Ravens: NatureScot bends rules for sheep farmers again
NatureScot considering allowing farmers to shoot young Ravens in Orkney
New powers to ‘cull’ - shoot dead - young Ravens in Orkney are being drawn up by NatureScot, Scotland's natural heritage agency responsible for the country’s “natural, genetic and scenic diversity”, following a spate of alleged ‘attacks’ on livestock. In a meeting organised by farmers in the islands, NatureScot officials agreed current controls are not proving an effective deterrent, and that the Ravens are “causing distress”.
The largest of the UK’s crows, Ravens are native birds protected in Scotland under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which makes it illegal to intentionally kill or disturb them, their nests, or their eggs. The British Trust for Ornithology describes them as “a majestic species of rugged uplands, highly intelligent and steeped in mythology”. There are thought to be around 10,000 breeding pairs, a partial recovery after centuries of persecution. They play a key role in healthy ecosystems. One of the most intelligent animals on the planet, a 2020 study published in Scientific Reports was titled “Ravens parallel great apes in physical and social cognitive skills” and suggest that Ravens “are particularly renowned for their sophisticated social cognitive skills including the formation of coalitions, considering visual perspectives of others, and directing conspecifics’ attention to external referent.”
Sheep, on the other hand, are non-native and bred to be slaughtered (sheep bred for wool are slaughtered too and are termed ‘dual purpose’). There are over six million of them in Scotland alone, and sheep grazing negatively affects the diversity of plant species of upland areas of the British countryside. In a memorable 2013 Spectator article (reposted on his blog), George Monbiot described the British uplands as ‘sheep-wrecked’: a 2020 study by the University of Liverpool found it could take up to 60 years for landscapes to recover after the removal of sheep. Animal farming in the uplands and on islands is massively subsidised, and livestock operations currently have the highest percentages of their income come from direct subsidies (in 2013 Monbiot stated that in Wales “the average subsidy for sheep farms on the hills is £53,000. Average net farm income is £33,000. The contribution the farmer makes to his income by keeping animals, in other words, is minus £20,000.”)
FarmSubsidy.org lists farm subsidy payments made to Orkney farmers (covered by NUTS region UKM65). It says that between 2013 and 2022 a total of 247 million Euros was received by all recipients in UKM65. Between 2022 and 2023 five Orkney farms received more than 250,000 Euros each.
Farmers and Ravens
Farmers want to be allowed to kill young Ravens (breeding pairs are not associated with livestock attacks). Young birds are, according to unverified media reports, “forming 'mobs' and attacking young calves and lambs” on the islands. The BBC for example quoted Douglas Paterson, an Orkney farmer, who it says
“…has been one of Orkney's loudest voices demanding action to control raven numbers.
He said the birds have killed lambs and also sheep, which can be vulnerable and exposed when they roll onto their backs.
Other farmers told NatureScot officials that the birds have attacked the tongues and feet of young calves, leaving them with devastating injuries.”
Ravens are opportunistic predators: put a resource like over-stocked animals into a sub-optimal environment and they will find it. While the occasional media outlet acknowledges the opportunities that subsidised sheep farming provides Ravens, most don’t.
Alongside photographs of Ravens sitting on fence posts “waiting for an oppertunity” [sic] to pounce on healthy lambs, for example, the Scottish Farmer website breathlessly ‘reports’ that Orkney farmers want a general licence to shoot ravens across the islands following “a torrid spring in which lambs and calves were predated upon by the largest of the corvid species”.
Echoing the claims routinely heard by shooting industry lobbyists as reason to kill foxes to protect ground-nesting Curlews (when what they mean is to protect ground-nesting pheasant and grouse chicks), one farmer even managed to get the line “We understand the ravens have also been preying on ground-nesting birds” into the media.
NatureScot routinely licences the killing of Ravens
Media reports suggest that after speaking to farmers and residents last week, a spokesperson for NatureScot said it had agreed to take steps to “better understand the impact young ravens were having on the island and to develop a better licensing scheme.”
These ‘steps’ will undoubtedly only go one way. NatureScot routinely issues licenses to kill Ravens for what should be specific situations, such as where they pose a threat to livestock (an entirely commercial decision of course) or air safety, and where there is “no other satisfactory solution.” Those solutions should involve deterrence and protecting ‘their livestock’, but farmers complain that neither is possible given the terrain and the costs. Killing Ravens, history proves, will always be the answer.
To demonstrate that they are ‘onside’, NatureScot presented evidence at the meeting that it had granted 34 licences to ‘control’ Ravens in Orkney since 2016 covering 28 locations. This had resulted in 124 being killed, 58% of the number which was permitted.
The figures on Raven ‘culling’ across all of Scotland have always pointed to the drift towards lethal control that farming actually wants. Raven populations have grown in the last decade so these figures need to be considered in that context, but parliamentary questions raised by former MSP Claudia Beamish in 2018 revealed that Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH, rebranded as NatureScot in 2020) had licenced the killing of 1,129 Ravens across Scotland in 2016, 1,133 in 2017 and 1,082 in 2018.
The same agency triggered a massive controversy in the same year when “to the utter disbelief of conservationists” (as a timeless post written by Raptor Persecution UK perfectly put it), it issued a licence authorising the mass killing of Ravens in a large area of Perthshire (an area that RPUK noted was identified as a wildlife crime hotspot where six satellite-tagged eagles have suspiciously disappeared in recent years). The licensing was “part of a proposed five-year experiment, on the basis of ‘seeing what happens’ to wader populations when ravens are removed.”
The licence was issued to the Strathbraan Community Collaboration for Waders (SCCW), which was later revealed to be a motley collection of farmers and gamekeepers on shooting estates.
The RSPB Scotland Head of Species & Land Management, Duncan Orr-Ewing, said at the time that
“We are also very surprised that SNH have issued such a research licence in the vicinity of Strathbraan, which has an appalling and well documented track record of illegal persecution of raptors, noting also the very recent “suspicious” disappearance of a satellite tagged white-tailed eagle in this very same area.”
Mr Orr-Ewing may have been surprised in this instance, but should he have been? The agency already had a long history of allowing commercial businesses to kill wildlife.
In 2019 The Ferret revealed that “since 2014 Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) has issued almost 4,000 licences to farmers, landowners and others to kill 97,500 geese, 11,400 hares, 10,000 gannets and 6,000 ravens. Hundreds of goosanders, cormorants, jackdaws, starlings, gulls, magpies and pigeons were also allowed to be killed.”
General Licences and a trend towards killing
The Strathbaarn licence was withdrawn after a study concluded it was ‘not scientifically robust’, and SNH rejected 2019 licence applications for a second year of ‘culling’. Seven years on from the original debacle, lobbyists are trying again. Few will be surprised in any way at all that NatureScot is again backing farming’s moves to ‘control’ Ravens.
Killing Ravens on Orkney will appear to some to be a rational response to an unusual situation: the birds breed well on sea cliffs, other food resources are scarce, and there will be some sympathy for the famers themselves (despite the fact that they are of course only raising sheep to be sold for killing in appalling slaughterhouses anyway).
We disagree of course, and have genuine concerns that NatureScot’s support will undoubtedly be a longer-term trigger for more widespread ‘control’. As long ago as 2016 a petition was launched by farmers to have Ravens included in the General Licence - a licence that doesn’t need to be applied for or even downloaded and allows almost unregulated killing of the species listed on it. The petition’s pitch was apparently made on behalf of “the massed voices of the rural community”. It closed with just 3,375 supporters, but demands by farming and shooting interests to kill Ravens have never gone away.
If (when?) NatureScot grants licences to kill young Ravens on Orkney it will be walking onto a very slippery slope. How many Ravens will actually die? There are no guarantees now that self-reported ‘kill’ figures are accurate, and there are no assurances that enforcement or monitoring will be ramped up. Once granted, Raven-killing licences (and grouse moor licences: NatureScot’s recent plans to ‘licence’ grouse moors are already in tatters after legal threats from shooting estates and land owners) will be very hard to revoke. They will become the ‘norm’. The move to just allowing landowners to kill as many Ravens as they want is coming closer.
At this point it’s well worth noting the words of Orkney wildlife expert Andy Mitchell who was quoted by the BBC saying there was no significant increase in the number of Raven nests, or the number of fledged young in the most recent surveys, and that he had "seen no compelling evidence of ravens killing healthy lambs. NatureScot cannot and must not ride roughshod over licensing rules to accommodate a few farmers."
Biodiversity is under threat
Wildlife in our nature-depleted islands is under incredible pressure. NatureScot is already issuing licences to landowners to kill beavers, a species which is only just returning after being wiped out centuries ago: that decision it should be noted was challenged in court which found that it had failed to adequately explain why beavers should be killed, and that it should have reviewed and revoked licenses it issued without sufficient justification. We are repeatedly told by shooting interests that there are now ‘too many birds of prey’ (see ‘Shifting baselines, pheasants, and birds of prey’ for more information on that). Fishing industry lobbyists have managed to have Cormorants rebranded as ‘predators’ (Natural England has issued licences to kill thousands of them, and as we reported the Food and Agriculture Organisation recently recommended "coordinated and systematic killing of Cormorants across Europe").
In Scotland itself, Conservative MSP Douglas Ross and Fergus Ewing joined forces in Holyrood this week to call for licences to kill gulls, telling the SNP government that residents are “at the end of their tether” and that “serious injury or fatality could arise from massive gulls swopping [sic] down on elderly and infants”. How long before gulls - most species of which are in serious long-term decline and largely surviving on the rubbish we throw down in our streets - are on the General Licence too?
The lack of empathy towards wildlife is widespread and should concern us all. There is now an unrealistic expectation among some humans that they should be able to wander around towns and parks totally stripped of ‘threatening’ wildlife. It is utterly wrong, and it is ridiculous to ‘manage’ the countryside in a similar way.
Landowners have already wiped out vast tranches of the biodiversity that used to occupy the UK. They must not be licensed to reverse the recovery of Ravens either on farms or on shooting estates.
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Humans are the biggest pest. The moves by NatureScot are deplorable
I have a very hard time believing that a raven is capable of killing a healthy, fully grown sheep or even a healthy lamb! Even so, there is ALWAYS another way that is far more humane to "deal" with wild animals than by "culling" (aka shooting and murdering) them! Using humane bird deterrents for example are just one such ethical alternative example that could be easily tried instead or leaving some land for the ravens to go to and get food away from the sheep is another. I wonder if the "farmers" have tried any deterrents or whether they have just gone straight to demanding to kill first before trying anything else?!! Humans are just 1 mere species on this planet that is meant to be shared with thousands of others! We are meant to share this planet, NOT own it and think we can do whatever we want to other species who have been here way longer than we have!!