Something to grouse about

ANYONE who owns, lets or manages a grouse moor in the East Highlands had better sharpen up. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the bobbies are after you. The message contained in the latest diktat to estates from the RSPB is pretty clear: you are responsible for wiping out raptors in the north-east of Scotland and if we don't see an increase over the next three years we'll want to know why.

And if you haven't got a decent quota of raptors you had better get one smartish. Anyone who is anyone, including, presumably, the Queen, who has a grouse moor at Delnadamph and happens to be patron of the RSPB, has been sent a letter by the society introducing the arrival of North East RaptorWatch, a clampdown on the illegal killing of raptors.

It will also advise on how best to increase the numbers. Raptors, just for the record, kill and scatter grouse, so they are not very popular with keepers and estates - and it is illegal to even say boo to a raptor.

RaptorWatch is a new "initiative" in partnership with the usual suspect, SNH, once memorably dubbed in a newspaper as "The Axis of Evil", and Cairngorm National Parks, with the bobbies riding shotgun. The aim of deliberately increasing raptor breeding numbers in areas of grouse moor is much the same as encouraging stoats to breed next to a warren. The RSPB, hand in hand with the police, are inviting themselves to visit estates and discuss wildlife crime.

There is a strong hint that if you don't take part in the surveys that the RSPB think you ought to, then "this will be put in place". How or by whom is unclear. Which is just the sort of approach guaranteed to ensure all-round co-operation.

According to the RSPB, there is a decline in raptor numbers in the East Highlands. This "often coincides with areas of heather moorland managed for sport shooting of Red Grouse. In areas of moorland not managed for the Red Grouse they do relatively well."

In the East Highlands, the only serious grouse moor territory in Scotland apart from the Borders and Dumfriesshire, hen harrier numbers are down, but up across the UK. Golden eagle numbers are down, but up across the country as a whole. Peregrine populations have remained moderately constant regardless.

The RSPB is convinced it is mainly the fault of keepers for illegally bumping off birds or stomping on their nests. But in spite of years of persecuting and prosecuting keepers who should by now know better (one or two don't, it is true) the numbers have not improved.

Which means either keepers are getting better at evading the RSPB, or the decline has very little to do with keepers. It may be worth noting, however, that the RSPB says the decline in numbers "often" occurs on moors managed for grouse, not "always". They also concede that the weather may have something to do with poor breeding and survival. But where is the scientific evidence that illegal persecution is the "major" cause of raptor decline?

Science has produced the "wrong" answer for the RSPB in the past. At Langholm in Dumfriesshire, when keepers were withdrawn as part of an RSPB-backed experiment and the moors left to their own natural devices, the harriers multiplied, wiping out the grouse so efficiently that they ate themselves out of house and home. Now the harriers have gone.

Could there be another reason why well-tended East Highland grouse moors are not brimming with harriers? Moors are regularly burnt to produce fresh heather for grouse to feed on. Other wildlife does not seem to mind. But harriers aren't that keen on regularly burned land. They like nice bushy banks for nesting, which you don't find in ready profusion on a well-managed moor. Could it be harriers simply don't like carefully managed grouse moors and naturally push off to somewhere more inviting? Just a thought.