Raptor Persecution Scotland paranoia

david1976

Well-Known Member
Despite having previously been a keeper and seeing on numerous occasions birds of prey eating my grouse / pheasant chicks (not their fault, they have to eat) I have a soft spot for raptors and admire them when I see them outdoors.

Having just had the misfortune of following a link and then reading the page below however, I see that the raptor persecution scotland group have brought paranoia to a whole new level and dont do pro raptor organisations any favours what so ever.

Police conspiracies, collusion with the government etc etc are all to be found in their lunatic rantings.

Unfortunately about a third of the way down I wanted to put my foot through the laptop screen so stopped reading so I dont know what happened at the end of the blog :mad:

Any how, does any one know of a more paranoid organisation connected with the country side?

http://raptorpersecutionscotland.wordpress.com/

 
I had a quick look but like yourself stopped before throwing the laptop out the window.
Typical anti-gameshooting b******s
 
Unfortunately, this site only exists because a minority break the law. I was amazed to see that RSPB were getting the blame for not mounting a 24 hr vigil at the recent WTE nest incident!

This RPS site is pretty extreme and run a fine line when it comes to liable! The media has been awash with incidents over the last few months, many concerning usual suspects. I do think that we are getting somewhere and SLE and SGA are not getting the credit they deserve as they have publicly denounced and ejected convicted members.

would be great to see an end to it!
 
Don't worry about it... somewhere in the middle of the hype and glory quest there is some bits of relevant summary but it just gives us notice that some people do things that they really shouldn't. If those few that break the law didn't they wouldn't have anything to sensationalise
 
This site is just as bad- Raptor Politics. If all illegal persecution stopped tomorrow these guys would still find something to sensationalise. They have even started to blame each other for nest failures and I think they are right. Too many monitoring visits to nests causes desertion and many of these raptor workers are so obsessed with being the first to find a nest that multiple visits occur by different groups. They often do more harm than good.
 
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I follow RPS on Twitter, they seem to think every keeper/land owner is destroying raptors and their nest for the benefit of shooting. They regularly sail close to the wind, it's got them in bother before now too.

they could stir **** in an empty room
 
The RSPB are the worst for sensationalism in their annual reports their figures never add up to the facts if a raptor is found dead anywhere shooters get the blame. Yet wont blame domestic cats for the number of garden birds killed as they are terrified of upsetting Granny who's going to leave them her estate.
 
Annoying, but ultimately interesting read.

23000 signatures to a petition in pretty short order - those numbers will attract and potentially hold a politician's attention. The 3" lock knife E petition I mentioned last week, that has been running a 6 months already - er 8 votes.

History shows that volume aces fact and morality in human interactions time after time!

Also interesting to note tactics - few websites quoted, instead e mail addresses - with obvious lead in to get writing to the addresses published. These guys are motivated, add in making action easy and you get mass results. Meanwhile we are still arguing over whether 243 is 'man enough' :banghead:

Also highlights that two wrongs - just add up to the tarring of a whole industry. This far on there simply is no excuse. But the one that exists - I fear - is that the land owners demand results without wishing to 'know' the details.

We can decry the ineffectiveness of representative bodies, but do we as individuals actually deserve something more?

A bit ironic, but the phrase ' not with a bang... but a whimper' seems ever more appropriate...
 
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Check the Shooting Times of 19th June.

The rspb's "conservation director" Martin Harper admitted that in 2011 / 2012 they had culled 292 crows, destroyed 76 gull nests, shot three lesser black backed gulls, oiled 73 greylag goose eggs, oiled 25 Canada goose eggs and destroyed 195 introduced barnacle goose eggs. The last item was apparently "to reduce the impact of aggressive behaviour towards nesting species of conservation concern".

Nice bit of conservation there Martin, or should that be hypocrisy?.
Apparently he wrote a blog on predator control "in the interests of openness".
More likely it was to pre-empt a Freedom of Information Act request by any shooting organisations.

According to the CA, the rspb also admits that in 2011 it obtained a licence to destroy the eggs of black swans. No further details of this were given

I think the rspb has a bit of a god complex.
 
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The RSPB's moors have the worst raptor survival rates in the country! If the problem is all about persecution does this mean they are the biggest persecutors of them all!

David.
 
It's the same with the new Langholm 2 moor demo project, yes the harriers are breeding and fledging but usually just the 2 pairs not the heights off 20+ pairs that were there in the 80's-90's during langholm 1.

If it was purely a commercial grouse moor trying to re-establish the grouse they would be blaming the keepers for everything for the numbers not jumping back to there old unsustainable high, but as it's so well studied/monitored that's not the case

The RSPB while not completely fruit loops do nothing to discourage or actually encourage the looney fringe(which may not be as fringe as it used to be, mark avery say no more) with all the disinformation and damm right lies they put out.

Alasiter mitchel (ex ngo now basc) who writes in ST every week has been going on about how the RSPB for years, how there 'flagship' upland reserve Geltsdale is bottom of the table when it comes to habitat or wildlife surveys, trailing miles behind all the local keepered moors. He has also highlighted these raptor monitors disturbing nests and nothing is ever done no charges, no publicity, no slaps on wrist or taking away peoples licences. Imagine if a keeper was caught going anywhere near a nest.
Actually scares me how out of touch some off these 'conservationists' are, bet they all have a house full off cats and take pleasure in feeding the magpies and grey squirrels in there garden too:banghead:
 
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Birds do die of natural causes too and we had an uproar and over the top surveillance when a Red Kite was found on our estate and after much testing it had died of OLD AGE!!
 
Its funny how the disturbance thing is never brought to the public eye.
Not so long ago I was out with the boss prowling for an early morning deer when we dropped on a chap a long way off any public footpath at the base of a pine that we knew had Gos chicks in it.
When challenged the chap in question said he was connected to the RSPB and that he was monitoring the nest although the climbing irons in his bag suggested otherwise.
We kept him there until a policeman arrived and he was taken away.And that was that,nothing else heard about what was happening from the police at all.Now change the circumstances from him to me at the tree with climbing gear and I think the outcome may have been different
 
Check the Shooting Times of 19th June.

The rspb's "conservation director" Martin Harper admitted that in 2011 / 2012 they had culled 292 crows, destroyed 76 gull nests, shot three lesser black backed gulls, oiled 73 greylag goose eggs, oiled 25 Canada goose eggs and destroyed 195 introduced barnacle goose eggs. The last item was apparently "to reduce the impact of aggressive behaviour towards nesting species of conservation concern".

Nice bit of conservation there Martin, or should that be hypocrisy?.
Apparently he wrote a blog on predator control "in the interests of openness".
More likely it was to pre-empt a Freedom of Information Act request by any shooting organisations.

According to the CA, the rspb also admits that in 2011 it obtained a licence to destroy the eggs of black swans. No further details of this were given

I think the rspb has a bit of a god complex.

Out of interest, is there a list available of these and other actions committed by the RSPB or their partner agencies over the years?

I would be very interested to read it or other figures available to have handy next time I have the misfortune of dealing with them at work or at a wildlife conference. They always put the boot into shooters / keepers when I deal with them and would like to be able to make them squirm especially at a group event which I do have the opportunity to do :stir:
 
I severly doubt they keep info like that, be to scared off it gettin out, same with the ammount of foxes or other animals they control while slagging off the shooting community for doing the same.
Also i think there is a lot of different small groups, not directly linked if at all to the RSPB, local raptor groups oor photography clubs.
I think groups have to apply to get a licence to go within 'X' m's or monitor a nest, guessing appply to SNH? so prob figures for how many monitoring licences, FOI? but wether they record the succes or failure off the nest i've no idea

I was at a talk for local wildlife trust given by some amatuer photographers and they had hides (legally) set up with in 6ft of a nest on a moor, photo's were great; and to be fair they were exremely dedicated sneaked in before dawn and stayed all day till dusk.

The man to speak to would be that alister mitchel who rights on the back page of shooting times every week, he's also took over steve's old job as the BASC north eng officer or wot ever u call it, he writes very well and has been banging on about the rspb hypocracity for years now amongst other things
 
Come on guys, whose being paranoid now?

RSPB have never hidden the fact that deer, predators etc are controlled on certain reserves. There have been several articles on the subject in the shooting times in the past.

Alastair Mitchell certainly has his facts wrong in as far as Geltsdale if what you say he writes, is true. Geltsdale has higher than average upland wader and Black grouse numbers and productivity levels are high. Crows are also controlled on the reserve, foxes aren't generally a problem as the reserve neighbours various large Grouse moors.
i visited Geltsdale for the first time last year and was mightily impressed, some really good habitat work and a productive Hill farm to boot.

RPS walk a rather thin line, but as I said before. if nothing comes up dead with pellets or poison or pellets, then they have no site.

I've been involved in "discussions" at many levels for over 29 years and you know, we are getting no where. It always comes back to mud slinging and 2nd hand anecdotes. Both side are guilty, are we still incapable of sittings round a table and having a constructive conversation??
 
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For anyone following this - the Scottish labs have, as I expected, refused to release any data from my FOI request

This despite the fact that a police press release made AFTER my request, but BEFORE it was processed, released part of the information I had requested - as such I have demanded a review of the request, since its clear that the public interest test has not been carried out correctly, it can't have been, because they refused me information that that have otherwise released into the public domain.
 
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