Time for licensing of shooting estates

- In reply to Tim Baynes of the Scottish Moorland Group on the culling of mountain hares, I can only think that Mr Baynes wears rose-tinted spectacles.

In 2006, I raised the issue of mountain hare culls with Scottish Natural Heritage and Ian Hudghton SNP MEP about a breach of the European 1992 Habitat Directive which requires that the control of mountain hare populations “is compatible with their being maintained at a favourable conservation status”.

So here we are 11 years on and still the problem persisits, with people complaining about culling of hares. The definition of cull is “a selective slaughter of animals”.

Through my inquiry in 2006 I was able to establish that because of these culls, whole populations of hares had disappeared in parts of upland Perthshire, large areas of the Monadhliath Mountains and the Pentland Hills.

Mr Baynes cites a number of progressive estates working with the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust and the James Hutton Institute (funded by SNH) to develop new methods of counting hares.

What he omits are the estates that seem to be above the law and have been suspected for years to be poisoning or shooting golden and sea eagles and hen harriers and wiping out hares because they are a vector to a disease and a valuable food source to eagle and raven and other ground predators. It is time for licensing of estates so that they comply to our wildlife laws or lose the right to shoot. Neil Macdonald. 192 Cedar Drive, Perth.

A mountain hare in its winter coat, photographed on moorland.