DILEMMAS IN CONSERVATION
PROTECT, TRANSLOCATE OR CULL?
THERE ARE REAL DILEMMAS IN BRITISH CONSERVATION…….
We ask a lot of the British Countryside, but not everyone accepts that we cannot achieve our varied objectives, especially given our big population, without management. Or that that management must include controlling at least some of the animal populations which inhabit our landscapes.
The inspiring Knepp project began with the name of “ Rewilding” and the explicit sub-text of “ letting Nature do its own thing “. That, however, changed with the important addition of selected herbivores ; their impact is now monitored, their populations controlled and numbers culled in order to meet the environmental aims of the project.
Such management has been a significant part of many other environmental projects. I write a lot on Linkedin now, and there most folk appear to accept that the constantly growing populations of our deer species do need regular monitoring and control, or it will be to the serious detriment of many aspects of the entire British countryside.
There have been many discrete projects where it has been decided to ‘remove’ one species in order to protect populations of others. This is often to protect our ground-nesting birds; but the approach, the way in which the ‘offending’ species has been dealt with, has varied significantly.
Rats have routinely been eradicated from islands in order to reduce predation on seabirds; there seem to have been few protests against this culling, no-one is anxious to boost their own population of rats.
In contrast, hedgehogs, removed from the Western Isles for the same reason, were ‘translocated’ to other places to boost local populations which were failing. Everyone loves hedgehogs……
And in Orkney, in recent years, there has been a continuing cull of the introduced stoats, which were, again, having a drastic effect on the numbers of ground-nesting birds and the local Orkney vole. I have heard one or two folk questioning whether they really should be killed, but, despite the number of occasions on which the Orkney project updates the general public on its progress, I have not seen any organisation pleading for translocation of the stoats to their own patch; no-one seems anxious to boost their local stoat population.
If you are ever lucky enough to take a look at one, (especially, perhaps in the winter when they wear their white, ‘ermine’ coats), you might well decide that stoats are quite attractive little animals in their own right. But it seems clear that the effectiveness of that once very small introduced population in wreaking havoc in Orkney has been well established; people understand what stoats can do to our ground-nesting birds, which face so many other different threats in various locations around Britain.
A close relative of the stoat is the pine marten. I have lived surrounded by them (an account of this will be found in my book about Assynt- ‘Under the Radiant Hill”). They are delightful little animals, and I really enjoyed their presence and my regular sightings of them, even when I discovered that they had somehow taken up residence in my loft. But I had then, and have now, no illusions about them; they are attractive, ferocious, little killers, as many folk who try to rear hens in the Highlands know only too well. They are pretty well omnivorous, and there can be no doubt that their predation, in general, has to be as effective as that of stoats- except that they can probably take larger prey than the somewhat smaller stoat.
They are also extremely agile, and able to get through the tiniest gaps in anyone’s ‘defences’, as getting into folks’ henhouses and my loft has often proved. In numbers, as they now are in many parts of the Highlands, they are such effective predators that they have been considered a real threat to the declining capercaillie populations. Translocation to other, less- populated areas has been considered, but now they are being lured to alternative food-carcasses being provided to tempt them away from caper nests.
Despite all these well-known and admitted problems, there are many individuals and conservation bodies in the South of England who are anxious to see the pine marten in their patch. This despite the undoubted fact that ground-nesting birds throughout are in deep trouble, that islands are being built where feasible on various reserves, while other nesting areas in places such as RSPB Pulborough are protected by complex electric-fences (Rewilding this is NOT!). I have to say that I doubt very much that such defences, which may deter foxes, badgers and otters, would ever keep the much more agile, slimmer pine martens out.
Pine martens will reach these areas soon enough, hardly giving us any time to boost at-risk populations, especially of vulnerable species like curlew and lapwing. Asking to speed the process up, to translocate them, seems quite unnecessary, and, bluntly, totally illogical, given experience elsewhere. The only reason why folk are anxious to see pine martens everywhere is their extraordinarily attractive appearance.
That is NOT a logical reason for taking steps which could further disrupt the balance of nature in many parts of the country. Pine martens are effectively omnivorous, which means that they will not suffer when they have ‘eradicated’ curlew and lapwing; they will simply turn to other species………….