WE don't have many good environmental columnists in Scotland but I would suggest Rob Edwards of The Sunday Herald is probably the best.
Rob recently picked up a story about a letter that had been sent to The Scottish Farmer newspaper, a letter that encouraged an official of the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association to make an outrageous statement on Facebook, a statement that could be interpreted as expressing an attitude amongst gamekeepers that many of us hoped had died out years ago.
I’ve always enjoyed a reasonable rapport with the gamekeeping fraternity in Scotland. Certainly there have been various individuals who have seen me as some kind of devil incarnate, encouraging the masses to walk over the “workplace” of those who regard themselves as stewards of the land, but generally speaking the relationship has been cordial.
I’ve even been proud to regard a number of gamekeepers as friends – notably the late Geordie Oswald of Benalder Estate, a wonderful character who used to visit walking clubs and give talks on wildlife, and our local keeper here in Glen Banchor Estate, who taught me a lot about the movement of red deer.
In recent years I’ve met a number of keepers who have come into the profession from a hillwalking background and I’ve served on various boards and committees along with members of the gamekeeping profession. In recent times I’ve sensed a growing awareness that many of the issues that were regarded as acceptable in days gone by are no longer tolerable. But I may have been wrong…
I think it’s fair to say the attitudes of many keepers reflect those of their bosses. I had an experience recently with a keeper in Knoydart who was aggressive and unpleasant, and I later learned that he actually wasn’t a bad lad at all, but his boss didn’t like hillwalkers and he was under orders to discourage us.
Likewise, some younger keepers are still influenced by the old countryside dinosaurs, those who still maintain the old ways are best and who hold conservationists and agencies like Scottish Natural Heritage in utter contempt.
One such dinosaur is Donny Ross, of Leault by Kincraig. Donny is a shepherd and a prolific letter writer.
For over 30 years I wrote a weekly column in the Strathspey and Badenoch Herald and I think there were more letters from Donnie about the contents of that column than anyone else. His letters were generally vituperative and unpleasant with a few Bible quotes thrown in to bolster his outmoded claims.
Donnie’s letters didn’t particularly worry me. I knew he was from a family of shepherds, and his own sons were shepherds, a profession that he could see visibly dying around him. He was, in many ways, a sole defender of an older way of life with the blinkered view that sheep were everything to the highlands.
Despite his old fashioned views I had a fond regard for Donnie, a regard bordering on respect. He was a man fighting against everything that threatened his age-old lifestyle.
Last year Donnie was elected to the Crofters’ Commission, a role that didn’t last very long. The Commission became concerned that his prolific letter-writing was sending out the wrong signals about the Commission and he was asked to stop. He refused, and eventually resigned.
And now another Donnie Ross epistle has caused a furore, this time within the gamekeeping world.
A letter published in The Scottish Farmer argued that sea eagles should be killed off because they preyed on lambs: “Nothing short of complete eradication will do, and it is the same for the pine marten – both should be absolutely destroyed,” it said. “The oblivion of the sea eagle wouldn’t matter and, indeed, would be an absolute blessing for the countryside and its animals.”
Sea eagle off the coast of Skye
I guess Donnie is entitled to his views, however draconian, but unfortunately, in what was obviously a weak moment, those views were picked up by George Macdonald, no less a person than the training and education officer for the Scottish Gamekeepers Association.
Rather than publicly lambast Ross’s comments, he agreed with them on Facebook, the social media website – “More people need to speak out,” he said. “Mr Ross of Leault is absolutely correct with his observations.”
Macdonald’s comments were picked up by Rob Edwards, and published in the Sunday Herald, comments that could be interpreted as an attitude amongst keepers that may well explain the spate of poisoned birds of prey that have been found on Scottish estates over the past few years.
Generally speaking gamekeepers are concerned with raptors that take grouse, birds of the moorlands that are shot by “sportsmen”, and a number of shepherds have claimed that sea eagles take new-born lambs, although hard evidence for that is notable by its absence.
But the fact is that the sea eagle, and the pine marten (a mammal of the pinewoods which doesn’t take grouse) are protected species and calls from people like Donnie Ross, apparently supported by a member of the SGA, to decimate them are both irresponsible and unacceptable.
Unfortunately, the SGA hasn’t taken a very strong stance on the issue, suggesting that Mr Macdonald’s clumsy comments were an “off-the-cuff viewpoint on a personal site based on a more general feeling that people working every day in the countryside should, instead of taking the view that no one listens to them anyway, voice their concerns.”
That may well be the case but Macdonald’s apparent affirmation of Donnie Ross’s ‘observations’ seems to reflect some very old-fashioned values that the field sports fraternity have been trying hard to keep at arm’s length.
There is increasing concern that a number of estates in Scotland blatantly disregard the law when it comes to poisoning birds of prey. A golden eagle and two buzzards, protected birds, were poisoned in 2012, but in 2009 a total of 30 birds were poisoned – 22 buzzards, four red kites, two golden eagles and a sea eagle. While the poisoning of raptors appears to be on the decrease other wildlife crimes, such as egg theft, trapping and shooting remains high, according to the Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime.
In a later entry on the Macdonald Facebook page there appeared a comment about the “shit-stirring scum out there”, presumably referring to Rob Edwards, and now, probably me too. Oh well, what’s new?
Finally, in a Government consultation to designate the golden eagle as Scotland’s National Bird, Scottish Natural Heritage, surprisingly, refused to recommend it, suggesting there were other contenders like, amongst others, the red grouse.
Maybe I’ve got this wrong but isn’t the red grouse intensively managed on an industrial scale so that lairds and their bloodthirsty cohorts can shoot them. Scotland’s National Bird? Come on SNH, think again and support the petition for the golden eagle, a bird that needs every bit of protection it can get. SNH support for the golden eagle might, I say might, go some way to reducing the dreadful and illegal persecution of this majestic bird, ongoing persecution that is the shame of the hunting and shooting fraternity in Scotland today.
Golden Eagle