A unified voice for conservation
The Aim to Sustain partnership brings together nine countryside organisations to promote sustainable game management and to pack a collective punch when it comes to policy formation
EVEN though our society currently enjoys the highest levels of health, income and life expectancy in human history, it feels insecure. Most of our population need to go back three generations to find a living memory of working in the countryside. In a world separated from agriculture, all animals are pets endowed with human feelings. The notion of killing for sport and, increasingly, even for management, is considered abhorrent in this emotional environment – a fertile breeding ground for fear, which campaigners exploit. This is why nine countryside organisations formed the Aim to Sustain partnership: to promote and preserve sustainable game management. It is a major challenge but one to which we are fully committed. A key part of our work is to combat misinformation, win legal challenges and resist unjustified regulation.
Three years ago, campaigners used emotional arguments to temporarily suspend the licences used by farmers and gamekeepers to control pest bird species. Since then, a variety of arguments have been used to demand that these General Licences are heavily restricted or banned. These calls extend to everything from trapping foxes to managing heather through burning small patches in the winter. Aim to Sustain is working, as a team, behind the scenes to examine and create a comprehensive strategy to address a range of government initiatives, from the Environment Bill and Nature Recovery Strategy to animal sentience and the review of the habitats regulations.
Campaigners argue that there is nothing to fear because licences can still be issued when required. There is one problem: Holland. This is a country that can no longer protect its national bird, the blacktailed godwit, because conservationists can’t access the predation control licences they need. Licence applications are immediately challenged in court. This is significant, because the scientific evidence shows that predation is one of the main reasons for the continued decline of waders in Holland. Large expansions in the stone marten, fox and crow populations coincided with greater legal restrictions on managing them. Even fox trapping is now illegal in Holland.
Eddie van Marum has been working with farmers to conserve waders in Holland for 30 years. He is convinced that now so much work has been done to improve habitat on the water meadows, to mitigate centuries of drainage, predation is the limiting factor. He describes the Dutch licensing system as “a brake on conservation”. Don’t be fooled into thinking it will not happen here. We already had a taste of this in Scotland, where the local community was encouraged, by the agency that issues licences, to apply to control ravens to protect their waders. All it took was an outpour of outrage on social media and the licence was withdrawn, with campaigners issuing death threats to the chairman of Scottish Natural Heritage (now Naturescot).
Van Marum says “every penny of public money put into the conservation of ground-breeding species will be in vain, if further layers of protection are given to generalist predators and, for example, you ban fox snares and Larsen traps”. He says that he would love to tell the politicians in the UK “what they risk destroying, based on what we have lost here in Holland.
Predation can be managed and must be managed, or we will lose the battle to prevent the extinction of our waders. We cannot leave it to nature; we need to make an active choice, and if we decide to save our beautiful birds, half measures are no good.”
Despite Dutch farmers being paid to improve habitat, waders – including black-tailed godwit, redshank, lapwing, oystercatcher, avocet and little ringed plover – have suffered dramatic declines in the past 20 years. As well as being the Dutch national bird, black-tailed godwits are on the IUCN ‘Near Threatened’ list and Van Marum is part of the team studying to what degree stone martens are limiting the birds’ productivity. The report showed that due to disturbance by predators, primarily stone marten, none of the wader species were getting enough time on the nest to hatch chicks, and many abandoned the area before the nesting period. It further revealed that godwit young had low survival rates: from the 50 chicks fitted with transmitters, only one survived.
Campaigners argue that licences can only be issued where there is proven impact. Then they try to block any research that might be ‘unhelpful’ to them. Today, they are placing adverts in Dutch newspapers to try to halt these licensed research studies. Don’t think that will not happen here. Court papers revealed that it only took a letter-writing campaign, initiated by the RSPB, to push the government into reversing its decision to commission research into the impact of buzzards on pheasant pens in 2012.
Aim to Sustain is a unified voice that will pack a greater punch in policy formation. Our countryside has been managed for generations by those willing to evolve and adapt based on lessons learnt and sound research. The ‘leave it to nature’ mantra sounds attractive but having fundamentally changed our landscape we must take responsibility and retain the ability to conserve species. This is a core GWCT value and we are proud to be scientific advisors to the Aim to Sustain partnership.
Andrew Gilruth is director of membership, marketing & communications at the GWCT
All it took was an outpour of outrage on social media and the licence was withdrawn