Pay for Scottish Natural Heritage or the police to investigate wildlife crime

Scotland is not a haven for wildlife crime (“... shocking reports of golden eagle’s disappearance”, 14 August).

I realise that we live in a world where the truth is not as important as the story that people want to hear, but we know that incidences of wildlife crime have been falling for many years and that populations of most birds of prey are increasing, and we know that within the United Kingdom, most of these are to be found in Scotland.

Any professional gamekeeper that touches a bird of prey in the way suggested will lose his job and be shunned by his colleagues.

An older generation may have done it differently, but it is a crazy thing to contemplate today. The evidence from other countries is that young raptors have a very high mortality rate, up to 70 per cent before they are a year old, and the bigger they are, the worse the natural mortality is.

Most of them will not survive, claimed by starvation, roads, electric lines, probably wind turbines. The huge electronic tags strapped tightly to their backs will not be helping them, either.

If there is any persecution, it is a very small proportion of the whole.

If the Scottish Government want to do something about this, they need to address the chronic conflict of interest right at the heart of this debate. The Royal Society for the protection of birds(rs pb ), which is entrusted to investigate missing birds, is also the organisation that tags them and which stands to gain most financially by campaigning to “protect” them.

The solution is simple and obvious. The government needs to reduce their funding to third parties and pay either Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) or Police Scotland

directly to investigate all reported wildlife crime, and SNH must be responsible for any satellite monitoring.

The opportunity to turn every malfunctioning tag into a national scandal will then no longer exist and we will all be in a much better place.

VICTOR CLEMENTS Native Woodland Advice,

Aberfeldy, Perthshire