RSPB calls for immediate halt to mountain hare culls on back of shocking new report
Government agency statement on status of protected species and habitats shows alarming decline in species’ population
New data published by the EU revealing the condition of Scottish protected species and habitats has revealed the country’s mountain hare populations have experienced a major decline.
As a result the status of the mountain hare has been downgraded to unfavourable, meaning that special conservation action needs to be undertaken to arrest further declines and aid their recovery.
The main cause of this reclassification has been identified as hunting and game management. Lesser pressures include the impacts of agriculture and habitat loss.
The Article 17 Report requires the Scottish Government to give information on the status of European protected habitats and species. Scottish Natural Heritage, the government’s own natural heritage advisors, have taken the action on the back of new evidence revealing catastrophic mountain hare declines particularly in areas managed for intensive driven grouse shooting activity.
RSPB Scotland have lobbied for many years to improve the protection for mountain hares in Scotland – calling for a moratorium in 2015 on the unregulated culling. Since then shocking new evidence has shown the species – a true emblem of Scotland’s wild places – has declined by over 90% in some sites managed for driven grouse shooting in spite of claims from the shooting industry that numbers remain healthy.
Duncan Orr-Ewing, Head of Species and Land Management at RSPB Scotland, said: ‘We have been extremely concerned about the state of our mountain hare populations for many years.
In the last 12 months new, robust evidence has shown that populations have declined precipitously, chiefly in areas managed for driven grouse shooting. This reclassification to unfavourable status demands urgent action.‘.
Duncan continued: ‘The recognition from Scottish Government’s own advisors that the mountain hare population is now unfavourable means that increased protection of this iconic species is needed. Self-regulation and claimed ‘voluntary restraint’ from culling by the industry has been nothing short of a pitiful failure.
We urge the Scottish Government to take action where the industry has not and to urgently increase the protection of mountain hares in Scotland until their status is secured.‘.
Ends
Or, alternatively, this is another pretty good solution:
Please sign this e-petition by Chris Packham calling for a ban of driven grouse shooting.
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Yet another very good reason to put an end to driven grouse shooting as your end comment suggests. Time, also, for the RSPB to back the petition.
Perhaps those who rushed to attack Mark in an earlier post might like to offer their thoughts on the precipitous decline of Mountain Hare particularly in areas managed for intensive driven grouse shooting activity. Note: head-in-sand denials won’t cut it.
Well said Duncan!!! On Chris Packham’s live Q & A session about the petition on face book yesterday the very first issue he dealt with was the mountain hare ‘cull’. This is only going to strengthen the point he made then that peer reviewed science indicated there had been drastic declines in many areas ‘managed’ for grouse shooting. Some of the moorland forums we have in Scotland would occasionally post videos of concentrations of mountain hares to dispel the idea they were now scarce. In every case the hares looked extremely agitated and were certainly not resting/relaxed. Often the person taking the film was very close to the animals and at least partly responsible for their distress, if anyone else had done this to a flock of geese for example they’d be called ‘bird botherers’. It looked as if the hares had actually been driven together and had the camera had panned a bit more to the sides I wouldn’t have been surprised to see lines of beaters holding the hares in place when they clearly wanted to get away – running a few feet in one direction, then turning and running a few more in another and so on. If the Scottish Gamekeepers Association for one or their knuckle dragging associates told us the pope was catholic then I’d start questioning if he actually was. One thing what the huntin, fishin, shootin set are doing to the land and wildlife, the other the lies, smears and dirty tactics directed at campaigners and the public to cover it up. For both or either they deserve to be kicked off the hills and preferably on to the dole. Let’s get the petition to 100,000 plus ASAP!
Perhaps Duncan Orr-Ewing could be invited to write a guest blog explaining exactly how the RSPB’s call for licensing will help the hare?
The nasty little beggars just attract other vermin (Harriers, Eagles etc) where ever they live. It may even carry lice that infect the main farmed crop.
Licensing will be the answer to its total eradication.
Time for a few reminder photos of truckloads of the little blighters.
Lice?? Ticks you idiot!
Ah yes, ticks. Time ticks away whilst NGOs watch our moors burn and believe licensing is the cure all. They may even believe in Werritty.
And btw, if all our NGOs that should be supporting a ban are not doing so due to some constraint or other, how is it that Derbyshire WT have broken the mould?
Get your members to sign now!
Time that Mountain Hares were protected for much of the year, if not all of it and if and when they are shot there should be quite restrictive bag limits (As happens for various species in many other countries).
Of course licencing will not help the Hare, Harrier, Peregrine or Eagle, all it will do is give the grouse shooting cabal ten more years whilst government and conservation charities prevaricate some more about wildlife crime in game shooting areas. Lets end it now, signing that petition can only help.
Do it and get all your friends and family to do it too.
Isn’t the simple answer that Mountain Hare numbers are lower in the grouse shooting areas because they are being culled? if you are shooting them then there will naturally be a decline in the population, the question is, is the population so low that it cannot maintain its current level and thus is at risk of total extinction? The whole point about culling is to reduce a population to a smaller but sustainable size.
S – I thought we’d done this before, but maybe we didn’t. The decline on grouse moors is 90% and there is a much, much smaller decline on non grouse moors in the adjacent arease.
And you aren’t right to say that ‘if youa re shooting them then there will naturally be a decline in the population’ – except obviously in the very short term. If that were true then all wildfowling and game shooting would be unsustainable.
Is wildfowling and game shooting sustainable then? Certainly game shooting involves the destruction of many other creatures, which surely does not qualify it as sustainable. Neither of these “hobbies” exist in a vacuum and with pressure on wildlife increasing, from loss of habitat for instance, can we really pretend they are sustainable?
Hi Mark, no I dont think we have done this before?
90% decline on grouse moors because they are being shot, less so on non grouse moors becuase they arent…I get that bit.
You say they are in decline but from what baseline? On grouse moors they are down 90% from what baseline I mean? Pre grouse shooting? Is there a national mounrain hare count?
S – OK, have a look at this then https://markavery.info/2018/08/14/mountain-hares-close-to-extinction-on-ne-scotland-grouse-moors/
Counts for over 50 years in the same, fairly large, area of NE Scotland by a (now deceased) eminent montane ecologist and published in a prestigious scientific journal.