Tim Bonner: Time for action, not excuses, on predator control

Another study showing the devastating ecological impact of the withdrawal of legal predator control should not really be necessary given the reams of already published evidence. Unfortunately, however, there remain some institutional landowners who are desperate to ignore such research so a new GWCT study revisiting a predator control experiment from the early 2000s in North Northumberland is an important addition.

During the original experiment, foxes and crows were controlled and ground-nesting birds experienced a dramatic improvement in breeding success. Populations of iconic moorland species such as curlew, lapwing, golden plover, and red grouse all saw significant increases. However, within just a decade of stopping predator management, the situation was completely reversed. Fox numbers rose by 78%, and Carrion Crows by 127%. Meanwhile black grouse and grey partridge became locally extinct. Red grouse numbers dropped by 71%, golden plover by 81%, snipe by 76%, curlew by 24%, and lapwing by 58%. Importantly, the habitat was largely unchanged. One part of the study measured the height of dominant vegetation and there was no significant difference at the start and end of the period suggesting that the cessation of predator control was the key driver in bird declines.

These findings are not isolated to this site. They reflect broader national trends across the UK recorded in study after study. In many areas, traditional predator management practices have been reduced or abandoned, and with few apex predators left in the ecosystem, generalist predator populations have surged. This imbalance is placing enormous pressure on already vulnerable bird species, many of which are of high conservation concern.

With such unusually clear evidence questions start to arise about the ethics of not carrying out fox and corvid control. In Scotland, for instance, there is a legal responsibility for landowners to cull deer to protect the environment as well as the health of deer. The Scottish Government is increasingly keen to use powers to carry out culls and charge landowners who have not carried out their responsibilities.

Logically, it should surely be considering whether landowners should have similar legal responsibilities to manage foxes and crows. In the absence of a legal framework, however, there comes an ethical question for all landowners and possibly a regulatory one for charities that operate under objects that require them to conserve the environment.

It is no secret that institutional landowners like the RSPB, Wildlife Trusts and the National Trust are not at all keen to admit to any predator control, if indeed they carry it out at all. Often, they will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having to kill predators, such as building miles of super secure, electrified fencing to exclude foxes.

This obviously does nothing to protect vulnerable species from avian predators, however, and also creates a ghetto environment rather than contributing to landscape scale management of predator species.

The time has surely come for all organisations that promote themselves as guardians of the environment to accept their responsibility both to carry out predator control and, if challenged, to deploy the ample evidence to justify their activity. The RSPB says that it sees “the killing or removal of vertebrates as a matter of last resort that should be carefully justified on a case‐by‐case basis, rather than as a uniformly acceptable everyday management tool”.

On the basis of the available evidence that policy runs contrary to its stated aim to promote the conservation of biological diversity and the natural environment. In fact, on the basis of this new study its refusal to carry out holistic predator control means it is knowingly overseeing the reduction of biological diversity, not its conservation.

The time has come when calling for more research or blaming other factors for species decline is no longer sustainable. It is time for action, not excuses.