What a week it's been! The announcement of Defra's proposals to (amongst other things) destroy unoccupied buzzard nests and remove "problem" adults into captivity, as part of a trial management project to protect young pheasants at their release pens, caused national uproar on a scale that few could have anticipated. So much so that only a few days later, Minister for Wildlife, Mr Richard Benyon, issued a statement announcing that Defra had "listened to public concerns" and were withdrawing the project in its current format, in what was to be the third or fourth government U-turn of the week (I don't know about you but I've lost count!). He said that he recognised a need "to understand better the whole relationship between raptors, game birds and other livestock."
It is certainly very true that while projects such as the Joint Raptor Study and the Langholm Moor Demonstration Project have done much to further our understanding of the issues, there's still a lot we don't really know about the true impacts, economic or otherwise, of birds of prey on sport shooting. We all have our gut-feelings but I'm talking about hard scientific fact. For instance, we know that on Langholm, a dramatic increase in hen harrier numbers, following protection, impacted on autumn grouse numbers (though not the breeding population) to such an extent that driven shooting had to stop. However none of the other five moors in the same study experienced the same exponential increase in hen harriers nor the same decline in grouse. These other moors were not studied closely enough at the time for us to be able to draw any conclusions from this, however as any gamekeeper will tell you, no two grouse moors are the same.
These gaps in our knowledge have previously led to assumptions being made on both sides of the debate and I think the complexity of the issue is summed up nicely by the BBC in what could possibly be the most sensible article I have ever seen written on the subject: BBC Nature - Are birds of prey being unfairly persecuted?
Whatever new research proposals Mr Benyon and his team come up with, one thing is for certain - "buzzardgate" has served to thrust the complex issue of birds of prey and sport shooting firmly into the spotlight of the public eye. Wherever we go from here, the world will be watching.