Bog Myrtle & Peat

After a great deal of controversy and anticipation, BBC Scotland broadcast it’s programme on raptor persecution on Monday night. The documentary is now available to watch on iPlayer (by clicking HERE), and I saw it last night with a certain sense of forboding. Contrary to expectations, it was not all bad.

Despite the fact that the pre-orchestrated “discovery” of dead buzzards beneath a forest plantation appeared to give the impression that the remains of illegally slain wildlife lurk under every tussock of grass in the Southern Uplands, the programme seemed to make a genuine attempt to be impartial. We were shown how grouse moors support local economies and provide employment, and the entrenched conflict was presented in a relatively fair balance. Now and again, an RSPB official was wheeled in to pass comment on the “evil” of some shooting estates, and he was in turn countered by others arguing for the right to control problem raptors.

Where the programme struggled was in its total inability to deal with different kinds of raptors. Birds of prey were treated as a single species, with a total disregard for the abundance of some and the scarcity of others. Without being able to draw the distinction between a rare bird of prey and common bird of prey, the viewer was left with the misleading idea that all species of raptor are treated with the same hatred from the shooting community.

With applications currently being lodged for some landowners to be allowed to kill buzzards and ravens in Scotland, a documentary like this is sure to cause confusion. It is fast approaching the time that we do something about our vastly overflowing quantities of buzzards (and increasingly ravens also), but to group common predators in with rarer species to create the ambiguously vulnerable “bird of prey” is to weaken the argument for the control of specific species. Golden eagles, hen harriers and buzzards were all made to contribute to one monolithic population of “raptor”, which is unfortunate. As a result, the programme was billed as “an investigation into who is killing rare and protected bird species”, reinforcing the misleading link between “rare” and “protected”.

Towards the end of the programme, an RSPB officer said (to paraphrase) “the public has decided that these birds [raptors] are vulnerable, so they are protected by law”. Nobody will disagree with the fact that the general public is the group least qualified to determine whether or not a species is vulnerable. Surely we should entrust such important descions to scientists and ecologists, who can look at a species empirically?

As humans, we are susceptible to aesthetics, and we often make judgements on what we like and what we don’t based solely on physical appearance. We like to see birds of prey because they are pretty, and our sympathy lies with them because they soar and appear majestic. Pity the bird that is brown, speckled and flies only when it needs to; it will fail to evoke human sympathy and investement.

The fact is that the British public is not qualified to judge what animal species are vulnerable; this being demonstrated by the continued prosperity of buzzards. Nobody in their right mind would describe buzzards as rare or endangered, yet they are preserved because we like to see them. To many, conservation has become a process of dressing the countryside with living ornaments. Rather than managing land to improve biodiversity, we are prepared to sacrifice boring species as food for exciting ones.

Surely the most crucial point that  this programme should have made is that the countryside is in a man-made balance (or imbalance). Grouping birds of prey together as one species shows a lack of understanding of the complexity of that balance, and while it is without a doubt right that we should condemn the killing of eagles and harriers, we should shake off our instinctive appreciation of aesthetics and approach any proposed changes to the law with an objective mind and with biodiversity as the primary goal.