There’s currently a Golden Eagle reintroduction project happening in the borders, all may not be lost, although I wouldn’t be anymore than hopeful that we’d see any in their original lakes area.
Cheers
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Golden Eagles (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter JTweedie
- Start date
There’s currently a Golden Eagle reintroduction project happening in the borders, all may not be lost, although I wouldn’t be anymore than hopeful that we’d see any in their original lakes area.
Cheers
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
A pointless scheme, since the cause (grouse moor gamekeepers) of the near-complete demise of the previous Borders population has not been removed. The releasees will all be dead within a few months.
Invigorating optimism there, with that kind of attitude we should all just give up now.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Actually Nutty is right. The guidelines for undertaking reintroduction projects include a precondition that the reason for the original demise must have been removed. It would be irresponsible in the extreme to release birds to near certain death at the hands of those who wiped out the original population, both on the grounds of waste of scarce conservation funds and for straightforward animal welfare reasons.
So what has changed in the Borders to give grounds for assuming that grouse moor operators will not blow away the reintroduced birds as they do everywhere else?
John
Paul Longland
Well-known member
I also Agree with Nutty and John, which was my original point (they have simply expressed it more eloquently and PC than my reference to bandit country) as to why Goldies are unlikely to ever become re-established south of the border.
Whilst the project is laudable in its aims I fear that it is simply doomed (as are the birds) to failure unless there is some serious policing and subsequent legal intervention, for which there seems to be no appetite or budget.
It is widely acknowledged that the white tailed eagle scheme now brings millions of tourist pounds to mull/skye etc and this would obviously offset those policing costs. The fact still remains that there are practically no grouse moors there. The economic argument holds no water with the vested interests of the grouse shooting lobby as they don't directly benefit from it.
If we are to one day see the return of eagles to NW England I think there would have to be a direct re-introduction scheme, but the same caveats would apply.
Whilst the project is laudable in its aims I fear that it is simply doomed (as are the birds) to failure unless there is some serious policing and subsequent legal intervention, for which there seems to be no appetite or budget.
It is widely acknowledged that the white tailed eagle scheme now brings millions of tourist pounds to mull/skye etc and this would obviously offset those policing costs. The fact still remains that there are practically no grouse moors there. The economic argument holds no water with the vested interests of the grouse shooting lobby as they don't directly benefit from it.
If we are to one day see the return of eagles to NW England I think there would have to be a direct re-introduction scheme, but the same caveats would apply.
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
The main problem here is that immature Golden Eagles range very widely. Worth remembering the juvenile last year from the sole surviving pair in the Southern Uplands was shot or poisoned near Edinburgh, over 100 km from its nest. The likelihood that an immature raised or released anywhere in southern Scotland or northern England will end up dead on a keepered hellhole at some point in its first 4 years is close to 100%. The pockets of 'safe' ground are small, and the young eagles have no way of knowing where they are.
You may be interested to read the latest blog from David Adams, which mentions the Southern Uplands golden eagle project:
http://davidadamsketchbook.blogspot.com/2018/08/raptorama-in-ogil.html
http://davidadamsketchbook.blogspot.com/2018/08/raptorama-in-ogil.html
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Ha ha indeed.
You may not like his painting (I’m not a huge fan myself), but what do you not like about his blog? He always seems passionate about wildlife conservation to me, bird conservation in particular, and he takes a balanced view of what is going on around him.
Have you ever been up to the Angus glens? I can thoroughly recommend it and if you’ve never been up you’ll not find what some prominent folk have told you that you will. On a single day out at Loch Lee I’ve seen buzzard, kestrel, a golden eagle, a sea eagle, an osprey fishing for trout in the loch and, to cap it all, two peregrines attacking taking clumps of feathers out of a hen harrier. All this on an area that is managed for grouse shooting. It's a beautiful area, well worth a visit in May or June.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
What I read was the language of grouse-shooting propaganda. Lots of absurd riffing against the new tools that are closing the net on these murderous apologies for human beings: e.g. trying to claim that satellite tagging is responsible for raptor deaths instead of it pointing up the fact of routine estate purging of them (take a look at the map of the last locations of tagged eagles in the Monadhliath and you'll understand what I mean). This is, of course, unsupported assertion. I know this because, despite the fact that satellite-tagged birds are routinely relocated using tag information and that the tags are robust, all the tagged raptors that disappear stop transmitting and are not found. My deduction (not assumption) is that this is because the tags are smashed deliberately (as a mere fall from the sky wouldn't stop them) and the eagles' bodies are not produced to confirm his claim that the satellite tag harnesses cause death because the bodies are full of lead/have legs broken by gin traps/are full of alpha-chloralose or whatever is the carcass-lacing poison of choice these days.
I saw no conservation-orientated words in his blog, only a lot of blah that anybody could write. I did see plenty of unbalanced hatred for anyone maintaining a close eye on raptor persecutors. He's just a grouse-shooting propagandist. Don't fall for it.
Incidentally, how do you know the Osprey was fishing for trout? There will be more species of fish in the loch than trout and Ospreys are often seen carrying Pike and other species. Of course, anyone anxious to show that Ospreys target expensive game fish would focus on that..... :eek!:
Recently I've read a few reports of days in the Angus glens by BF members, and curiously they seem unable to reproduce the success in seeing large raptors that you mention. Maybe they have been unlucky. I'm in Hampshire and only get to Scotland occasionally, so naturally I concentrate on spots I know will repay effort. Currently this does not include the Angus glens.
While we're on, lets talk about the massacre of Mountain Hares by the same bunch of idiots, because someone has told them that Mountain Hares are implicated in grouse getting louping ill. What they haven't noted is that louping ill has been passing back and forth between hares and grouse forever, and until the moronity of Victorian values intervened, the normal cleaners-up of sick creatures, i.e. predators, kept it under control. With grouse moor levels of predator control (and this includes aspects carried out legally but still stupidly, i.e. destruction of Stoats, Weasels, Foxes etc) this natural check on illness is removed and suddenly moor managers are looking for a cure for something else they have caused with their utter inability to understand the word ecosystem. So they shoot as many Mountain Hares as they can and hope nobody will notice - or more likely don't care if anybody notices.
When taxed with this latest stupid massacre the shooters say they don't recognise the figures. I assume this is because they are larger than can be counted on fingers. Even with my short visits to Scotland I can recognise that vast numbers of Mountain Hares have been suddenly and dramatically eliminated from places where they have been common for years and years and years.
It's quite simple. Grouse moor managers shouldn't be put in charge of a box of lego, let alone upland ecosystems. Your blogger is backing them. Open your eyes.
John
birdboybowley
Well-known member.....apparently so ;)
:clap::clap::clap:
You and I won't agree about the blog. I've read it extensively and I don't believe that the author shoots, or supports grouse shooting. I also strongly suspect that you feel that I too speak "the language of grouse-shooting propaganda", with the assertion that I am "anxious to show that Ospreys target expensive game fish". How do I know that the osprey was catching trout? Because I was in a boat right beside it fishing for the same species! There are no pike in that loch, just trout, char and a very occasional salmon. Pike are taken by osprey elsewhere, of course (easy prey given their habit of sitting still just under the surface on sunny days) but not on that loch. Trout up here are not an expensive game fish, there are many lochs that are either free or charge a nominal fee. It's different in the beautiful and world-famous streams of Hampshire, but a lot of trout are stocked there and the brownies up here are wild and plentiful. I've fished in that loch when the osprey hit the water within 25m of the boat, a sight that thrills all of the fishermen that I know. The day that I described with all of the raptors was exceptional, but maybe part of the reason for my luck is that I was there all day and the fishing was lousy, so I sat in the boat with binoculars instead, just watching the deer and the birds. The osprey are common there, as are the peregrine and buzzard. The goldie's are less common but frequently seen and the sea eagle is regular there nowadays.
I don't shoot grouse and have no desire to, and I don't have any desire to shoot pheasants either, but I do shoot some/most of the meat that I and my family eat (mostly rabbits and roe deer). I like to know that the meat that I eat is healthy and has lived a proper life, not stuffed in a barn with no natural light and a poor diet with lots of antibiotics. Partly as a result I have a keen interest in the natural world, conservation and the balance of nature, although I've been a bird watcher since I was a child. What I have realised from the reading I do is that there is rarely an easy answer in conservation and often the law of unintended consequences prevails. The RSPB have found that themselves, and are killing foxes and crows in exactly the same ways as the sporting estates (often using ex-gamekeepers to do the dirty work with the instruction to keep quiet about it). One of the local farmers at their reserve at Loch Insh was telling me all about the fox cull just a few weeks back. Conservation is not always pleasant but the RSPB obviously believe that conservation is enhanced when predation is kept down.
You and I will agree that raptor persecution should be stamped out and that guilty parties should have the full weight of the law brought to bear against them. All shooters that I know (and the few keepers that I know too) agree with that, and I hope and believe that the tide of illegal persecution is turning. There are still cases of illegal persecution - I read today of a keeper in Cumbria taken away for killing two owls. Disgusting.
As I mentioned, the law of unintended consequences often seems to be there with nature conservation. I suspect that if your wish to see the back of grouse moors comes true there will be negative effects for many species. Time may yet provide an answer.
I don't shoot grouse and have no desire to, and I don't have any desire to shoot pheasants either, but I do shoot some/most of the meat that I and my family eat (mostly rabbits and roe deer). I like to know that the meat that I eat is healthy and has lived a proper life, not stuffed in a barn with no natural light and a poor diet with lots of antibiotics. Partly as a result I have a keen interest in the natural world, conservation and the balance of nature, although I've been a bird watcher since I was a child. What I have realised from the reading I do is that there is rarely an easy answer in conservation and often the law of unintended consequences prevails. The RSPB have found that themselves, and are killing foxes and crows in exactly the same ways as the sporting estates (often using ex-gamekeepers to do the dirty work with the instruction to keep quiet about it). One of the local farmers at their reserve at Loch Insh was telling me all about the fox cull just a few weeks back. Conservation is not always pleasant but the RSPB obviously believe that conservation is enhanced when predation is kept down.
You and I will agree that raptor persecution should be stamped out and that guilty parties should have the full weight of the law brought to bear against them. All shooters that I know (and the few keepers that I know too) agree with that, and I hope and believe that the tide of illegal persecution is turning. There are still cases of illegal persecution - I read today of a keeper in Cumbria taken away for killing two owls. Disgusting.
As I mentioned, the law of unintended consequences often seems to be there with nature conservation. I suspect that if your wish to see the back of grouse moors comes true there will be negative effects for many species. Time may yet provide an answer.
Farnboro John
Well-known member
Essentially what you are pointing out is the need for suppression of mesopredators and high intelligence opportunists such as corvids. This requires top predators, in avian terms Golden Eagles (persecuted by the mindless morons who shoot) and in terrestrial terms wolves, whose total world depredations on humans are logarithmic powers less than those of the road vehicle and would also benefit the environment in both direct control and behaviour modification of the over-sized deer population.
Both of these activities would be better carried out by top predators, whose prey selection criteria match the requirements of the ecosystem, than by the incompetence masked as accuracy that is carried out by human shooters.
A natural level of predators and prey in the environment would ensure a mosaic habitat suitable for all the current inhabitants. The intolerance, and incompetence in management of the single crop approach of grouse farmers, is unnecessary and counter-productive.
John
Both of these activities would be better carried out by top predators, whose prey selection criteria match the requirements of the ecosystem, than by the incompetence masked as accuracy that is carried out by human shooters.
A natural level of predators and prey in the environment would ensure a mosaic habitat suitable for all the current inhabitants. The intolerance, and incompetence in management of the single crop approach of grouse farmers, is unnecessary and counter-productive.
John
