There are days when you really have to wonder about the farming press. Pages have recently been devoted in Scottish farmer, to events wreaked upon the world by birds of prey. In Scotland, thanks to conservation programmes, red kites are making a comeback, a few years behind England and Wales it has been said. But evidently the 150 or so pairs of Scottish red kites are causing havoc in contrast to the 1000+ pairs in England – see here. Some of the complaints do seem to be overlooking the impact of farming itself on wildlife, because the declines in Lapwings and other species in Galloway pre-date by some measure the return of the kite. Two or three cuts of sileage per season plus rolling and drainage of wet areas doesn’t leave much space for ground nesting birds like lapwing or redshank which are fast declining in the lowlands as a result.
We have also heard quite a bit about the return of the white-tailed-eagles, an effort Scotland can be very proud of.
photo: Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com)
Many farmers, crofters and sporting estates have helped this effort over the past 30 odd years. The people of Norway have gifted us the young birds which were reared and released, and now form the core of our 60+ nesting pairs. Harald Misund a retired Norwegian airforce officer devoted much of his life to helping this re-introduction. The RSPB gave him its highest award – a simple medal as a tribute to his work. I remember him on the stage at the Aros centre on Skye celebrating the 25th year of the partnership to bring back the white-tailed eagles. He recounted how he watched the mosquito fighter bombers skimming the waves near his home when he was a young boy, as they tried to disable the Tirpitz. Years later when the request to help with the white-tailed-eagles came he said it was for him his great opportunity to thank those RAF airman who flew from Scottish bases to take the fight to occupied Norway. I still choke up with emotion when I think of it - and you could hear a pin drop in the hall that night.
Some, but lets be clear nowhere near all, farmers and crofters view the white-tailed eagle with great suspicion and they do sometimes take viable lambs. But not on the scale reported. Independent studies into the lamb loses claimed have found a very different story, with drowning, hypothermia and in some cases poor husbandry responsible for the majority of lamb deaths, as shown here. More recently the death of a lamb in Perthshire got considerable media coverage, and a white-tailed-eagle was blamed in the Dundee Courier here and reported as the suspicious party in the Scottish Farmer. That lamb was given a post-mortem. The vet’s findings – which sadly were not reported - revealed a quite different story to the conjecture and supposition of the lamb being killed by the eagle that was wrongly written up as fact. Indeed, the Scottish Agricultural College’s laboratory report by the Veterinary Centre Manager read: “There was no bruising or haemorrhage evident anywhere on the carcase. Although predation was extensive, there was no evidence that the lamb had died due to traumatic injuries such as might have been inflicted by a large predatory bird. Given the climatic conditions on 03.04.2012 death due to hypothermia and subsequent opportunistic predation seem the most likely explanation in this case”. Of course, these birds attract valuable tourism to areas like Mull and Galloway, and some farmers benefit from this directly, but not all. So I accept that cannot be the only answer.
But lets not get carried away – The RSPB does not deny that on occasions a viable lamb is lost and this is a loss for the farmer. There is a SNH scheme in place that offers proportionate payments to farmers in eagle areas, to help with managing any issues. But the scale of mortality that can be attributed to eagles is dwarfed by losses to severe weather, the cussed ability of sheep to find novel ways of expiring and poor nutrition on the hard hills, and in some areas foxes are an ever present danger. But a bit of well researched evidence doesn’t stop the hyperbole in Scottish Farmer! And as for White-tailed-eagles decimating sea fish stocks as some correspondents claim, I won’t get drawn!
I think we should look and learn from other countries who have large eagle populations. In Norway losses of viable livestock are tiny, despite far larger white-tailed, and golden eagle numbers. How do they do it? Can we emulate this? Perhaps a study tour could be organised to find out.
If you're looking in Scottish Farmer for a reasonable, well-informed, unbiased article about birds of prey, I would suggest that you are wasting your time!