Shocking video footage of hares being shot fuels demand for culling ban
Animal rights groups call on Government to take ‘urgent action’
CAMPAIGNERS are demanding a ban on hare culling after undercover footage seemed to show mass shootings on Highland estates.
Animal rights groups claimed their investigation showed large-scale, ‘military style’ culls are taking place.
The League Against Cruel Sports and OneKind released a video yesterday appearing to show mountain hares being shot before being piled onto trucks.
The groups claim the estates seem to be ‘at war’ with the hares, in spite of an agreement four years ago with the Scottish Government to practise restraint.
They have been joined by TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham in calling for a ban on hare culling until a review is carried out.
But the Scottish Gamekeepers Association and the Scottish Moorland Group said culling was ‘not only legal but necessary’.
In the video footage, passed to the BBC, three short sequences show the killing of about 20 animals.
Footage filmed on the Corrybrough Estate in Inverness-shire shows a man on a quad bike shooting a hare. Activists say it ran around, obviously injured, for several minutes before being killed by a dog.
Videos from Candacraig Estate in Aberdeenshire and Seafield Estate in Banffshire show dead hares being collected and carried off the hillside.
At Holyrood, Nicola Sturgeon said the Scottish Government was ‘exploring all options’ as a potential response.
Responding to Green MSP Alison Johnstone at First Minister’s Questions, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘Large-scale culling of mountain hares could put the conservation status at risk and that is clearly unacceptable.
‘I want to be very clear today that the Government is exploring all available options to prevent mass culls of mountain hares and one of those options, of course, is legislation and a licensing scheme.
‘What we are seeing is not acceptable and that is a very clear message that goes out from the Government today.’
Mountain hare killing is not monitored in Scotland. But a Scottish Natural Heritage study estimated 25,000 were killed in 2006-07.
OneKind director Harry Huyton said: ‘Our investigation has revealed that instead of restraining themselves, as the Scottish Government has asked them to do, some estates seem to be at war with mountain hares.
‘We filmed large groups of armed men moving around the mountains in convoys, killing hares and filling pick-ups with dead animals.
‘The voluntary approach has failed and the Scottish Government must take urgent action before the open season starts once again in August.’
Mr Packham said the scale and co-ordination of the attacks on mountain hares was ‘shocking’.
He added: ‘The animals are driven towards men with guns by off-road vehicles. As the carcasses are gathered and dropped into trucks, it becomes apparent whole mountainsides are being completely cleared.’
But Tim Baynes, director of the Scottish Moorland Group, said: ‘Mountain hare management is not only legal but necessary and is carried out within a regulatory framework of closed seasons and licences administered by Scottish Natural Heritage.
‘There is no threat to mountain hare populations, as some activists pretend. Culls on open moorland typically reduce the population by 5-14 per cent.’
A Scottish Gamekeepers Association spokesman said: ‘Thousands of deer are killed annually, under government instruction and a potential £40,000 fine for noncompliance, to protect designated habitats. Killing thousands of deer then leaving thousands of hares to feed on that same habitat defies any sense or logic.
‘No one managing any species can guarantee human error will never play a part. That is why dogs assist with wounded animals.
‘We are not far from the stage now where people will not want to manage deer and hare populations because they cannot operate without being covertly filmed.’
‘It is not only legal but necessary’