Outrage as SNH allows estates to cull 300 ravens in effort to save curlews
to kill 300 ravens as part of an experiment to determine whether wading birds will benefit have sparked outrage from conservationists and members of the public.
SNH has granted a licence to a consortium called Strathbraan Community Collaboration for Waders (SCCW) to kill birds for research purposes over a period of five years in Perthshire, including on estates where satellite-tagged birds of prey have gone missing.
Some campaign groups have condemned the trial.
Duncan Orr-ewing, head of species and land management at RSPB Scotland, said: “We are extremely concerned about the likely scale on impact of this research licence on the local raven population in the Strathbraan area of Perthshire.
“We are also very surprised that SNH have issued such a research licence in the vicinity of Strathbraan, which has an appalling and well-documented track record of illegal persecution of raptors, noting also the very recent suspicious disappearance of a satellite tagged white-tailed eagle in this very same area.”
Both RSPB Scotland and the Scottish Raptor Study Group are working to get the research licence revoked.
A petition has been launched to stop the cull and has attracted more than 9,430 signatures.
A spokesman for SCCW said: “Farmers and keepers in the community have for a number of years identified ravens as a predators of wading bird eggs and chicks, particularly at breeding time. The people here are proud of the number of waders they have locally and their contribution to the numbers nationally.”
The licence is support plans ed by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA), whose members believe killing ravens could help reverse massive declines in wading birds such as the curlew.
Alex Hogg, chairman of SGA, said: “The reality is no number of keyboard petitions will save the curlew. Only action will.
“The practical land managers, who have shared their land with these birds for decades, know the time for talk is long over.”