Trees, not traps, once covered hills

Sir, – Wayne B Whitcher’s recent letter is an interesting example of shifting baseline syndrome.

This phenomenon describes a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment due to lack of past information or lack of experience of past conditions. He asserts that there were few trees on the hills in the first place.

He is incorrect, as much of Scotland carried a mixed open woodland in the past and what we now have is just a remnant.

Management for grouse shooting has only been practised for around 170 years and prior to that much of our upland had a more diverse habitat and was populated by many more people. However, the baseline has shifted because none of this is within living memory, hence many people such as Mr Whitcher regard the current situation as “normal”.

Moorland managed for grouse shooting is by no means normal and has to be very closely managed to maintain its burnt and treeless condition. I recently passed thriving birch regeneration on unburned heather at an altitude of around 330m (1,000 ft) which is well below the maximum tree line of around 600m (2,000ft) so given a chance nature can recover.

Mr Whitcher claims inaccurately that traps will only take stoats and weasels but sadly there are plenty of well-recorded instances of small and large birds being taken in these traps.

He also fails to mention the means by which other natural predators such as foxes, crows and even sometimes raptors are killed on grouse moors.

He defends the vast array of traps seen on any grouse moor on the grounds of controlling predators which take chicks of groundnesting birds, but of course the main aim is to prevent grouse chicks from being eaten so they can grow into adults to be shot for fun. This raises the moral question of killing to kill. Nature has its own system

for keeping predator and prey species in balance and does not need human intervention to distort the natural balance.

Incidentally, I can assure Mr Whitcher that hill drainage on grouse moors is still being carried out in 2023.

Colin D Young. Newtonhill.