Breaking down the divisions to save birds
A new book goes in search of disappearing birds and the people trying to help them. Philip Bowern reports
PATRICK Galbraith has a deep understanding of wildlife, particularly birds. But he has an even deeper understanding of people. And his book, In Search of One Last Song, is as much about the people doing their best to try to save endangered bird life as it is about the birds they are trying to save.
Surprisingly for some readers perhaps, not all of those engaged in work to give threatened species a chance are directly linked to the conservation movement. Gamekeepers, farmers, deer-stalkers and fish filleters – even an animal rights activist – all of whom have a special interest in trying to give a second chance to a bird on the brink – are the heroes and heroines that Patrick meets on his travels.
As the editor of Shooting Times, a weekly magazine dedicated to fieldsports, he might not be seen by some as the right person to be writing about birds that are close to extinction in the British Isles. But one of the lessons from this fascinating and absorbing book is how closely aligned are the rural concerns of those who shoot, hunt and fish and those who see conservation as their primary focus.
In a telling introduction Patrick meets with BBC TV wildlife presenter and campaigner Chris Packham to discuss pursuing a joint project for the benefit of wildlife. In the end it is not to be – but their meeting and the generally sympathetic hearing each gives the other is heartening for anyone who sees only animosity between apparently divided interests when it comes to conservation.
Patrick writes: “Chris and I had talked and talked. Few people work harder than he does to try and make people understand that plight of some of the birds we’re set to lose, and over the years as a journalist, I’ve tried to do the same.”
After his chat he resolves to meet with those doing their best, often in very trying circumstances, to give new hope to threatened birds. “I’d decided I needed to go and meet these people,” Patrick writes, “the animal rights activists and the gamekeepers, regenerative farmers and scientists. I understood that some of them mistrusted each other deeply and recognised that some of them would mistrust me, but I also felt that from different directions we were all moving towards the same end.”
Patrick’s journey takes him all over the country in search of nightingales, hen harriers, lapwing, black grouse, kittiwake, capercaillie, turtle dove, grey partridge, bittern and corncrake.
There is a lot of love in the book for the species that the individuals Patrick meets are fighting to save. There is a lot of anger too. Patrick Laurie, keen wildfowler and deer stalker, who runs Galloway cattle in Galloway in South West Scotland, is passionate about black grouse, now down to around 6,000 pairs in the UK and disappearing at the rate of 40% a year in some places.
Laurie quietly fumes that it is becoming commercially unviable to keep grazing his hardy cattle on the land that bears their name... yet adamant that it is precisely that grazing that creates and maintains the habitat black grouse need to thrive.
Laurie is scathing about the way schemes designed to bring back nature through rewilding have spectacularly failed species like black grouse. “They just pulled all the agriculture off and thought they were making a space for nature,” the farmers tells Patrick. “You can see how dense the washed-out grass is, the cattle would just smash that out and graze it down so you’d end up with a much better heather mix, but at the moment the heather can’t come through.” Conservation agreements restrict the number of cattle Laurie can graze and those restrictions, he says, are directly related to the decline of the black grouse he is trying to protect.
It’s just one small example of how closely bound are the way land is used and the wildlife that exists on it. Change things and you change the habitat and the animals and birds that used to be able to live on it. Take cattle off the hill and the habitat which helped black grouse, curlew and lapwing thrive disappears – along with the birds.
This is no guidebook for birders who want to find out how to spot some of the last examples of Britain’s iconic avian species. Patrick Galbraith often sidles up to his subject; the bird can sometimes seem incidental to the story he’s relating.
But he is a great reporter, a superb describer of what he sees and what he’s told and he paints pictures in words of the quirky, often flawed but always passionate characters who are doing their bit for nature, often in ways that conventional conservationists would find hard to accept, but with commitment and knowledge borne of experience.
Anyone who wants to know how real conservation might work, away from the petty arguments between those with vested interests on both sides of the debate, should read this book.
‘They just pulled off all the agriculture and thought they were making space for nature’
FARMER PATRICK LAURIE