Right folks, thought I’d start my first thread with a bit of a sore subject up here in Scotland. Can’t see any pervious threads in the history, so forgive me if I’m covering old ground.
I’ve just met up with a friend of mine who was heavily involved in the initial work in relation to the re-introduction of the European
Beaver in Argyllshire. This project was many years in the planning and at a several million pounds, quite heavy on the tax payers pocket. The whole project was temporally put on hold last year, even though there was strong arguments for and against the re-introduction. My argument is that personally I believe it to be a waste of time any precious money. As an old romantic, It would be fantastic to have species that have previously wiped out by man re-introduced, but should we not protect the rare species we already have and put money and recourses into that?
The public only see a small amount of the actual wildlife crime that goes on in the UK. I’m unfortunate enough to be extremely busy trying to catch the perpetrators, and I’m only just scratching the surface. One example of this is on one of my gaming estates alone, six pairs of hen harriers mysteriously disappeared last year, and that doesn’t include several buzzards that have turned up poisoned on this same estate. I have five further estates in my area with similar problems, which is a lot for one cop.
We now have a chap up north who wishes to re-introduce the European wolf. This would entail putting an extremely large fence over a vast area to keep them in. So that would upset walkers and climbers such as myself, and it would only take one escapee and something or someone killed, and off we go again blasting them.
Some species have been re-introduced successfully such as the white tailed sea eagle, which is doing reasonably well. Unfortunately (tongue in cheek) some of my fellow WCO’s and I have to go work up on the Isle of Mull every year for a few weeks to help protect these birds eggs from egg thieves, over zealous photographers ( see nest photos thread), and also some of these birds are still poisoned or shot once they reach the main land. The operation is time intensive and quite expensive to run.
My friend and I have already drunk over half a bottle of Glengoyne, and there’s another one waiting, so no doubt the arguments will continue long into the night resulting in us both probably passing out
.
So lets have your opinions on re-introduction of species for and against and see who win’s the argument. There’s a bottle resting on it!!!!
Phil