Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Upland keeper
The Scottish government doesn’t seem to be looking at the wider environmental picture, which could have devastating consequences
Afew weeks ago, I headed north with a keeper friend who was looking for his first stag. We found ourselves in Perthshire on a pretty gloomy morning with low cloud shrouding the hill. The stags were roaring in and around the woodland, but nothing of any note presented itself. As forecast, the day brightened and we set off up the hill in beaming sunshine. Armed with only a walking stick, I lagged behind — these hills are not as easy as they used to be.
As we walked, I took in the small beds of dwarf willow, good stands of heather with a bit of burning here and there, and areas of Sphagnum moss. All in all, everything that you would expect to find on the hill was there in profusion. I saw a couple of harriers and also scores of pipits — no doubt why the harriers were there — a greyhen, the odd grouse and a fair few white hare droppings. Nothing I thought that the antishooting zealots could complain about.
Autumn sun
My man shot a pretty poor wee stag that was never going to make a good one and was probably best removed for his own sake. The view as I waited for the machine to come and collect him was stunning, and my old bones were feeling better as I sat in the autumn sun. We retreated back to the lower ground where, as the light was fading, a rather better beast was culled. He was just past his best but was still a good animal, and our day ended on a high note as we loaded him up with the younger one for the journey back to the larder, with everyone in good spirits.
It had been an enjoyable day, but my mood was somewhat dampened later when I found out that the estate had been sold to a green laird in the shape of an investment company who, aided by an £8,500 per acre grant from the Scottish government, is going to plant a lot of it up with commercial conifers. The sheep have already gone, as well as the team who cared for them.
I am well aware that carbon sequestration is the be-all and end-all at the moment, and the public have been brainwashed to believe that trees are the answer to all the world’s problems, but it is not the whole truth.
“The grouse will be gone, and no doubt every aerial predator that used the hill”
Conifers are not great at capturing carbon, especially compared to the vegetation assemblage I viewed on the hill. In 10 or 15 years, that hill will be catching far less carbon than it is now as all the understory will be starved of daylight and dead. The grouse, red and black, will be gone, as will the pipits, the white hares, the harriers, and no doubt every other aerial predator that used the hill for its next meal.
There is also the matter of how the trees will be planted. From what I have seen on some hills, the method is that a good-sized divot is turned over with a machine, and the tree planted on top of it. Millions of lumps of peat and carbon are exposed to the sky, ready to be blown into the atmosphere. More governmentsponsored natural world vandalism.
As the clamour to regulate the grouse moors proceeds, where are all those bodies which are supposed to be caring for the natural asset bank of Scotland? It is no more than statesponsored destruction of heather moorland, one of the rarest habitats in the world. If challenged to justify it, I don’t think the Scottish government has a leg to stand on. It would be interesting to hear from them, but then given it’s indefensible as far as I can see, I expect the silence to be deafening.