As the possessor of the richest biodiversity in the UK, Argyll will celebrate 2010′s status as Year of Biodiversity. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Scottish Natural Heritage
National Planning Award for Argyll and Bute Council
A very real coup for Argyll and Bute Council has seen it given Continue reading
Operation Easter for Mull’s Sea Eagles
This year’s Operation Easter starts on Friday (12th February). Police on Mull will announce Continue reading
Marine & Coastal Access Act a black day for marine environment
Environmental Fair 2009, Hunter’s Quay Holiday Village
Every person inspired to make their lifestyle more sustainable, Continue reading
PAW held out for Finlay Christine, honoured today for protecting Mull’s Sea Eagles from wildlife crime
New Environment Minister, Raseanna Cunningham has, at a conference today at Tulliallan Police College, presented Mull’s Wildlife Crime Officer, Finlay Christine, with the Wildlife Crime Co-ordinator of the Year Award.
The award is made by PAW Scotland – Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime. In presenting it, Ms Cunningham said: ‘Wildlife crime continues to threaten Scotland’s rare species and it is dedicated people like Mr Christine who are at the forefront of efforts to tackle it.
‘Partnership working is incredibly important and Mr Christine has worked tirelessly with other agencies to protect one of our most precious native species.
‘The Scottish Government will continue to provide the political leadership to tackle wildlife crime, and it is an issue I am particularly passionate about, but we look to those on the ground to lead the fight against this stain on our natural environment’.
Finlay Christine has been with Strathclyde Police for almost 30 years, working on the Isle of Mull since 1991. He was responsible for setting up the Mull Eagle Watch project to raise awareness of and to protect sea eagles on the island. it is a partnership bringing together Forestry Commission Scotland, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Scottish Natural Heritage, Mull & Iona Community Trust and Strathclyde Police.
As this very successful initiative of Finlay Christine’s makes clear, much of the work of Wildlife Crime Officers (WCOs), both in prevention and detection of wildlife crimes, involves working in partnership with other agencies. The existence and the duties of Police WCOs are an integral part of the fight against wildlife crime. Scotland now has around 80 WCOs and their impact is widely recognised – and measureable.
PAW Scotland itself brings together a wide range of bodies with an interest in tackling wildlife crime. Its remit covers issues like conservation, land management, shooting and law enforcement.
Today’s conference at Tulliallan Police College, where WCO Christine was deservedly honoured, was attended by police officers and other key groups including the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty Against Animals (Scottish SPCA), Scottish Raptor Study Groups, RSPB Scotland, British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), SRPBA, Advocates for Animals and Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA).
The Sea Eagle reintroduction programme on Mull has been markedly successful for the species and for the island. It is contributing strongly to the island’s rich wildlife tourism sector. The worthy winner of the Best Wildlife Website Award in the ForArgyll Awards 2008 was RSPB Mara & Breagha, a blog that also offers visitors the opportunity to watch the satellite-tracked flight paths of two young sea eagles hatched on the island.
10th Outer Hebrides Bird Report available – with some shock discoveries
Can you imagine a young lamb head-butting a Golden Eagle in a struggle for survival? And would you have thought that a young Golden Eagle would run along the ground after rabbits? Well both these incidents actually happened and both were recorded – the lamb’s head-butt at Baile Ailean and the gound chase by the young Golden Eagle on the Sollas Machair.
Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) have funded the production of the 10th Outer Hebrides Bird Report and these – and other, incidents feature in it, along with records of the islands’ resident birds and exotic visitors across all four seasons of the year.
The report charts some of the remarkable stories of migration which some species undertake to reach the Western isles in the course of their seasonal wanderings. Travellers to the islands included an arctic tern from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a woodcock from Russia, sandpipers and whooper swans from Iceland and storm petrels from County Mayo. One determined dunlin left the balmy shores of Setuba in Portugal to head for Stinky Bay (why?), Benbecula.
The report also notes the earliest ever sightings of snowy owls and the arrival of two colourful hoopoes from sub tropical climes.
Amongst the exceptional sightings was that of ‘Albert’, a 47 year old black-browed albatross, photographed by Dods Macfarlane of Ness, happily roosting in the middle of the vast gannet colony on the cliffs of Sula Sgeir. This far-travelled returning visitor from the Southern oceans caused such a stir that scores of twitchers from all over the UK headed out to the remote rock on chartered boats to log their own sighting.
Of wide interest, given the continuing standoff between crofters and natural heritage supporters over the reintroduction of the white-tailed Sea Eagle, is the detailed account in the report on this raptor’s diet. This picture had been put together from the prey contents of nests. These were shown to contain mainly the remains of seabirds – fulmars in particular, followed by mackerel, lumpsucker, dogfish, red deer, mountain hare, lamb, brown rat, raven, short-eared owl, great black backed gull, puffin, greylag goose and eider duck.
Brian Rabbitts (you couldn’t make it up), Coordinator of the Outer Hebrides Bird Group says: ‘We are delighted to see the efforts and input of so many people included in this publication which we hope will be of great interest to anyone with a general interest in the nature and wildlife of the Western Isles as well as those with a more specific interest in birds. We thank all contributors and hope people enjoy reading about the birds of the Western Isles and the very special environment we have here to support such a rich and varied bird population’.
Copies of the Outer Hebrides Bird Report are available from Brian Rabbitts (himself) at 6 Carinish, Isle of North Uist HS6 5HL. It costs £8.50 per copy, which includes postage and packaging. Please make cheques to Outer Hebrides Bird Report.
The photograph above is of a black-browed albatross – but unfortunately not of Albert – and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.
SNH case objecting to Stacain windfarm demolished by Argyll & Bute Council solicitor’s closing statement
The last week has seen a public local inquiry in Inveraray at which Scottish Natural Heritage opposed the proposed 14 turbine windfarm at Stacain, near Dalmally, in Argyll.
Argyll and Bute Council had approved the application by Wind Prospect Stacain Ltd, overturning the recommendations of its own planning officers who had been influenced by twhat has turned out to be the unsubstantiated view of Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH).
SNH claimed that the Stacain windfarm could have a devastating impact on one of the most important golden eagle territories in Scotland. However, during evidence it was revealed by an SNH expert that the Eagle pair most likely to use any part of the windfarm site are 40 years old; and as such any interruption to their breeding capabilities was long irrelevant. Additionally, what SNH was calling ‘one of the most productive pair of Eagles in Scotland’ had not in fact given birth to a chick since 1993 – some 15 years ago. This is hardly surprising, given the eagles advanced age.
Many of the audience at the inquiry, after listening to the evidence, were perplexed as to how SNH can trigger such costly public inquiries when presenting no new scientific evidence or credible expert opinion. This question was rasied in the Argyll & Bute Solicitor’s closing submission.
For Argyll has reported on this sort of situation before. It is important for SNH’s own credibility that it adopts a more discriminating stance on windfarm applications. Where, as here, it seems to have got locked in autopilot mode, objecting simply because that is what it does, it can be left looking foolish, as it did here. This cannot but damage the respect in which an institution important to Scotland is held.
What is encouraging is the growing confidence of Argyll & Bute Councillors to make their own decisions and, where these conflict with advice offered by, say, SNH or Historic Scotland, to folow their own judgment.
They saw off Historic Scotland over ‘the Rothesay windows’ case and over the demolition of the barn at Barn Brae in Inveraray. In the first case, Councillor Isobel Strong declared that preventing people from having competent windows was ‘an abuse of their human rights’. In the Inveraray case, Councillor Alison Hay said that ‘Historic Scotland have too mch power’. And in this case of the Stacain windfarm, they came to their own conclusions and overrode their own planning officers. In all three cases it would be hard, objectively to say that they made a single wrong decision.
With the Stacain windfarm inquiry, the ‘jury’ is literally still out. Scottish Government Reporter David Russell, must now weigh the importance of the submissions and make a recommendation to ministers on the matter. For Argyll will report his decision when we get it.
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Auditing the countryside: British Countryside Survey published yesterday, saving £700,000 by using GIS software
Imagine auditing the UK countryside. Where would you start? The sheer scale of the job is unimaginable – but it’s underway. The largest survey of its kind undertaken in Britain, or the first stage of it, the British Countryside Survey was published yesterday, 18th November 2008. It will be followed next year with the release of detailed results for England and Scotland. It provides vital scientific evidence for policymakers and stakeholders in sustainable land management.
Headline results for the UK as a whole indicate:
• arable land decreased by 9% between 1998 and 2007
• the number of plant species found in arable fields increased by 30%
• the area given over to broadleaved woodland increased by 7% between 1998 and 2007.
Interestingly, the government has saved £700,000 by using geographic information software (GIS) on mobile computers to produce this, the most detailed survey to date.
The savings were achieved by halving the time taken to capture the data. Surveyors from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) used Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) equipment in the field to capture location data and entered it directly into the GIS system.
John Watkins, section head at CEH, said this meant data was available within the central database on the same day as the survey was carried out. In past surveys, the CEH used paper maps and recording sheets to capture landscape features and their attributes. A team of ten digitisers then took two years to prepare the data for analysis. The process was slow and prone to error due to the number of manual transformations and edits required to link the data together.
Michael Russell, the Environment Minister, says: ‘This survey will provide us with invaluable information on how the countryside is changing and how pressures like climate change, air pollution and land use are impacting on the countryside’s natural resources. Scotland’s countryside is one of our greatest assets and I look forward to seeing the detail of the results from Scotland and gaining a clear picture of the health of our natural habitats’.
The Countryside Survey measures long-term change in the UK countryside, including the health of habitats such as grassland, soil, streams, ponds and hedgerows. The first survey was in 1978, and the most recent was completed in summer 2007. It provides long-term data on such changes, including the effects of environmental change upon these habitats.
Professor Colin Galbraith, SNH’s head of policy and advice says: ‘Scientific reports such as this provide us with key pointers to the future of our countryside. We really are very fortunate in this country to have excellent data such as this which can help all of us plan for the future. The new findings will be of great value to Scotland, to those who advise on countryside management, to non-government organisations who strive for a better environment and to public sector agencies like SNH.
‘Fields and woods, moorlands and burns are all of importance to our economy and to our well-being. This series of reports will help us look after them and I look forward to receiving the detailed Scottish report next year’.
The Countryside Survey is a joint initiative led by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and including the Scottish Government, Scottish Natural Heritage, Natural England, Northern Ireland Environment Agency and the Countryside Council for Wales among others.
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From SNH: an afternoon of Damsels and Dragons – flies, that is
Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), the body which manages the Loch Leven National Nature Reserve, is inviting people to join reserve staff for an afternoon of damsels and dragons this week.
We all know summer has arrived when blue flashes dance erratically above local ponds, weaving intricate patterns in the air. Ponds provide excellent habitat for damsel and dragonflies to develop through their fascinating life cycles. From aquatic larvae, to elegant adults these creatures live a short-lived and often frantic life where breeding is the ultimate aim. Loch Leven is a stronghold for some of our Scottish species and SNH is holding an event on Saturday 12 July from 12-4pm to celebrate them.
The reserve has various ponds that are breeding sites for a selection of species, including the common darter and the blue-tailed damselfly. SNH is inviting anyone with an interest to come along to Burleigh Sands on Saturday to take a closer look at one of these sites and to view the habits of this fascinating group of insects. Visitors can expect to see some early nymphs starting out life as fierce aquatic predators, as well as striking adults with their master aviation skills flitting overhead.
To book your place on this event contact SNH reserve staff on 01577 864439 as soon as possible. This day is open to all but children must be accompanied by an adult. Please bring your own lunch.