Tomorrow morning, from 09:30, the Scottish Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee will take evidence from three members of the Werritty group whose report on licensing of grouse moor management was so inadequate. The three members are the Chair, Prof Alan Werritty, and Prof Colin Reid and Prof Alison Hestor.
It will be interesting to see what the Committee members, such as Mark Ruskell (who knows his stuff), will ask.
And of course it will be interesting to see and hear what the Werritty group , particularly the Chair, say if they are asked why their report was so technically badly argued, why the wealth of ecological evidence was not properly referred to in the body of the report, why the report hardly mentions wildlife crimes against raptors as an issue, why the impacts of grouse moor management on hydrology and carbon storage are given such scant attention, why anecdotal evidence is treated almost as seriously as science, why the economic value of grouse shooting is not properly assessed when it should be dismissed as being minor etc etc.
I imagine that the Committee discussion of the hearing will be held in private to spare the Werritty group’s blushes.
It’s too late to breathe life and meaning into the Werritty report, it’s time to pass on and the need is for Scottish politicians to decide what they are going to do.
What they should do is ban driven grouse shooting but what they absolutely must do, to retain any credibility on this subject, is to bring in a licensing scheme as quickly as possible.
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Aye Mark Ruskell certainly knows his stuff – so good to have a Green politician that does a bit more than parrot that ‘Climate change is the biggest challenge we face’. He’s also been quite active in looking into the appalling situation re beavers in Scotland, you can apply to kill them, but blanket ban on translocating them to anywhere they’re a direct boon to conservation or flood prevention. So beaver ‘problems’ are hyped to death, beaver benefits are swept under the carpet – like soft soaping the grouse moors a sop to appease the rural mafia.