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| Curlew - a species whose nest is vulnerable to predation by foxes, badgers and corvids |
Hereditary peer Lord Caithness (75) has enjoyed a distinguished career in the House of Lords, serving under many Conservative prime ministers as far back as Margaret Thatcher. He is a landowner and a birder. During a speech last week in the Lords, he championed the cause of predator-control which he believes to be necessary if vulnerable bird species and other wildlife are to be saved. Below is an extract from his speech.
Given the large sum of taxpayers’ money spent annually on agri-environment schemes, this country should have a surfeit of wildlife.
It does not. So why has it failed so badly?
It is widely acknowledged that there are three legs to the stool of nature conservation.
They are:
* Providing habitat
* Providing good food sources
* Legal predator management
The first leg has been available for some time and the second is more recent, but the third is not - and a two-legged stool does not function well.
It is just too simplistic and naive to blame all the failure on farming operations.
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| Lord Caithness - 'two-legged stool does not function well' |
It is true that habitat provision through agri-environment schemes has produced benefits for certain aspects of the life cycle for a great many species.
The provision of attractive nesting habitat, foraging areas in summer and winter, and winter food resources in the “hungry gap” has helped.
The cirl bunting and corncrake are notable beneficiaries.
The introduction of new premium payments for certain high-priority actions, including nesting plots for lapwing, is welcome.
However, of deep concern are the many examples of the provision of habitat alone not halting decline of species, let alone bringing about recovery.
I would mention puffins, Manx shearwaters, water voles, brown hares, grey partridge, black grouse, curlew and lapwing.
In 2015 and 2016, as part of the curlew recovery initiative based on the Shropshire/Welsh border, 30 nests were monitored to find the cause of curlew breeding failure in a significant local population in excellent habitat.
In each year, only one per cent of nests got beyond the egg stage to produce chicks.
All chicks were subsequently lost.
Over 50 per cent of the egg predation was by foxes and 25 per cent by badgers, which are protected, with crows also being a significant nest robber.
Approximately £23-million per year is spent on agri-environment options to support breeding waders on grassland, but given the poor results, one must question whether this is good value for money.
Clearly, more needs to be done, and there is good evidence across Europe that, where the provision of the right habitat alone has failed, the combination of habitat improvement and targeted, effective predation management can lead to the recovery of species of conservation concern.
As a result of a conservation programme led by the RSPB, Natural England, the Landmark Trust and the National Trust to exterminate the rats on Lundy Island in the early 2000s, seabird numbers have been restored to levels not seen since the 1930s.
For instance, puffin numbers have increased from 13 birds in 2002 to 375 in 2019.
Despite this species management success, the RSPB still argues that management does not work.
Its recent research on the response of breeding waders to predation management is arguably flawed as it did not apply predation management to the level of intensity recommended by professional game and wildlife managers.
That meant that it was always likely to be ineffective - possibly, that is what it was designed to be.
It was also unethical.
If one is going to take one species in support of another, one needs to ensure that one’s approach is effective.
Furthermore, if the RSPB claims that species management does not work, I wonder why it is a partner in the project to eradicate stoats, which have been posing a threat to Orkney’s internationally important wildlife since their introduction there in 2010.
The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, or GWCT, has proved the RSPB wrong on predation management of wildlife on farms.
Some 30 years of careful scientific research on its commercial demonstration farm in Leicestershire have demonstrated that numbers of songbirds and other wildlife numbers across the farm are significantly higher when there is proper species control than when there is not.
It has followed the three-legged stool principle and, with management, songbird numbers have doubled alongside a commercial farming operation.
It is good to read reports of the water vole, better known to some as Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, returning to areas in which it once thrived.
They were virtually wiped out, mostly due to predation by mink, which decimated whole colonies.
Now, with the successful use of the GWCT-designed mink trap, numbers are rising again, proving that targeted management can benefit a variety of endangered species.
Given that it is so important to improve wildlife numbers, I ask my noble friend why the Government is not introducing a set of funded standards to contribute towards the cost of the management required to aid the recovery of species, especially those on the red list, when there is so much evidence to prove that it works.
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