SCOTLAND licenses the killing of at least a thousand wild birds each year
to protect salmon without any scientific justification for the cull, claim
conservationists. They accuse the Scottish Office of appeasing fishermen by
allowing more birds to be shot than in England and Wales.
Over the past 13 years, the Scottish Office fisheries department has issued
568 licences to fishing organisations to kill 4946 goosanders, 3730 mergansers
and 4420 cormorants, mostly in the spring. 鈥淭he scandal is that this cull is
carried out without any scientific evidence,鈥� says Ray Murray, president of the
Scottish Ornithologists鈥� Club. 鈥淭here is no proof that these birds do serious
damage to fish stocks.鈥�
Each year about 5400 goosanders and 4300 red-breasted mergansers breed in
Britain. Cormorants are more numerous. All three species are protected by the
1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, which only permits them to be killed under
licence to prevent 鈥渟erious damage to fisheries鈥�.
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Local fishery boards, angling associations and fish farmers apply for
licences to the government fisheries departments in Scotland, England and Wales.
According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), no licences
have ever been issued to kill mergansers in England. The Ministry of
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has issued only seven licences to kill
goosanders and 鈥渟mall numbers鈥� of licences to kill cormorants.
The RSPB says that the Scottish Office has repeatedly refused to provide the
scientific evidence on which it decides to grant applications for licences. 鈥淥n
the basis of evidence that is kept secret, the Scottish Office is licensing the
killing of far more birds than in England,鈥� says Ian McCall from the RSPB in
Scotland. 鈥淲e fundamentally question whether this is justified.鈥�
The accusations made by ornithologists are supported by Mick Marquiss from
the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology in Banchory near Aberdeen. In a report on
fish-eating birds, which he wrote in 1994 for the National Rivers Authority, he
concluded that 鈥渁t present licences are issued on the basis of anecdotal and
circumstantial evidence which is an inherently unsound procedure鈥�.
Marquiss accepts that in some areas the birds do eat significant numbers of
young salmon. But he points out that in other areas where hundreds of goosanders
have been shot鈥攕uch as the Tweed catchment area in southern
Scotland鈥攖he proportion of salmon found in the stomachs of the dead birds
is very small. Killing the birds to protect the fish, he told New 杏吧原创,
could be 鈥渁 waste of time鈥�.
The River Tweed Commissioners, who control fishing on Britain鈥檚 most famous
salmon river, argue that the cull is economically justifiable. The commissioners
say that each of the 10 000 salmon caught by rod in the Tweed each year is worth
拢500 to the local economy. About 70 goosanders are being shot this spring,
compared with 264 in 1990. 鈥淚t is not a mass slaughter,鈥� says Judith Nicol,
director of the commissioners.
The Scottish Office denies the claims made by ornithologists. 鈥淟icences are
issued on the basis of scientific evidence and to prevent serious damage to
fisheries,鈥� says a spokesman.