BASC warns Bill adds pressure to deer sector

[west_meon]

Not so, so far. The objectives have changed because there is a direct conflict between the interests of those managing their land to maximise sporting returns and those who wish to adopt the new management model which prioritises biological diversity and carbon capture. You want as many deer as the land will support and treeless heather moorland, I want to promote woodland cover with natural regeneration. My woodland, with its reduced herbivore population is going to draw your deer.
I don’t want them, they cost me money. You want them, but you won’t build and maintain fences.
Deer numbers will be vastly reduced and the grouse moors will sprout trees.
Its a new variant of the clearances.

Trees and carbon capture are vastly more profitable to the landowners than traditional sporting use, thats why hard nosed commercial companies and trusts are buying up the land and shooting out the deer.
They wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.

The problem is it depends upon your real objectives - grouse moors are heather. 75% of the world's heather moorland is in the UK, with a very large proportion of that being in Scotland. Globally, it is rarer that rocking horse poo!

As heather moorland is unviable for anything other than grouse shooting and stalking, the shooting and keepering pays for and manages their continued existence. If you incentivise turning heather moorland into forestry, you may capture carbon (or actually release more during the afforestation than the trees will ever conserve- jury still out on that one, I think) but you will lose an ecosystem that is already incredibly rare and 'valuable', just not in a monetary sense. With regard to biological diversity, is the biodiversity really greater in blanket conifer woodland rather than open heather moorland?

 

[Mungo]

The problem is it depends upon your real objectives - grouse moors are heather. 75% of the world's heather moorland is in the UK, with a very large proportion of that being in Scotland. Globally, it is rarer that rocking horse poo!

As heather moorland is unviable for anything other than grouse shooting and stalking, the shooting and keepering pays for and manages their continued existence. If you incentivise turning heather moorland into forestry, you may capture carbon (or actually release more during the afforestation than the trees will ever conserve- jury still out on that one, I think) but you will lose an ecosystem that is already incredibly rare and 'valuable', just not in a monetary sense. With regard to biological diversity, is the biodiversity really greater in blanket conifer woodland rather than open heather moorland?

Careful.

Natural heather moorland is rare.

We don’t have very much of that at all. What we have is essentially an intensively farmed Heather monoculture that doesn’t have very many similarities to natural Heather dominated systems.

The argument you’re making isn’t far off saying something like ‘wild potatoes are rare, but we have thousands of acres of farmed potato, which must be protected because the wild potatoes are under threat’.

 

[Dunwaters]

To which the solution is for you to fence off your theme park. In fact, most sporting estates don't want as many head of game as the ground will support and they carry out the majority of conservation work. This may be somewhat semantic, but it's not natural regeneration if you are killing off or fencing out the fauna.

My trees stay where they’re put. You want the deer, you fence them in.

This argument appears to boil down to the fact that you're unwilling to spend money to achieve your objective on your land, so others must be forced to spend money on their land, and in this case, to frustrate their objective and livelihood. Not only that, but others are to be compelled to spend further money, via tax and subsidy, to continuously subsidise your objectives. On a rational basis, that hardly seems reasonable.

All true, I don’t make the rules I just follow them to my best advantage.

It certainly is. Grouse moors area globally rare and threatened habitat of greater conservation value and greater carbon storage value than woodland cover. I appreciate that they look pretty awful.

Managed grouse moors do very little for anything except the grouse and the owners.

Because, the state distorts the market to make it so and by providing large financial incentives at the expense of the population. It is not genuine profit, and it is quite likely not to be real carbon-capture either, it is simply mis-allocation of resources. If you buy up the land, shoot out the deer, destroy the existing ecosystem, you get large financial benefits in the form of subsidy and tax exemptions, but you don't actually perform any useful economic function and most likely not an environmental benefit either. Bearing in mind these policies also cover farmland, to the extent that planting trees instead has environmental benefit, it is offset by the consequent displacement of agriculture to a less efficient zone causing more net damage.

Distorting the free market is just what states do, particularly left wing ideologies .
Of course leaving people who can’t fend for themselves to die of hypothermia or malnutrition requires some intervention in the market, but we agree to that.
There is no perfect system, never was and never will be.
It’s all about compromise, after nearly 150 years of unopposed dominance it’s time for the deer to move over. They won’t all go, but there’ll be a lot fewer.
It might ease the pressure to release wolves and lynx .

 

[Apthorpe]

Careful.

Natural heather moorland is rare.

We don’t have very much of that at all. What we have is essentially an intensively farmed Heather monoculture that doesn’t have very many similarities to natural Heather dominated systems.

"Essentially" it isn't an intensively farmed heather monoculture, because the heather isn't farmed and it isn't intensive and it isn't a monoculture, by definition.

Hyperbole aside, one can debate how natural a grouse moor is, or indeed how natural "natural heather moorland" is, as one can debate how natural "rewilding" is. What is beyond debate, though, is that a grouse moor is much closer to natural heather moorland than forest is. Grouse moors, regardless of how natural we decide they are, are the majority of the world's heather moorland and are both rare and endangered. It's splitting hairs whether it's a managed grouse moor, or whether it's "natural heather moorland". Whatever it is replaced with is a man-made alternative and the destruction of a globally rare and threatened landscape. I quite appreciate that you may prefer the appearance and political opportunities of one over the other.

And with this policy, we're not talking about only grouse moors, we're talking about all habitats: peat bogs (also too rare and valuable), forestry, pasture, farmland, wasteland, the lot.

The argument you’re making isn’t far off saying something like ‘wild potatoes are rare, but we have thousands of acres of farmed potato, which must be protected because the wild potatoes are under threat’.

It's a lot further from that than you're thinking. Who planted the farmed heather? Did they do that in a way that your analogy holds - i.e. by farming it in a completely different environment with machinery, chemical inputs and so on? No.
Of course, we do also need to protect heirloom strains of crops too, because they are rare or absent in the wild.

 

[Apthorpe]

My trees stay where they’re put.

Not if I don't fence the deer, and you don't fence your trees.

You want the deer, you fence them in.

The deer already exist. I have no wish to enforce a change to the status quo on others.

All true, I don’t make the rules I just follow them to my best advantage.

Managed grouse moors do very little for anything except the grouse and the owners.

Nor does a forest.

Distorting the free market is just what states do, particularly left wing ideologies .
Of course leaving people who can’t fend for themselves to die of hypothermia or malnutrition requires some intervention in the market, but we agree to that.

That's a highly spurious line of argument. The fact that a degree of intervention is justified or even necessary is no argument in favour of more than the minimal possible intervention. As it happens, people dying of hypothermia, malnutrition or any other cause is entirely irrelevant to this.

There is no perfect system, never was and never will be.

Again, that is no argument in favour of creating a system which is more imperfect than it need be.

It’s all about compromise, after nearly 150 years of unopposed dominance it’s time for the deer to move over. They won’t all go, but there’ll be a lot fewer.

It's not about compromise if you're legislating to force your policy.

It might ease the pressure to release wolves and lynx .

We both know that it won't.

 

[Mickeydredd]

Managed grouse moors do very little for anything except the grouse and the owners.

...and mountain hares, and ground nesting birds such as waders, pipits, SEO, Merlin, Hen Harriers, bees, etc, etc

 

[Dunwaters]

...and mountain hares, and ground nesting birds such as waders, pipits, SEO, Merlin, Hen Harriers, bees, etc, etc

All at the cost of eliminating everything that damages or preys on grouse.
Which is why Scotland now has a licensing system linked directly to wildlife crime.
The benefits of intensive grouse management are only extended to creatures that don’t compete, you mentioned hares, they get hammered because they harbour ticks, the Merlin’s, hen harrier and other birds of prey are very recent additions, they were hammered for decades, so is anything else..

 

[Dunwaters]

Not if I don't fence the deer, and you don't fence your trees.

The deer already exist. I have no wish to enforce a change to the status quo on others.

Nor does a forest.

That's a highly spurious line of argument. The fact that a degree of intervention is justified or even necessary is no argument in favour of more than the minimal possible intervention. As it happens, people dying of hypothermia, malnutrition or any other cause is entirely irrelevant to this.

Again, that is no argument in favour of creating a system which is more imperfect than it need be.

It's not about compromise if you're legislating to force your policy.

We both know that it won't.

I think you should start a campaign of resistance to this creeping socialist/environmental nonsense.
Before you publish your manifesto you might want to have a few proposals to counter existing policy.
So far you haven’t had a single suggestion as to how things might be changed for the better.

 

[Conor O'Gorman]

@dunwater noting comments about grouse moors, this may be of interest from your neck of the woods:

Environmentalists warn ‘failure is not an option’ in saving the hen harrier from extinction in Ireland

Measures taken in the past to save the bird of prey have not stopped its numbers declining sharply this century

www.irishtimes.com

 

[Apthorpe]

I think you should start a campaign of resistance to this creeping socialist/environmental nonsense.
Before you publish your manifesto you might want to have a few proposals to counter existing policy.
So far you haven’t had a single suggestion as to how things might be changed for the better.

Since that wasn't the topic, it is true that I haven't aired any ideas, beyond suggesting that not doing a bad policy is better than doing it.
However, I'd suggest that rather than obsessing about deer:
1. Achieve the eradication of grey squirrels, signal crayfish, and other damaging invasive species - probably including sika.
2. Ban coastal fish farming.
3. Complete tax relief for rural landowners. On the basis that selecting policies as being of environmental benefit is beyond the computational capacity of the state and leads to abominable results.
4. Zero or negative net immigration. It is environmentally damaging and obviously unsustainable.
5. Redevelopment of the swathes of shitty housing in deprived areas across the country.
6. Legally limit the size of the state and public spending to 30% of GDP on a balanced budget basis. (That's much higher than Ireland and Australia, both of which compare favourably to the UK.)

 

[Apthorpe]

@dunwater noting comments about grouse moors, this may be of interest from your neck of the woods:

Environmentalists warn ‘failure is not an option’ in saving the hen harrier from extinction in Ireland

Measures taken in the past to save the bird of prey have not stopped its numbers declining sharply this century

www.irishtimes.com

Funny. I'd understood from those great experts Packham and Avery that hen harriers were at risk of extinction only because of British gamekeepers allegedly persecuting them. Some re-evaluation of causes seems in order?

 

[Hayduke]

I’m from the government and I’m here to help…..

 

[Mickeydredd]

All at the cost of eliminating everything that damages or preys on grouse.
Which is why Scotland now has a licensing system linked directly to wildlife crime.
The benefits of intensive grouse management are only extended to creatures that don’t compete, you mentioned hares, they get hammered because they harbour ticks, the Merlin’s, hen harrier and other birds of prey are very recent additions, they were hammered for decades, so is anything else..

Your post that I responded to stated that managing a grouse moor was only beneficial to grouse and the landowner. That is clearly not the case and well documented.

The fact that some landowners/keepers choose/chose to then break the law and kill some of the beneficiaries of the landscape is irrelevant to the fact that the only reason they were there in the first place was due to the moor being managed. The large hare culls that caused such an outcry with the townies were done due to their success on the managed land and their population needed kept in check. They also are a species providing sport in themselves, I used to fly them with my goshawk for example.

Burning heather is absolutely necessary for the health of the moorland, albeit there is an argument against doing it in regimental shapes.

I live on a 4500 acre farm which bought the heather moorland from the estate when it went bust, and it covers around half of the total acreage. When managed, grouse numbers were phenomenal, white hares were abundant and plenty other species benefitted, so much so that a SSSI was put in place due to the nesting pairs of Hen Harriers. Since the farm bought the moorland, no further management has taken place. There are now no white hares and around 4 or 5 small coveys of grouse each year. The heather has been heavily choked out by mosses and grasses and is rank and pretty useless. There is one pair of Merlins and zero Hen harriers. Despite this, the SSSI remains in place and is the only thing stopping a windfarm being put in place on the moor.

Why do you think there is no natural strong population of golden eagles in the south of Scotland these days?

How is planting huge swathes of moorland with trees going to help the population of HH / Merlin?

How anyone can think that an unmanaged heather moorland is more beneficial to wildlife simply beggars belief.....

 

[jall55]

All at the cost of eliminating everything that damages or preys on grouse.
Which is why Scotland now has a licensing system linked directly to wildlife crime.
The benefits of intensive grouse management are only extended to creatures that don’t compete, you mentioned hares, they get hammered because they harbour ticks, the Merlin’s, hen harrier and other birds of prey are very recent additions, they were hammered for decades, so is anything else..

You are on another planet - a very negative one

These places now - because they are managed are the last reservoirs of golden plover , lapwing , curlew and full of snipe, lark - pipit

 

[Cumbrian 1]

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem when you have don’t national objectives.

Scotland has many many problems, the highest drug death rate in the world, one of the lowest life expectancies in Europe, a NHS and education system that has failed completely and a huge budget deficit, I think the perceived deer problem shouldn’t even be on the table.

The worst issues on the uplands is overgrazing by sheep and the afforestation by non native blanket species such as sikta spruce.

The massive drive to exterminate the deer population is simply class warfare, this and the previous socialist government see big landowners (often wealthy people who plough endless amounts of money into their estates) as a legitimate target. The one way to kill a sporting estate is to simply remove the main quarry I.e. deer.

 

[Heym SR20]

Under the Deer Scotland Act there is already provision for deer control orders from the Red Deer Commission and its successors. There always has been.

Quite why the Scottish Government needs to waste yet more time on these matters when there are many many much more pressing matters such as healthcare, the economy, drugs etc that need addressing.

 

[Mungo]

Under the Deer Scotland Act there is already provision for deer control orders from the Red Deer Commission and its successors. There always has been.

Quite why the Scottish Government needs to waste yet more time on these matters when there are many many much more pressing matters such as healthcare, the economy, drugs etc that need addressing.

Legacy of the Bute House agreement with the Greens.

I think the residual institutional momentum is waning fast as the costs become apparent.

 

[LuckyEddie]

All at the cost of eliminating everything that damages or preys on grouse.
Which is why Scotland now has a licensing system linked directly to wildlife crime.
The benefits of intensive grouse management are only extended to creatures that don’t compete, you mentioned hares, they get hammered because they harbour ticks, the Merlin’s, hen harrier and other birds of prey are very recent additions, they were hammered for decades, so is anything else..

The hares get hammered because they nibble trees during winter when other food is scarce.
Not sure if there is any more up-to-date info.

 

[Dunwaters]

@dunwater noting comments about grouse moors, this may be of interest from your neck of the woods:

Environmentalists warn ‘failure is not an option’ in saving the hen harrier from extinction in Ireland

Measures taken in the past to save the bird of prey have not stopped its numbers declining sharply this century

www.irishtimes.com

At least part of the problem is down to a marked reluctance from some members of the community to having their land designated as an SSIA because of nesting harriers and therefore being prevented from developing it.

 

[Dunwaters]

You are on another planet - a very negative one

These places now - because they are managed are the last reservoirs of golden plover , lapwing , curlew and full of snipe, lark - pipit

I’m not in the least bit negative, the changes in land management objectives are part of your national climate policy, so they’re coming.
The snipe and pipits will adapt, so will the grouse and the sporting tenants.