Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
Time is running out for the capercaillie in Scotland and, sadly, it may now be necessary to control pine martens to give these birds a chance
Irecently wrote an entry for Country Diary in which I declared my unashamed love for pine martens (13 July issue). I stand by that love, but hope I was sufficiently clear on a degree of pragmatism, too. Just because I happen to think that pine martens are wonderful creatures, that doesn’t mean I cannot regard them objectively as part of a wider ecosystem. Time spent on Speyside with some extremely devoted and hard-working capercaillie enthusiasts has driven this point home harder than ever and I’m ready to park my qualms for the greater good.
It seems as if capercaillie are in a terrible bind in Scotland. Their numbers shrink away every year and they’ve recently become so scarce that it’s hard for scientists to study them. Even the methodologies used to count capercaillie in the winter have had to change over the past few years to accommodate the fact that it’s pointless to keep looking for birds in places where they’ve vanished. This means there is a logjam around establishing the science we need to protect them.
Urgency
It seems relatively obvious that pine marten control should be deployed as a matter of pressing urgency, but those who oppose that idea are determined any control should be trialled and studied before it can be rolled out in the real world. However, in practical terms, this is a non-starter. Now that the number of capercaillie in Scotland is potentially no more than 500 to 600 individuals, there simply aren’t enough birds to study any more. Scientists can’t trial a pine marten removal experiment because there aren’t enough places to see whether or not it would work.
Faced with this obstacle, it’s clear that some scientists who oppose the idea of culling pine martens are now frozen like rabbits in the headlights. They don’t want to act without evidence, but they also cannot afford to do nothing.
But it’s not that we lack any evidence at all. There’s plenty of data to suggest that capercaillie are being heavily predated by pine martens and there have also been a sufficient number of studies to show that if predation is suppressed, capercaillie will prosper. The problem is only that no single study has shown how reducing pine martens increases capercaillie numbers in Scotland. However, with those two crystalclear pieces of the puzzle in place, it’s hardly an outlandish leap to imagine that pine marten control might help.
All this controversy progresses at a snail’s pace and that’s maddening for the people on the ground. We are not so far away from losing capercaillie altogether in Scotland, so time is clearly of the essence. There are also a number of political and ideological issues at play, particularly among rewilders who argue that we should not have to control pine martens.
To support this argument, these people cite numerous examples from Scandinavia and Russia that show how capercaillie and pine martens can live in blissful harmony. They not only downplay the fact that while natural balances are possible in larger areas of quality habitats, pine martens are also often trapped and shot across their Eurasian range. But more central to their arguments is a sense that we simply shouldn’t have to control pine martens at all. If Britain had functioning ecosystems, nature would be able to manage itself without any human intrusion.
“It’s pointless to keep looking for birds in places where they have vanished”
Disastrous
That’s a lovely idea and many of the people involved at the business end of capercaillie conservation are working towards a low-intervention future based on habitat restoration. But it’s slow work. While we can all agree we shouldn’t be in this situation, we also have to accept that we are.
Complaining about the parlous state of British conservation is simply fogging up the airwaves with noise. The capercaillie is in a disastrous situation and, from the perspective of a pine marten fan, the thought of killing those fantastic creatures is saddening. But it’s where we’ve ended up and we don’t have long to get this right.
Patrick Laurie manages a programme to promote farming and conservation, with a particular focus on wading birds and black grouse, and runs a farm in Galloway.
Normally at this time of year, I’d be asking why we have to have it so wet and so cold for so long, and questioning what chance anything has got in the wild. Well, it’s a slightly different tale this summer.
What little rain we’ve had has barely done much more than lay the dust and now things are getting a little desperate. The green crops that we establish on the stubbles are still in the bag and the established game crops that we have in, although looking remarkably well at the moment, are desperate for a drink. These days, it seems to be either feast or famine and never a sensible combination.
Deathtrap
While the prolonged dry spell is great for wild game, there’s always concern that there will not be the insect hatches that are critical for the young stuff. On shoots with heavier types of ground, I’m sure the cracks will be appearing in the land, becoming a deathtrap for the unsuspecting partridge chick. All said and done, though, I’d take a spring and summer like this any day.
The water that we put out for the gamebirds is constantly needing to be replenished. When I put a trail cam on one of the drinking stations to see what was helping themselves to the water, it was no wonder it was getting emptied. Everything from squirrels to red deer were partaking in the fresh water, but who can blame them?
The hot, dry weather has meant a lack of natural little dew ponds or ghost ponds, which have been filled in or left to become overgrown and silted up over the years. These little oases are such an asset to wildlife, even if they dry up in the summer, and they have their own ecosystems.
Rich with insect life, lush vegetation, nesting cover and, of course, water, they shouldn’t be underestimated. Perhaps even more importantly, they also provide a more diverse habitat to the farm landscape in general, breaking up what is in some places simply vast tracts of arable land. My only concern with all this talk about a lack of water is that when it starts raining it might forget to stop. Be careful what you wish for.
August signals the start of our cull of the wild fallow deer, starting with the prickets. It always amazes me how, in June and July, you drive round the corner of a wood and they simply stand there gawping at you. But come August, it’s as if they’ve looked at a calendar and thought: “It’s that time of year again. Keep your head down chaps, let’s disappear off the radar.”
The muntjac, however, are a different story. They always seem to be quick to get their heads down and always look guilty to me, as if they know they’re up to mischief. Love them or hate them, you can’t help but admire them. They are one of life’s survivors. The other day, while parked up making a phone call in one of the few spots on the estate, I watched a little muntjac doe decide that she might like to go to live in the deer park with the fallow.
All that was stopping her was an 8ft deer fence and a cattle grid — enough to keep fallow in, but clearly not enough to keep muntjac out.
She nonchalantly walked up to the cattle grid and, without further ado, stepped lightly on to each rail of the grid until she was safely over. Only then did she notice me and decide that it was time to vacate the area, and with her tail flicked up in the air — which, incidentally, I believe is the muntjac version of sticking up two fingers — she disappeared off into the park to take up her new residence with the fallow.
“A tail flicked in the air is the muntjac version of sticking up two fingers”