Fishing & Shooting

You may have noticed that the Salmon and Trout Association is petitioning the Scottish government to tighten up fish farms to reduce lice numbers.

But you are more likely to have noticed that the RSPB has also raised a petition; this one to demand the Scottish government spends more money on resources to combat wildlife crime – which for the RSPB means poisoning birds of prey, notably golden eagles.

The RSPB managed to get news of its Holyrood petition on to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, which is a commendable coup for a Scottish news item. It emerged that with 86,000 members in Scotland the RSPB had managed to find 21,000 petitioners, all of whom wanted the Scottish government to throw increased resources (ie taxpayers' money) at the problem. But does the problem need more money?

No one pretends poisoning is a good thing. But as Mr James Naughtie, the opera loving Today presenter opined, 400 birds of prey poisoned or illegally trapped over 10 years is not a huge number.

True, replied the RSPB's Duncan Orr-Ewing, the Ayatollah of the raptor world, but that figure was only the tip of the iceberg. All the same, the current golden eagle population stands at 442 breeding pairs –- breeding pairs, please note. (There are a whole lot more single birds out there we never hear about).

The population is, however, stable and gradually increasing, according to the science. Indeed there are today only 70 fewer breeding pairs in Britain than in 1800, in the days before raptors were widely persecuted as a threat to organised shooting.

But the way the RSPB goes on you would think poisoning is the only thing standing in the way of a golden eagle population explosion and recolonisation. It isn't.

There are nine factors that affect golden eagle breeding viability, of which poisoning is one. The others are: commercial afforestation, nest site availability, agricultural encroachment, deer and sheep grazing, disturbance by walkers, native woodland expansion, competition from white tailed eagles (bit ironic, that one) and wind farms.

The last has been the subject of a joint study by the RSPB and Scottish Natural Heritage which confirmed that wind farms in upland areas act as scarecrows.

The RSPB gives the impression golden eagles are in danger of extinction. But poisoning is an emotive subject, as it knows, and whenever the words poisoning and eagles are put together, donations pour in.

We do not need more layers of expensive bureaucracy in the form of "additional resources" – in effect a wildlife crime squad. We already have the laws. Ninety nine per cent of keepers and landowners got the message about poisoning years ago. Constant harping on about poison simply demonises and alienates otherwise reasonable people who might be more inclined to help if they weren't constantly branded as criminals (alleged).