By John Knox
Yet another report has come out warning that the hen harrier or “sky-dancer ” is in danger of extinction on the grouse moors of Scotland. And deliberate persecution is being blamed.
The UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee says: “In Scotland, there is strong evidence that in five Natural Heritage Zones, illegal persecution is causing the failure of a majority of breeding attempts.” It lists the five zones as Central Highlands, Cairngorm Massif, Northeast Glens, Western Southern Uplands and Inner Solway, and Border Hills. In these areas, the number of hen harriers is falling rapidly while the overall population for Scotland is holding steady at around 630 pairs.
It’s estimated that only 1 per cent of hen harriers on UK grouse moors are successfully breeding. In England, the hen harrier population has been virtually wiped out. In the last survey, in 2004, only ten pairs were counted.
Professor Des Thomson, the principle adviser on biodiversity for Scottish Natural Heritage, says: “This report identifies persecution as a significant problem hitting hen harriers hard across some parts of the country. It will feed into the strenuous efforts that are being made to conserve this bird and to resolve the conflict between hen harrier conservation and red grouse management which underlies persecution.”
The plight of the hen harrier reflects the same worries over its iconic superior the golden eagle. There are 440 pairs of golden eagles in Scotland, not counting the four eagles killed by poison on estates near Inverness last year. The Scottish Parliament is currently tightening the law against killing birds of prey, making the landowner, as well as the perpetrator, liable for prosecution. To be fair, landowners are taking measures to stamp out wildlife crime. A letter promising action has been signed by 225 Scottish landowners, including grouse moor owners.
I’m happy to say that the Glen Tanar estate on Deeside, where I spent several summers grouse-beating when I was a student back in the early 1970s, is one of the leading estates in the fight to save both the hen harrier and the golden eagle. It’s also fighting to save its grouse moors. Last year was the first time in ten years that there were enough grouse to make shooting worthwhile. Ironically, that was partly due to hen harriers eating the young grouse chicks.
But the estate owner Michael Bruce began a bold experiment last year. As soon as the hen harriers had hatched their young, he began feeding them with chopped-up white rats and poultry, giving them an alternative food supply to his grouse chicks. He also fed the estate’s adult golden eagles with deer carcasses during the winter, so by the spring they were strong enough and in good enough numbers to predate the hen harriers. Thus he hopes to establish a natural balance between eagles, hen harriers and grouse, allowing everyone to enjoy a good living on the Glen Tanar estate, including the wildlife visitors, the shooting parties, holiday cottagers, and, of course, the owners.
A similar experiment has been running on Langholm Moor in the Borders for the past four years and results there show that feeding hen harriers reduces the loss of grouse chicks by over 80 per cent. The project is also experimenting with other methods of raising grouse numbers while preserving a healthy bird-of-prey population - better heather burning, fox and crow control, medicated grit to prevent infections etc. There are many factors at play.
On the moors, as elsewhere in the natural world, everything is linked to everything else. The hen harrier is just part of what Burns called the “social union” which binds man and animals and landscape together. Burns was sorry to break that union when he ran over that mouse with his plough on an autumn day in 1785. And we would be sorry if we saw the hen harrier disappear. We would miss them soaring in ever-higher circles over a moorland and tumbling to the ground to make a kill with astonishing speed, earning them their nickname, the sky-dancers.
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