Further to the news that Scottish Natural Heritage has issued a multi-year licence to allow the mass culling of ravens in Highland Perthshire, ‘just to see what happens’, which prompted a surge of criticism from the Scottish Raptor Study Group (here), RSPB Scotland (here), OneKind (here), Mark Avery (here) and thousands of members of the public, Chris Packham has added his voice.
Here’s his email to Mike Cantlay, Chair of SNH:
Good morning Mr Cantlay,
I hope you are well.
I write with reference to the licensing of the raven cull. I’ll keep it short, I imagine you’ve had a fair few emails about this.
If you had asked a team of the very best PR executives to come up with a plan to incinerate the last vestiges of credibility, to banish any dwindling reserves of integrity and to destroy any remaining trust between conservationists and SNH, then it’s my bet that they would have suggested this. Top work.
As it stands the already beleaguered reputation of SNH lies in bloodied tatters, and, whilst I am not a PR person I would suggest that to reverse this ill judged and ruinous decision – as quickly as possible – would be a jolly good idea.
Yours
Chris Packham,
Conservationist
ENDS
[Photo: RPUK]
Still no response from SNH since we blogged about this raven cull licence last Friday.
If you’d like to add your voice to those of us in opposition to the licence, please email Mike Cantlay, Chair of SNH: chair@snh.gov.uk
You can also sign this petition HERE
Raptor Persecution UK 
Well done Chris. You could not have said it any clearer.
Let us hope they listen.
I wonder what Botham and other bird killers will say?
Doug
Well done Chris, erudite and utterly on point as always.
Brilliant!
*mic drop*
https://gph.is/2biY0lt
That missive from Chris is an absolute masterpiece. Oscar Wild couldn’t have done better. It’s a conservation classic, and all the better coming from someone of Chris’ standing.
There’s obviously some type of groupthink in operation at the top of both SNH and NE, that they could make such crass and obviously mistaken decisions, and did not foresee how conservationists would perceive them. I do really mean this because if you look at the Wikipedia page, which provides a nice summary of the concept of groupthink, these bizarre decisions bear all the hallmarks of groupthink. Essentially groupthink is where a group of otherwise intelligent individuals, make disastrous decisions, which from the viewpoint of hindsight are inexplicable. This group tends to deliberately isolate itself from possibly critical viewpoints, and suppresses dissent or opposing voices.
I don’t know them but I’ll bet the people at the top are careers civil servants/managers rather than copnservationists/naturalists scientists etc
Not a helpful comment.
Thank you Chris for your brilliant message. I have sent him an email too, but pales into insignificance next to yours. Together we will win for wildlife
Excellent. I have regular professional and personal dealings with SNH regarding the population of taiga bean geese which winter in Central Scotland.
Sad to report that ‘beleaguered’ is indeed the would. The organisation appears to be decimated by decades of cuts in central funding (sadly nature conservation doesn’t ever seem to be a ‘front-line’ service).
I am aware of other instances of desperately wanting to be seen to be ‘doing the right thing’ when it is the exact opposite.
Anything and everything they do should be science lead. But that involves time and resources. And so what we get is these pathetic knee jerk decisions if those in power say jump. Yet another instance of the abuse of power.
And left hand and right hand stuff too; just when the Scottish Government appears to be facing up to do something about the illegal persecution of raptor.
You couldn’t make it up.
Derek Ratcliffe would be horrified.
I think Derek Ratcliffe would not be merely horrified at the direction of travel of our statutory conservation bodies, he would be absolutely baffled by what is going on. There was a time when there seemed to be continuous progress. Okay, things were not perfect, but generally over time any slight backward movement was ironed out, and we seemed to be getting somewhere.
In my opinion it is not these statutory bodies themselves which are the problem, but the pressure they are put under from their political masters to compromise their duties so not to get in the way of vested interests. In plain language, vested interests have far too much influence on politicians behind the scenes. What I’m saying is that even if they simply do their jobs, it is seen as stepping on the wrong toes. These cuts you mention are the means by which these body’s political masters control them. They live under the constant threat of further cuts, which they know are likely to be worse, if they upset someone with influence, through their decision making.
This Raven cull is not a conservation measure even if it is falsely dressed up as one. It really is insulting to call it an “experiment” because it has not been set up under the auspices of proper conservation scientists who could monitor its efficacy and impacts.
There are presumably many ways to investigate the predatory effects of one species on another. Some form of scientific monitoring of prey species taken to nests would be one way, and relatively easy to do. Another way would be to just kill all of the predatory species and see what happens. But surely only an idiot would choose that second option …..surely not!…..REALLY !!!
Exactly…rather than a seriously flawed ‘trial’ that involved killing one species to see what happens far, far better to do more proper field research including cameras on wader nests, electronic monitoring of nests to see if temp drops due to predation etc to see what’s really happening rather than supposition that conveniently fits in with vested interests. You could do trials to change the ‘management’ of the grouse moors to see if that affected wader numbers, imagine if a less intensive muir burn regime was found to increase wader numbers after all they seem to decline when it becomes more intensive as in the Lammermuir Hills. Of course the latter would mean fewer grouse to shoot so any surprise that’s not on the cards, could produce some very awkward results couldn’t it?
Nicely put Chris, and I guess it sums up our thoughts and feelings on the matter succinctly. Judging by the credentials of the hierarchy at SNH and NE it would seem that there may be some good management brains but unfortunately brains which do not exhibit a grasp of the concepts around conservation – and hence these daft schemes and political affiliations.
However along with those characteristics come egos and group egos which I fear will get in the way of them admitting a gaff and doing the right thing about it. Chris’s email may not make it any easier for them to climb down.
Well said Chris, we’ve known for a long time what an utter shambles and a shameful disgrace SNH and NE are when it comes to wildlife and habitat protection, but this latest fiasco of cow-towing to every wish of the grouse shooting estate elites takes the proverbial biscuit.
Well said sir.
Almost 16k sigs on the petition already…..this has so touched a nerve.
Wow the care2 petition has jumped to over 28,000.
This may not even be the Chris Packham effect as under 13,000 are from the UK.
A strong argument for Mike Cantlay that this is not good for Scottish tourism or international reputation.
Always considered a major positive in engineering to carry out ‘non-destructive testing.’ Even more relevant in conservation/ecology research. SNH – Duh.
Articulate as ever.
Chris Packham’s email is a brilliant. I have sent one as well. Together all of us may have the desired impact and achieve the only sane result.
People should unsubscribe with Scottish Heritage
See how they like that
Bunged an FoI request in. Its going be interesting to see how feeble their responses are.
1) What conservation organisations or raptor groups have been consulted and/or are involved in the collaborative trail?
2) What is the evidence base for your organisation to publicly state “We are satisfied this licence will not affect the population of ravens overall”?
3) What independent organisations will be involved in the assessment of efficacy of the cull?
4) How and when the success or failure of the cull will be assessed?
5) Will the data be published and peer assessed?
6) What are the obligations placed on the counter-parties are to justify the statement “The licence places significant responsibility and expectations on all those involved – to be able to show that this approach can work and will help deliver what are essentially shared objectives.”
7) How you will monitor the counter-parties’ compliance?
8) What penalties are available in the event that the counter-parties fail to met their obligations?
Phil, I predict you’ll get the following answers on a postcard.
1) None
2) None
3) None
4) None
5) No
6) Duhhh?
7) Ask them for a report assuring compliance
8) N/A
CORRECTION Answer to question 4) Manyana
Asking for communication with the partners would likely provide the most information
I know I can’t be the only one with some inside knowledge about what’s going on within SNH in recent years, but must admit to being rather puzzled that the elephant in the room is not being mentioned. There is much disquiet among the front-line troops employed by SNH, but also somewhat concealed are the officers who have pushed through this latest debacle. Several years ago, in a somewhat similar context, I complained to SNH that they appeared to have stopped consulting outside experts on certain cases, leading to some rather questionable decisions. The response I received was to be told that in order to protect valued staff from redundancies (a laudable enough objective in my opinion), a decision had been made to no longer routinely consult outside agencies or individuals when SNH had their own advisers in house. Then a few years ago, following my own personal 7-year research project into the impact of alleged Raven ‘predation’ on lambs, I contacted SNH to complain about the misleading information being provided in advisory literature to the farming community, which accepted as a proven premise that Ravens cause serious harm to sheep farming by preying upon lambs. The SNH Adviser I engaged with would not listen to reason and simply repeated tediously that “all these farmers” who reported the predation problem couldn’t be wrong. He had no answer to my point that all the research which has been published, and my own extensive studies, had shown this not to be the case. So the situation is that SNH is dogmatically sticking to its own mistaken guidance, and is not prepared to listen to outside species experts. Which begs the question, why are they prepared to believe the myths and hearsay evidence presented by farmers and gamekeepers? What happened to the fundamental scientific principle?
Thank you, Iain.
It is interesting where you mentioned the ‘advisory literature to the farming community’. A certain weekly publication has been running a series of highly damning, one sided articles on the raven and it is my belief that media psychology was used as some in the farming community began to repeat almost verbatim from the articles. They claimed to have witnessed certain alleged negative behaviours.
Utter tosh.
I did wonder if pressure to print such negative publicity had come from certain quarters…..Many stopped buying the rag in question as the quality of the journalism has declined a lot when it became blatant pro shoot. Ditto a BBC Scottish Rural tv programme.
Chris Packham’s letter is direct and clear to those who made this stupid decision. It seems like SNH have lost their direction.
This brings to mind the debacle on the Gairloch peninsula where the ‘poor’ crofters were screaming about hundreds of their lambs being eaten by recently returned sea eagles. When SNH radio collared 58 lambs there to see what would happen NOT ONE was carried off by a sea eagle. Melodrama about livestock lost to wildlife is far better to keep public sympathy and subsidy rolling in rather than a proper look at the real reasons for high sheep mortality in Scotland, it’s originally a desert animal that’s expected to live on shelter less, cold, rain swept hills and husbandry is perhaps not always what it should be when a lot of the economic value comes from subsidy rather than sales. Like the estates I think some in the (subsidy) farming industry need to be put on their back foot, they are not being challenged the way they should be.
Packham is a legend. Nearly 18k on this linked petition, 15k+ on the change.org one.
Has anyone managed to get this on TV? If anyone can it’s Chris P.
Class. Simple as.
Email sent – beginning with the fact that the SNH website has “Connecting people and nature in Scotland”. Almost hilarious, that.
Just had to double check but It still says on the SNH web page “All of nature for all of Scotland” bearing in mind this monstrously stupid ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ decision to allow a cull, then this mission statement is clearly a load of cobblers.
Totally without merit!
Why oh why are humans so intent on killing everything. This is appalling and I stand firmly with Chris
Thank you Chris. Perfectly stated. You have my support and I fired off an email too. I have always loved and understood the fact that your loyalty and integrity lie with the animals and nature, and not with people per se. That is, of course, not completely politically correct or ethically right, But I agree with you and am glad you are ‘my’ voice.
my thoughts turn to this human fault of needing to control everything. now at 72 yrs I see the damage it causes. we just cannot stand back and nine times out of ten it has a negative effect. I remember going to meetings and hearing a voice perk up and offering some pointless intervention and thinking – shut up and get back in your box . to think up the idea of killing so much wildlife, so many innocents I find so deeply disappointing. jobsworthies . I sent my email too.