Feathers fly as conservationists reveal plan to cull birds

Published on Thursday 27 January 2011 16:40

THE dawn chorus may ring clearer in the Scottish Borders due to a controversial plan to trap and kill crows and magpies in a bid to protect songbirds.

Campaigners anxious to reverse the decline of the skylark, bullfinch and yellowhammer are to embark on a large-scale trial to find out if culling the songbirds' natural predators will help reverse their plummeting numbers.

But the trial, expected to begin in March, has revealed a rift between two rival conservation groups. Songbird Survival, which is funding the 100,000 trial cull, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds which is disputing whether predators are to blame for the collapse in songbird numbers, which have halved since 1970.

The RSPB believes the main case for their demise is intensive farming which has robbed the songbirds of their habitat and food sources and argue that a cull of crows and magpies could be illegal.

However Songbird Survival questions whether farming practices are the main cause of the decline, pointing out this has continued despite the billions of pounds paid to farmers in the past decade to protect bird habitats. Between 2003 and 2008 there was a fall in farmland bird numbers of 7 per cent, according to figures published last week by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Populations of the main songbird predators have doubled in the past 30 years. Sparrowhawks, which kill an estimated 50 million songbirds a year, have increased by 152 per cent to 40,100 breeding pairs. Magpies, which raid nests, steal eggs and kill chicks, have increased by 98 per cent.

The cull to be carried out by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust Scotland will operate by identifying two similar hedgerows close to each other.

By setting a trap in one and leaving the other to nature they will measure how the two compare over the nesting season from March to July and whether more songbirds survive in the protected area.

• Twitterers on stand by for unusual sightings

The Borders region is being considered because lower population levels suggest there is less chance of people affecting the results

Yesterday Georgina Bradley, office manager at Songbird Survival, which has 1,356 members UK-wide, said: "This is not a sudden problem, it's something people have been concerned about for 20 or 30 years.

"Our members have been saying we need to do something about this for a while.

"It is only now we've raised the money to carry out this research.

"The RSPB says there is not a problem because it doesn't want to upset anyone, and killing things upsets people. They don't want to upset a little old lady who might leave them 100,000 in her will.

She added: "Everyone likes to talk about the natural balance of things, but name me one part of the countryside that is still natural."We no longer have a natural environment, we're man-made, even in the Scottish Highlands, which people think is the most natural place in the UK, there used to be more forests.

"We've made this country unbalanced, we've got to fix it."

Duncan Orr-Ewing, head of species and land management at RSPB Scotland, said: "Whilst we have no objection to bona fide research we do not believe that there is any scientific evidence to justify a cull of magpies and crows to protect songbird populations, and certainly not a cull of vulnerable raptor species.

"A recent scientific review of the way predatory birds impact on songbirds, commissioned by SongBird Survival from the British Trust for Ornithology largely exonerated crows, magpies and raptors from causing songbird population declines.

"Our own and other reputable scientific research suggests that intensification of farming practices and other land use changes, encouraged by the Common Agricultural Policy, have driven the particular declines of farmland bird species across the UK and more widely in Europe".

A spokeswoman for the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust Scotland said the issue had been blown out of all proportion.

In a statement she said: "We are thinking about the Scottish Borders but we have not yet identified any sites.?

"We are looking at controlling 20-30 crow species."