Dear First Minister – it’s me again

Dear First Minister

I doubt that you have had the time to look through many, if any, of the emails sent to you this week about the young poisoned White-tailed Eagle found on a grouse moor in the Cairngorms National Park.

I’ve seen hundreds of them but that, I know, is a small proportion.

What strikes me about many of them is that these are ordinary people, like me, reaching out to you because they look around UK politics and see you as one of the more admirable politicians on view. They see you as pretty honest, pretty straight, pretty reasonable, pretty intelligent and pretty caring. Those of us living and voting south of the border are hard pressed to see any politicians currently in power who measure up very highly on those criteria.

And that’s why a lot of those people, including me, have asked you, not some faceless bureaucrat, but you, as a person in power and with power, to do a lot more about wildlife crime in Scotland. We know that Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Eustice and others are an untrustworthy bunch of politicians who can never be trusted to act for the environment or wildlife, but we look to you to be different.

And this thing isn’t going to go away. It would be foolish for you to think it might. Grouse moor managers are laughing at you and the crime will continue unless you act.

Please act.

Have a nice weekend. Why not go out and see some eagles or harriers? If you do, I’d head north and west rather than south and east, ie away from the grouse moors, for your best chance of seeing some.

If you are maddened or saddened by the level of wildlife crime in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park then please write to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon ([email protected]) and copy in Cabinet Secretary Roseanna Cunningham ([email protected]).

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