Saving wildlife

Wildlife may well be able to save Scotland’s economy (your report, 3 October) but who will save it? The Scottish Government’s Rural Land Use Strategy rightly buys into the idea that the sustainable intensification of rural land use is needed to deliver many public benefits from the 60 per cent of land that is under agriculture, 20 per cent managed for sport and 17 per cent under forestry.

As Aldo Leopold, a leading conservationist, said of America more than 70 years ago: “Every head of wildlife still alive in this country is already artificialised, in that its existence is conditioned by economic forces. Game management merely proposes that their impact shall not remain merely fortuitous. The hope for the future lies not in curbing the influence of human occupancy but in creating a better understanding of the extent of that influence and a new ethic for its governance.”

Game management requires habitat conservation, predator control and provision of supplementary food. This pragmatic approach to conservation can be adopted by hardened bottom-line farmers and pure conservationists alike because it provides three things; cost effective solutions for spending on public agri-environment finance, ways to support enlightened self-interest in game shooting or wildlife tourism and practical delivery of an altruistic interest in nature. Wildlife may save the Scottish economy, but farmers, foresters and gamekeepers will have to save our wildlife.

(Dr) Adam Smith

Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust

Perth Airport

Scone, Perthshire