Most people spend their whole lives without seeing a golden eagle so you’d think you’d be lucky to see one up close.
I promise you it’s not the case when it has been poisoned out of the sky.
Alive, flapping, this beauty couldn’t lift off the ground.
At first, I thought its foot was trapped but it wasn’t. It couldn’t fly.
When I told the first person its location, they said, ‘Ahh…Angus.’
Wildlife Crime
It appears Angus, home to landed gentry and grouse shooting estates has quite the reputation for wildlife crime.
There is a strong possibility this bird had been poisoned.
(I’m not sure how else eagles fall out of the sky).
Wildlife crime is Scotland’s dirty secret.
Picture the empty Scottish landscape… it’s pretty easy to drop poisoned bait for scavenging raptors (who carry it away from the scene of the crime and stuff it down their chicks’ throats).
Illegal? Yes, very.
But who would ever know?
Biodiversity
Land owners’ interests directly compete with that of wildlife (really, when humans start talking about being ‘stakeholders in wildlife’, you know how badly we’ve screwed things up).
Most Scots agree that we want the landscape to look attractive for tourists, but that’s no guarantee of biodiversity.
From a distance, the purple heather looks pretty.
Most visitors don’t scratch the surface enough to learn that the barren grouse moors are not what a healthy, biodiverse Scottish landscape looks like.
The Scale of the Problem
About 10% of Scotland’s land is used for grouse and pheasant shooting (that’s approximately 2.5 million acres).
With the estates come private land management practices, more or less hidden away.
35 million hand-reared pheasants are released annually in the UK to supplement any surviving bird stock that make it across the guns.
Despite the scale of the breeding/shooting industry, it seems no birds can be spared due to natural causes.
Vermin are trapped or shot (legally – depending on the type of trap), but protected species, including raptors are also disappearing.
Since 2011, 1/3 of all Scottish golden eagles (40+) wearing transmitters have vanished in unknown circumstances (several in the same areas).
It’s not ‘foxes.’
One transmitter was found wrapped in lead sheeting in a river.
Powerful People
From Argaty Red Kites to Comrie Croft, there are many, varied conservation-minded businesses in rural Scotland (which our language school supports, visits and promotes).
But there’s a limit to what positive environmental management can achieve if surrounding private estates control ‘vermin,’ including legally protected birds of prey.
A golden eagle can fly 100 to 200 miles per day and would be particularly drawn to the apparently people-less landscape of a grouse moor (ironically, it would be much safer on the peopled land of the eco-businesses).
Despite knowing that some estate owners must be complicit in wildlife crime, many grouse estates still receive public funding for specific environmental conservation and increasingly lucrative carbon offsetting.
An estate could easily provide habitat for one (subsidised) species whilst continuing to control (illegally) others.
The Burden of Proof
Wildlife crime happens behind the scenes in private estates with little public access, making it incredibly hard to prove culpability.
One gamekeeper was caught with a jar full of eagle leg tags on his mantlepiece (each number identified a missing bird).
Legally, there was no irrefutable proof that he committed the crimes: that he chopped the dead (or dying) birds’ legs off for the souvenirs.
The remains of 2 red kites, 6 illegal traps, a trapped hen harrier and poisoned bait were found in the same raid.
He was prosecuted for just one crime: the remains of one further red kite in his work vehicle.
The fine: £1,500…
Compare that to the thousands of pounds every person pays for a grouse shooting holiday…
A Licence to Kill
The good news is that this year, the Wildlife Management and Muirburn Scheme (Scotland) Act 2024 means that grouse shooting estates now need a license.
Unless caught red-handed, the owners and actors (£25 per fox tail!) are still likely to evade a wildlife crime, however, their business risks losing up to 5 years of lucrative license if there is compelling evidence of wildlife crime occurring on their land.
‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ becomes ‘balance of probability.’
A Lasting Impact
What’s this got to do with a language school?
I teach English by sharing Scotland and Scottish culture with international visitors.
I was on an organised outdoor activity with a student.
We were exploring a little-walked part of Scotland with the company Adventure Paddleboarding when the group discovered the fallen bird.
That’s one international academic (an ecologist with strong links to ALL the universities in Germany) heading home to tell her story of Scotland.
Good.
And, I’ll use my website and social media platforms to share this story too.
How to Help
Toads... bats... eagles... report ALL wildlife crime.
If you are lucky enough to see an eagle nest, don’t share the location (especially not on social media).
Support wildlife conservation charities. Keep informed.
Tourists: spend your tourists dollar critically: support Scottish rural business which support wildlife and share it in non-invasive ways.
Question empty landscapes.
Where IS all the wildlife?
Support the Wildlife Management and Muirburn Scheme (Scotland) Act 2024.
Wildlife Management and Muirburn Scheme (Scotland) Act 2024
Does your MSP know you care?
Reduce your driving speed on country roads
On the same day we saw a roadkilled buzard.
The Hidden Costs
Let’s talk money.
Grouse shooting generates around £32 million annually (in wages and economic activity) but tourism brings £12 billion into Scotland.
Most of those visitors want to enjoy the Scottish landscape with flourishing and healthy wildlife.
(Landscape and wildlife are in the top 5 reasons people CHOOSE Scotland as a destination).
Perhaps once it’s known how a tiny minority of the population are damaging our nation’s attractiveness to tourists, our rural communities will stop looking the other way and accepting wildlife crime as ‘tradition’.
Further Information
This blog is written using information published inThe Scotsman, by Dr Ruth Tingay, Revive, the coalition for grouse moor reform.
Follow them on Facebook.
Related Posts
This blog is dedicated to my artist hero Stuart Bastik, who didn’t doubt how awful the worst humans could be, yet still dedicated his life to helping whole communities enjoy art and discover nature: saving quite a few souls in the process.
Image Credits
My own images: a white-tailed eagle, discovering the injured eagle, 2 x grouse moors (Glen Quaich), a close-up of the injured bird, and finding an eagle feather (shortly before first seeing the bird), Visit Scotland tourism statistics.