Bog Myrtle & Peat

Working for Waders was established to bridge a gap between ecologists and land managers. Wading birds made for a decent rallying point because they’re almost universally popular, but the real driver was a bid for reconciliation.

Traditional conservation has often been defined by warring factions, broadly characterised as the data-driven scientists versus the practically minded farmers and gamekeepers. Both sides stand to gain from working together. The scientists are tired of designing conservation schemes which are hard to implement, while the farmers are sick of feeling disempowered by schemes which failed to acknowledge the value of local knowledge. Blending that local knowledge and hard scientific data requires a degree of compromise from both sides; it forces people to abandon specific threads of dogma in order to reach common goals, and that’s precisely where I work. I love it.

Returning to themes raised in a recent article on pine martens, it’s worth thinking more about how the dynamic operates between “science” and “practitioner”. In traditional terms, science has wielded power over people on the ground. Conservation projects have been delivered through a system of carrots and sticks, but there is never any question of who’s in charge. Over the last thirty years, conservation expressed itself through a system of pulleys and levers which forced farmers to behave in certain ways. 

That might have been understandable if it had borne fruit, but that same time period has seen some of the most abrupt and catastrophic declines in British biodiversity we’ve ever seen. Beaten into subservience and disempowered by the system of financial support to fund conservation, it’s no wonder that many farmers now have no interest in wildlife. It simply doesn’t feel relevant to their businesses, and I often hear conservationists bemoaning the fact that “farmers just don’t care”. But of course they don’t care, and there’s no personal iniquity in that. The current system could not have been better designed to prevent them from caring.

Even farmers who do still care approach conservation with a degree of resigned fatalism. They know it’s daft to try and change the system, but something keeps them nagging on. Perhaps they’ve got a theory or an idea they’d like to try for nature on their land. Perhaps they simply cannot walk away from birds and wildlife they love. In these slightly more conciliatory times, a few of these farmers have approached projects like Working for Waders in the hope of being heard. We are very clear about our remit for reconciliation, and we recognise the need to listen. 

More often than not, farmers are concerned about predation as a driver of decline for wading birds. From where I’m standing, predator control feels much less contentious than it did ten years ago, and I’m hearing better conversations about this subject than ever before. But beyond predator control as it stands today, there are also concerns about badgers, a species which cannot be controlled.

Badgers are a controversial issue, linked to wider conversations about predators but standing slightly apart from them. When farmers approach me to ask about badgers, I agree that there is a potential problem with these animals in some parts of Scotland. But here’s the rub, because any movement towards managing these problems would have to be built on a foundation of hard data that is sadly lacking. We know that badgers are having an impact on the landscape, but we have almost no data to prove or understand it. From the farmer’s perspective, it can often feel frustrating to know the truth and also have to weigh it up in a foreign system of tables and charts.

All this talk of reconciliation and compromise begins to feel a little wooden here, because change can only ever be data-driven. When we promise farmers that equal weight will be given to scientific data and their own personal experience, we do so in the knowledge that only data can really drive change. It’s clear that scientists remain the gatekeepers for change, and it’s a tough dynamic to manage when the first step towards compromise requires the weaker faction to climb down.

All too often, farmers approach projects like Working for Waders to air their concerns about badgers in the expectation that we can turn their management proposals into reality. To be clear, these proposals are not all based on lethal control – there is no provision for non-lethal badger deterrence in Scotland, largely because there is no scientific recognition that badgers are ever anything less than a joy. So many farmers feel immediately rebuffed when we reply that there’s nothing we can do without data. It seems to fly in the face of our foundational credo; that we give equal weight to data and lived experience.

At this, some farmers recoil from the project and claim that we’re just more of the same. Their frustration is palpable. But others rise to the challenge; they reckon that if data’s what we need, data’s what we’ll gather. That’s great, and it’s led us down some really exciting and progressive avenues. But just as in the capercaillie/pine marten controversy, this work has to feel honest and open-handed. Farmers need to build a case, and that case has to be heard fairly. This is a long game, and many critics find it’s moving too slowly to add value. I agree, and things will get worse for waders before they get better. But no matter how slow or arduously this piece of work progresses, there has to be a degree of faith that it will come to a head one day. 

I am generally confident that things will change, but I must admit that my confidence is shaken now and then. Knowing that some major players are now attempting to squirm and wriggle their way out of the pine marten conundrum, I really feel for the people who entered a similar process several decades ago, gathering data on pine marten predation. They were given assurances that data would be taken seriously, but now those goalposts are being moved. Work realised with patience and determination over many years is at risk of being deliberately marginalised – if the same were to happen to me, any hope I had in change would vanish. 

So here’s where the compromise comes. Where farmers and gamekeepers have agreed to play by rules laid down by the scientists, those scientists must commit to listening. That listening is more than just a polite gesture of goodwill, (although that’s surprisingly welcome too); it’s also the first step towards building and sustaining trust and unlocking real, meaningful progress for conservation.

It sounds easy, but there’s actually a structural issue here too. Gamekeepers and farmers frequently outlive conservationists. Big, important organisations experience a constant through-flow of personnel, and while the land manager might remain in place for twenty years, it’s not hard to imagine that the person they’re dealing with at NatureScot or RSPB might have been replaced ten times during that time. In this way, it’s hard for farmers to hold anybody to account. If you feel like NatureScot promised you something, it’s disorientating to realise that the promise only stood for the duration of that specific individual’s post.

It’s no wonder that farmers often feel jaded, particularly when it comes to contentious issues like predator control where there is no organisational party whip to ensure consistency between individual employees. Depending on who answers the phone at RSPB or NatureScot, you’re likely to receive conflicting advice about predator control according to that employee’s personal values. I’ve sometimes found this very confusing myself; how individual staff members are permitted to brief against their own organisation’s policy. Aside from anything else, this kind of inconsistency is a constant spanner in the works for relationship-building and the development of trust.

In return for adopting scientific methodologies, it’s only fair that farmers and gamekeepers should feel like they’re being listened to. We’re all working together on this, so perhaps it’s not constructive to measure the two sides of a compromise. However, straddling the divide as I do for my work, it’s clear that land managers who engage with this kind of conservation are currently bearing a far larger piece of the burden with all the momentum against them. They’re taking the first step; they’re changing the way they think; they’re opening doors and engaging. Listening to these people is the least we all can do.

Picture: Redshank on North Uist – 20th May 2015