Burning Issue

Published on Monday 4 August 2008 20:27

Should law be changed to allow for control of birds of prey in some cases?

Yes

TIM BAYNES

Moorlands director with the Scottish Countryside Alliance

BEFORE we look at whether the law should be changed, we need to quantify the problem with birds of prey. It differs from species to species. Some are more damaging than others. We need to consider observations of people on the ground. One problem is people see things happening, but because it has not been quantified by a scientist it's poo-pooed as evidence. It's going to be very difficult to collect very good scientific evidence because by the very nature of it, it's not often that some of these things are seen.

We asked members for feedback a couple of months ago particularly about buzzards. About 90 per cent of those who responded said they had seen them take things like red squirrels. We need to have the debate and amass the evidence. We know there's a problem and it's especially obvious in moorlands where the balance of birds is quite delicate and can easily be upset. If there are too many birds of prey in some areas, the question is "How many is too many?" and how do we decide how to maintain populations to keep them in balance?

I don't think that's very difficult. I believe there's a huge wealth of knowledge about birds. I really don't believe it's at all difficult for us if we all get together to work it out scientifically.

We then have the big problem: once we have decided what's a sensible balance we have no legal mechanism at the moment to put that into practice because the law says you cannot control these birds. That's where we need to look at changing the law. We're not suggesting jumping straight to that stage or making any species extinct. We like seeing birds of prey as much as anyone else. It's just the build-up in numbers.

No

DUNCAN ORR-EWING

Head of species and land management at RSPB Scotland

THE buzzard population that we see now is an entirely natural situation. What we previously had was a situation where the population has been recovering from historical lows from the Victorian period.

The main prey of buzzards are things like rabbits and small mammals like voles. This makes buzzards quite useful because many people would regard rabbits as an agricultural pest.

Quite often, people make the connection between buzzards and song bird declines. This is not correct. Song birds only form a small part of their prey.

Why we are seeing more buzzards around, I believe, is for two reasons. There is plenty of food out there in the form of rabbits and also the fact that there has been quite a substantial decline in illegal poisoning in the lowlands. In the uplands we are still seeing a problem with illegal poisonings.

History tells us and also the ecology of the birds tells us that allowing control of species such as raptors is not a good thing because they are quite vulnerable to increased mortality. They are at the top of the food chain. If you remove them we know their populations are quite slow to recover.

The populations we have now we have not seen since Victorian times. It has taken 200 years for our buzzard populations to recover to what they were at the beginning of the 1800s.

In my spare time I monitor buzzard nests. The main prey we see is rabbits. In 2001 we started studying buzzards in the central Scotland area. We have only had one red squirrel in a buzzard nest.