman Scottish Gamekeepers Association
Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen. As the representatives
of Scotland's professional wildlife managers the Scottish Gamekeepers
Association (SGA) are very pleased to be speaking here today and
to share with you some of our expertise. I should like to start
by thanking Tony Andrews for inviting us and Roger Wheater for opening
this section of the conference.
You wake up one morning and go downstairs for
your cup of tea and, whoops, a pipe has burst and your kitchen floor
is flooded. You can clean up the floor, but not until the pipe which
is still spewing water all over the floor has been fixed. You don’t
know where to start, so who do you call for help? The community
council, SEPA? No, common sense tells you to call a plumber.
So who do you consult when you want to get wildlife
management right? Common sense tells you surely to consult the people
who manage wildlife and their habitats every day of the year. Scotland’s
gamekeepers have managed their countryside for generations. Their
skill as gamekeepers has been to produce a surplus of game for an
annual harvest. The habitats of moorland, meadow and wetlands have
been created, maintained. They provide the necessary condition of
habitat and husbandry for conservation and tourism that makes Scotland
and her wildlife a top tourist attraction.
Today’s conference is about getting the balance
right and I’m here to discuss enhancing our environment: holistic
management versus single species priorities. Perhaps the best place
to start my response is to quote someone who had a deep respect
for wildlife, who loved their countryside passionately and who summed
up the responsibilities concisely, King George VI.
He said
'the wildlife of today is not ours to dispose
of as we please, we have it in trust, we must account for it for
those that come after.'
I don’t think there is anyone here today
who would disagree with that statement. So let’s start by looking
at the benefits of holistic management.
It is widely recognised that shooting and fishing
benefits a huge range of wildlife as well as protecting rural employment
and fragile rural economies. You only have to look at the varied
bird life feeding on the game crops planted by gamekeepers to recognise
that it is not just pheasant and partridge feeding off those crops,
but many other birds too. These are the same game crops which conservation
bodies are now promoting and making it sound like they discovered
the practice.
Scientific study has shown that it is not just
grouse that benefit from moorland management, but also waders, such
as golden plover, lapwing and curlew. Muirburn removes the rank
heather and allows many other plant species to flourish, thereby
supporting a range of invertebrates that could not exist if it were
not for the nurturing hand of the shooting fraternity. All this
and at no cost to the taxpayer, who is free to come and enjoy the
countryside whenever he or she want to.
For Scotland is famous all over the world for
our countryside and wildlife. Ask a tourist what they picture in
their mind when they think of Scotland. The answer will undoubtedly
include heather and deer. I was speaking to a stalker last night
who was telling me that every October, late September/October, a
blind man comes up to the glen and has his vehicle parked just so
that he could hear the red deer rut. I thought it was quite touching.
Proving that the holistic approach has worked, and that if it were
not for the sporting estates much more of Scotland would be covered
in blankets of spruce.
We have now found ourselves living in a countryside
influenced by those who want to preserve just single species, like
the hen harrier. More and more the needs of the land and of the
people are being ignored by legislators, with ears only for those
who want to protect only predatory species, and who seek to undermine
the traditional ownership of the countryside, and leave it bankrupt
for future generations.
So does their way work? Can you leave nature to
do her own thing and allow predatory species to flourish unabated?
Can rural jobs be sustained, or does the conflict that arises wreak
havoc with the countryside that once was healthy, and sustained
wildlife and jobs too?
Many of the answers to these questions can be
found by looking at the Langholm experiment. In 1992 the study began.
Langholm Moor supported five gamekeepers, had an average bag of
2000 brace of grouse, there were two breeding female hen harriers
on the ground, two pairs of peregrine falcons, and the grouse, meadow
pippets, skylarks etc were plentiful. We all know the tragedy of
Langholm Moor, so I won’t go into the whole sorry saga again
as time is short, but suffice to say that now there are no gamekeepers
on Langholm, no grouse, no hen harriers, no meadow pippets, no skylarks.
The moor is now a desert. On Blackhouse Moor in the Borders 125
black game have been destroyed by illegally introduced goshawks.
The Scottish Executive has employed, at an annual cost to the tax
payer of £18,000 per annum, an expert to tell them how to
put right the wrongs. How many other £18,000 experts do they
employ around Scotland? But we can tell them what the problem is,
we can tell them how to fix these problems and at no cost to the
tax payer. But will they listen? Will they heck.
Let's look at another example of single species
management - capercaillie. Millions of pounds of tax payers' money
is being spent on an attempt to save the capercaillie. Claims have
been made that the capercaillie numbers have almost doubled since
the £5 million EU life project began. Reproduction figures
produced by ??? suggest different. So where is the scientific
proof to back up these claims or are we just expected to accept
their word. We know that pine martens, badgers and goshawks kill
capercaillie and other wildlife, but because these predatory species
have special protection no-one is prepared to acknowledge this.
Why are the government’s advisors ignoring one of the big truths
about this bird’s survival struggle? I suggest that it is a
perfect example of single species manipulation.
The Scottish Executive’s experts claim that
deer fencing is killing the birds, but if that were true we would
have seen capercaillie knee-deep beside fencing in the 60’s
when there were 1000’s of miles of fencing and 1000’s
of capercaillie. One of our committee members has worked on an estate
with capercaillie and deer fences for 30 years and in all that time
he has seen one dead carcass beside the fence. And at our AGM last
month the RSPB’s capercaillie project officer Kenny Kortland
admitted that the highest population of capercaillie in Deeside
today is behind a deer fence. So we believe, unless the capercaillie
is given full protection from predators such as pine marten and
goshawk, all further funding from EU sources should be removed.
Not a penny more of taxpayers’ money should be spent on this
bird until controls of these predatory animals are implemented.
And we call on the Scottish Executive to recognise that their action
plan for saving this bird is akin to a leaking pipe. The removal
of forestry fencing to protect endangered birds is just an excuse
employed to undermine our countryside. Fence removal and the subsequent
need to severely reduce deer numbers creates welfare problems for
Scotland’s national mammal which in some cases is managed as
vermin, not as the valuable resource it should be both in terms
of unique sport, prime venison and tourist attraction. There are
many who desire nothing more than the demise of the sporting estate
and by removing income form deer hope to hasten this process. This
agenda for the reduction in deer numbers will have a serious impact
on employment in remote areas. If the stalker, a really important
point, loses his job because there are no stags for the sporting
clients we also lose the wildlife management from that area. The
stalker is not only stalking deer, he manages the vermin and a whole
load of issues that goes with his ground. What will now become of
the ground nesting birds? We will see the Langholm disaster repeated
all over Scotland.
I remind you again that the wildlife of
today is not ours to dispose of as we please. We have it in trust
and we must account for it for those who come after. The current
single species politics are the politics of the foolish, not only
will the rural economy suffer, but so too will the social fabric.
Further reading recommended by Land-Care
1. Mitchell, Brian (2003). The reply to Langholm
http://www.scottishgamekeepers.co.uk/langholm.htm
2. Editorial (2003). RSPB falls foul of the Scottish
Gamekeepers Association (SGA). SGA case study: Langholm Moor.
See ENVIRONMENT Homepage, filed 25 Mar 03, www.land-care.org.uk
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