More birds on Angus Glens housing estate than on grouse moor!

We’ve been witnessing an increase in propaganda from the grouse shooting industry’s Gift of Grouse campaign in recent months, as they ramp up the pressure to try and ward off any kind of regulation that the Scottish Government’s grouse moor review panel might recommend.

We know this fear of regulation is driving this campaign because the Gift of Grouse admits as such, on these cards that were distributed at the Scottish Game Fair in June/July.

The text on the card under the ‘Economic & Employment’ section has already been ripped to shreds by some amusing commentary on Twitter from the Forest Policy Group (@forest_policy), who pointed out that the 11k jobs refers to ALL game shooting, grouse shooting itself supports far less; that grouse moor occupies a broadly similar area to forest in Scotland and yet Forestry supports over 25k jobs from that area; and that wildlife watching contributes more economically than ‘country sports tourism’. The Forest Policy Group suggested that the question shouldn’t be ‘Does grouse shooting deliver economic benefit?’ but rather ‘How does that benefit compare with alternative land use?’. The answer is badly.

The text on the card under the heading ‘Environment and Conservation’ has recently been shredded by Mark Avery (here) and it’s also worth re-reading a blog we wrote a while ago (here) about the Gift of Grouse campaign’s misleading interpretation of the data recorded in the Taylor Wildlife Report, 2016.

Also in July we saw the Gift of Grouse making an absurd claim that ‘Grouse moors are nature reserves’ (see here for the press release).

This claim seemed to be based on a report by a German scientist (Dr Daniel Hoffman) who has been conducting ‘surveys’ on Glenogil Estate in the Angus Glens for three years (although the first year of survey was conducted over only four days in late April 2015 in appalling weather conditions – we blogged about it at the time – see here and scroll down to the bottom).

We are very interested in Dr Hoffmann’s work and found a report he’d written describing the ‘surveys’ undertaken in 2015. Download it here: Hoffmann-report

It’s very difficult to follow because English clearly isn’t Dr Hoffmann’s first language (that’s not a criticism, just an observation), which makes us very suspicious about the following commentary piece in The Times in June 2018 that was attributed to Dr Hoffmann, whose English skills seem to have suddenly improved.

Anyway, we digress. Let’s get back to Dr Hoffmann’s research.

A summary of some of his work has been posted on the Glenogil Estate website here. Take a look at this graph – it’s fascinating! It shows more bird species were recorded on a Glenogil ‘housing estate’ than on the grouse moor!

Obviously, there isn’t a ‘housing estate’ on Glenogil Estate and Dr Hoffmann’s terminology has just been lost in translation. If you read his 2015 report, his definition of ‘housing estate’ is revealed on page 38:

“Most of the song birds were observed in shrubs next houses” [sic].

Ah, so it’s not the grouse moor at Glenogil that’s ‘a nature reserve’, it’s the bushes around the gamekeeper’s houses!

If you look at the six habitat types identified by Dr Hoffmann (and no, we don’t know how he differentiates between ‘field’ and ‘meadow’ and nor do we know what ‘realted’ means), the grouse moor habitat only scores 4th in terms of avian diversity, behind housing estate (1st), meadow (2nd), and waters (3rd).

Dr Hoffmann’s 2015 report contains some pretty surprising claims, such as

“In fact of the political discussion about a ban on driven grouse shooting, our data should provide an indication if a ban will have positive or negative effect on the grouse population, birds in general and other species that have relevance to wildlife conservation“.

Really? And how will these ‘surveys’ (that don’t appear to have been done using recognised survey methods, although again this is difficult to understand from the report) provide such an indication? Has Dr Hoffmann set up a control area where grouse shooting is stopped, to compare with an area where grouse shooting continues? If he has, it’s not mentioned in this report. It sounds like the sort of “completely inadequate” study devised by GWCT for the Strathbraan raven cull! Dr Hoffmann appears to work for the Game Conservancy Deutschland – perhaps that organisation is twinned with the GWCT.

The report also contains some other interesting detail, such as the number of gamekeepers employed on Glenogil Estate to undertake predator control (twelve of them – that’s a lot of predators being killed); “an exceptionally high population of grouse” (presumably as a result of intensive predator control); and the revelation that “about 2000 traps” are deployed to kill predators. That’s a lot of traps. There’s a photo of one of the traps and it doesn’t look like the entrance/exit holes have been sufficiently restricted to minimise the chance of non-target species being caught and killed:

The report also reveals that there “is a total of more than 2000” medicated grit trays – that’s a lot of medicated grit, presumably needed to maintain “an exceptionally high population of grouse“. We wonder if the disease Cryptosporidiosis, known to be spread by the use of communal grit trays in high density grouse populations, is a problem at Glenogil, given the apparent intensive grouse moor management going on there?

The report continues:

“Another measure to increase the health of grouse is trapping them with nets. Almost 90% of the adult birds were caught in late autumn to dispense each with a fluid vermicide. Before releasing the grouse were ringed“.

Wow! 90% of adult grouse caught to be direct dosed with an anti-worming drug? And we know from previous blogs on this issue that SNH permits direct dosing with veterinary drugs during the shooting season, which means that the drug (Levamisole hydrochloride – used in human chemotherapy treatment) has every chance of entering the human food chain when those shot red grouse are sold (and we know the Veterinary Medicines Directorate does not undertake adequate surveillance or monitoring).

Sounds like a strange way to manage a ‘nature reserve’, doesn’t it?

UPDATE 7pm: Thanks to one of our blog readers (Peter Rees) who says the literal translation of the Deutscher Jagdverband is ‘German Hunting Association’. That explains a great deal. See comments section for more info.