Mark Avery and the GWCT in complete agreement again?

Recently I had a long conversation with a GWCT  member who felt the organisation was 'going soft' on the problems wildlife is facing in the countryside (some commentators may use the expression 'left'). The construction of his observations were well made. As he slowly explained his logic I had the opportunity to fill in the gaps in his understanding. I was delighted that he could see how keeping what we all wanted to achieve for wildlife was crucial and, to that end, the GWCT was neither moving left or right. However, is it the answer to the wrong question? - I feel that organisations should be judged on what they have achieved - not left or right of another.

Yesterday the former conservation director of the RSPB, Mark Avery remarked on his blog that the he felt the GWCT is being "dragged to the right". As ever, no real examples were offered. On a later post he suggested that our joint working with Songbird Survival supported his view. This is remarkably similar to some of our members feeling our join initiatives with the RSPB and other organisations that they, personally, have less time for, are dragged us to the left. All complete nonsense.

I feel that the GWCT has not switched at all, but for those that find it easier to focus on building conservation stockades, dig entrenched views and use provocative language will continue to use left/right analogies. Clearly it is the conservation outcomes and achievements that need to be judged. Solutions suggested and tested are infinitely more helpful to wildlife than those trying and seeking division.

I feel the following example illustrates my point. The RSPB are currently running their farmer of the year awards and Mark Avery (who is sure we are all heading in differed directions) has suggested on his blog today that followers vote for Nicholas Watts. Good choice; only two weeks ago Nicholas was the candidate the GWCT suggested members support.  We are in agreement that his achievement have been truly remarkable. So have other candidates; vote here.

So in the spirit of this blog - if we keep the end in mind; I suggest we should focus on what can be achieved for wildlife, not where organisations sit in some theoretical conservation spectrum.

Should we ban grouse shooting?

It’s that time of the year when, as usual, grouse stories are circulating - some are calling for an outright ban - such as this blog Mark Avery. The logic is simple; if it is the case that game keepers are preventing the recovery of hen harriers then lets just ban grouse shooting.

So why not just ban it? Well recent work suggest what might happen if we were short-sighted enough to curb or undermine grouse moor shooting.

Across the UK, there is a strong correlation between grouse moor management and the abundance and productivity of species such as lapwing, curlew and golden plover, which are otherwise increasingly rare. And a new scientific study by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), published recently in the Journal of Applied Ecology, identifies that the control of predators such as foxes and crows, carried out to protect red grouse, can benefit one of our most striking birds of prey – the hen harrier.

The consequences of failing to work with farmers and keepers in the wider landscape is nowhere better illustrated than in the uplands of Wales, which once supported the most productive grouse moors in the UK as well as abundant populations of other birds.

However, since the last war almost half of the heather cover in Wales has been lost. Since the 1990s, owing to disease, overgrazing and, from the moor owners’ perspective, a lack of support from conservation agencies, grouse management has been all but abandoned and, as a consequence, upland bird populations have crashed.

This analysis has been leant credibility by a recent study carried out by GWCT, funded by the Moorland Association, which analysed the trends of upland birds in the Berwyn Special Protection Area (SPA) in North Wales. The study focused on changes in red grouse numbers and other upland birds between 1983 and 2002. Like many other parts of Wales, grouse bags peaked early in the 20th century. Unfortunately, this was followed by a steady decline in driven grouse shooting and, with it, upland keepering, which had virtually ceased by 1990.

The study showed that between 1983 and 2002, red grouse declined by 54 per cent in the Berwyn SPA. Over the same period, in the SPA, lapwing became extinct, golden plover declined from ten birds to one, and curlew declined by 79 per cent. Today, over 75 per cent of the entire Welsh black grouse population exists on the one remaining keepered Berwyn moor.

Given the private investment and measurable biodiversity benefits grouse management brings to the rest of the UK, many Welsh moor owners find it difficult to understand a negative and obstructive attitude towards traditional moorland management which had produced such an important landscape worthy of designation. There is a desperate need in Wales for a partnership between conservation agencies and sporting interests. Conservation management, on its own, has not succeeded.

Alarmingly, we see in south west Scotland a similar decline in upland areas actively managed for red grouse. This abandonment of sporting management threatens the rich tapestry that is the Scottish countryside. We therefore welcome Scottish Natural Heritage’s Wildlife Management Framework, a guide to decision making for wildlife management situations which could be used to test possible ways of re-starting sporting conservation.

Which brings us back to the grouse. Like it or loathe it, red grouse shooting generates on average £30 million to the Scottish economy alone. The management of grouse moors (heather burning, legal predator control) hugely benefits our diverse yet fragile wildlife. And most of this management is funded through the private investment of landowners.

Grouse moor management isn’t perfect and the GWCT and others are working to improve some aspects of it, notably the conservation of some birds of prey. But we, as a nation, should embrace grouse management and the private investment it brings as a positive contribution to biodiversity and celebrate the fact that we have a thriving industry maintaining our heather hills.

Surely it is time to move on and avoid such simplest views on grouse moor shooting?
 

RSPB Conservation Awards for Shooting?

Well if hen harriers are back in the press grouse shooting must have begun. The hen harrier numbers for England are shocking. Bricks are being thrown; talk of hen harrier extinction etc. In the 15 years since the GWCT published a scientific paper that stated that “In the UK, a full recovery of hen harriers Circus cyaneus breeding numbers is prevented by illegal culling by some gamekeepers who fear the species threatens the future of grouse moors”. It is hard to see exactly what has changed other than perhaps the population range of hen harriers has contacted to grouse moors alone. No hen harriers are breeding on RSPB managed moors for example; they used to.

What does this tell us? For me it is two things. Firstly the slow but constant blaming of hill keepers with negative press messages has not worked. It was never likely to work. I can think of no conflict resolution example where his has been the solution. Indeed it was not until the RSPB stopped blaming farmers, for the declines in farmland birds, that the farmers began to hear what they had to say. This was achieved in part by positioning themselves as the ‘farmers friend’ and listening to them. The second point is that the very conditions that the hill keepers put in place to help grouse (and as a result many other wildlife populations) appear to be exactly what the hen harrier needs to thrive.

So if  keepers hold the keys I believe we should, as with farmers, engage positively with them. Rather than run yet more stories about how evil keepers are; how about what they have achieved for conservation. Perhaps more importantly we should listen to the keepers concerns. Is their fear that the loss of their productive moor would result in the loss of their job? If so I can understand that. Surely it is time to listen and understand what these key holders what to say? Why not offer them some quota agreement (with the relocation of surplus hen harriers) so we can all move forward? To those on both sides that say this is heresy – I say other ideas have not worked well enough. Worse, if the moors should become unproductive; the keepers will leave and so will the conditions that the hen harriers (among others) need to thrive.

I was inspired by Martin Harper (RSPB Conservation Director) words at the CLA Game Fair. He mentioned that the RSPB approach to shooting is “no different” from farming or any other land use. So there has never been a better time for the RSPB to link up and run a conservation award scheme for the shooting community; just like it does for farmers. I am sure there will be problems but surely in the interest of maximising the benefits to wildlife and positively moving forward – this is exactly what is needed. Perhaps, an award of the best run grouse moor too. It is most certainly a time for an approach that works much better.

State of Nature - shattering the old conservation battle lines

For over a generation the UK’s approach to conservation has been based on one of protection and prescription. So, if a species is in worrying decline our response has been a rush to give it protection from the hand of man. Itself a little ironic since most of the remaining species in the UK are here precisely because they have found a way to live alongside man. Some species in fact thrived alongside man and followed, as farmers moved west opening up woodland for agriculture.

Protection takes two main forms. Firstly; legal protection, even though the real threat may come from something that legislation can’t address. It gives politicians, and those that like writing lists, something to show; however that may be all that is achieved. The second level of protection is buying land and putting up fences to protect nature from the hand of man. Marvellous places for inspiring minds. However the chances are nature is there precisely because man has not been using it to live, work or grow food and there is often no plans to alter that state.

Prescription takes the form of clip-board based conservation initiatives. In response to the cry for more to be done; NGO’s and civil servants arrive with manuals and instructions to tell people what they should be doing. Obviously it was never intended to be seen as top-down direction, however the bigger the conservation problem becomes, the greater the temptation to increase to dictate. This control and direction increase further when financial incentives are introduced to encourage adoption of prescriptions. The bureaucracy and manual must be right because I you are going to receive a payment for these ideas.

The result is a national approach to conservation isn’t working well enough. Plenty of people have said that, including the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2007-08)  “… new approach will be needed to address the dramatic biodiversity loss that is occurring…”. Organisations produced alternatives, including the GWCT’s Restoring the balance discussion paper but most offering ‘new’ thinking were uncomfortable reading for most. Whilst all would agree we had to something better the idea of moving on from protection and prescription based conservation alone was just too much. Remember an entire generation had been educated and trained to follow this manta. Those that had ideas outside the core group were marginalised.

Ignoring the warnings that the existing approaches to conservation needs to change was easy. Human behaviour meant that, those with most to lose, the large conservation NGO’s, turned a blind eye to the growing problem. For as generation those that bought into the thinking made strides up the conservation corporate ladder; the rest held back.

The backfire effect, another human behaviour hardly helped. Studies have shown that when likeminded groups are presented with evidence that fundamentally challenges their view they just don’t believe the evidence. Worse, the more the evidence mounted, the more strongly people cling to their cherished view.

Just as in 2008 when the world realised that a AAA rated assets could be almost worthless will the publication of the State of Nature in 2013 chance the herds relentless pursuit of prescription and protection? We are all worried bystanders, unsure of what to do, fearful of embarrassment. Is the herd about to change? The chances the conservation community will have to switch course at some stage since to continue on the existing route will just require even more money – something the next generation of conservationists are likely to have.

Future conservation is going to have to rely less on what conservation NGO’s and civil servants think needs to be done – and more on engaging with and giving people on the ground the freedom to decide what they want and how they are going to produce it. A system that rewards success rather than putting conservation schemes in place. It is what we do for food production for us.