Gamekeeper in row over call to ‘destroy’ pine martens and sea eagles

from Sunday Herald, 16 February 2014

A leading gamekeeper has come under fire for seeming to back a call for two of Scotland’s iconic wild animals - pine martens and sea eagles - to be wiped out.

A letter published in The Scottish Farmer last week from Donnie Ross of Leault in Kincraig, near Aviemore, argued that sea eagles should be killed off because they preyed on lambs. “Nothing short of complete eradication will do, and it is the same for the pine marten - both should be absolutely destroyed,” he wrote.

Ross’s outburst was recommended on the social media website, Facebook, by George Macdonald, the training and education officer for the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA). “More people need to speak out,” he said. “Mr Ross of Leault is absolutely correct with his observations.”

Sea eagles and pine martens are rare and legally protected species. But they both prey on a wide variety of animals, and have been blamed by gamekeepers for taking game birds like grouse that could be shot for sport.

Macdonald’s support for Ross has been seized upon by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). “For such a senior member of the SGA to express unequivocal support for the absolute destruction of our cherished and symbolic native species seems to reflect those outmoded Victorian values that led to their previous extinction,” said a spokesman for RSPB Scotland. 

“These attitudes have absolutely no place in a modern Scotland,” he added. “These sorts of comments certainly appear to completely undermine the SGA’s oft-voiced claim to be Scotland’s true conservationists.” 

Macdonald, however, denied that he meant to endorse the eradication of wildlife. “I was meaning that people need to look at the issue,” he told the Sunday Herald.

“I am and always have been a campaigner for dialogue to air the issues that arise and would never ask anyone to eradicate anything. I have monitored all sorts of wildlife all my life and see very well what has impacts on other people and also other wildlife.”

He repeated the denial in a post on his Facebook page on Thursday, adding that there were “some shit-stirring scum out there”. Later, all his Facebook posts on the topic disappeared from public view.

The SGA pointed out that it didn’t have any policy on sea eagles other than believing that those whose businesses suffered should be compensated. “The SGA does not believe pine martens should be completely destroyed,” said a spokesman for the association.

“The Facebook comments by Mr Macdonald were an off-the-cuff viewpoint on a personal site based on a more general feeling that people working every day in the countryside should, instead of taking the view that no one listens to them anyway, voice their concerns.”

Macdonald had not been referring to sea eagles or pine martens but to the need for the countryside to speak up, the SGA spokesman maintained. “It is everyone’s right to voice an opinion equally, regardless of how valid or otherwise people deem that opinion to be. No one should be arrogant enough to say they know someone else’s problems.”

This story was also reported by Raptor Persecution Scotland and by Cameron McNeish in Walk Highlands.

Comments

[Ruth Miller]

Well said Stuart and Jason. It's about time gamekeepers and farmers woke up from past times and joined the 21st century! It's human interferace that has caused nature imbalance so leave the animals alone for once and they will sort themselves out. These antiquated attitudes of farmers and gamekeepers need to be squashed once and for all !!

[Stuart MacKenzie]

The sea eagle's preferred diet is fish, but it will also eat rabbit, hare and carrion. A compensation progam is in place for farmers who have shown evidence that their lambs were killed by a sea eagle, but the only times such compensation has been claimed has been on high ground in winter where the lamb was just as likely to have succumbed to the harsh climate conditions (which kills far more lambs in Scotland than any predator) and the sea eagle merely fed on its already dead carcass.

In the case of the pine marten, that is a species that is only now starting to make a recovery in Scotland. They are strictly inhabitants of pine woodland and will not impact on red grouse numbers, which prefer open moorland. There is growing evidence that pine marten are helping reduce grey squirrel numbers, as greys feed on the forest floor more often than reds, thereby making themselves more susceptible to being preyed upon by pine marten, so the pine marten is in effect helping reduce the spread of squirrel pox virus (SQPV), a disease which is harmlss to grey squirrels but deadly to reds, and which could decimate our Highland red squirrel population if it spreads from the central belt, where the disease was recorded in the later half of last year.

Scotland's biodiversity has already suffered greatly from the eradication of predators like the wolf in the last few centuries, and we are still paying the price for the ecological imbalance that has resulted from that; the gradual fragmentation and dwindling forests due to the resulting explosion in deer population for example. The job of conservationists in this case is to repar the damage that has already done, but the likes of the Donnie Ross and George Macdonald care little for learning the lessons of the past or for the consequences faced by future generations.

[Jason Alexander]

You could not make this up, a call to wipe out pine marten & sea eagles by gamekeepers - SGA. Confirms what we all know already SGA are anti conservation and ecologically illiterate