SGA chairman calls for stronger raven control

The Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association chairman Alex Hogg has backed calls from farmers to relax licensing conditions on controlling ravens. Recent complaints that attacks on newborn lambs in the Highlands are causing serious damage to livestock farmers’ industry were supported by the gamekeeping association’s assertion that an unprecedented number of dotterel, plover and ptarmigan nests have been destroyed by the predatory birds.

Mr Hogg commented: “Vast sums are spent every year in the uplands in the name of conservation or on grouse moors to bring high-value tourism to remote parts of the country. Unfortunately, the pictures we as gamekeepers could take of broken eggshells would not tell as dramatic a story as a mutilated newborn lamb and despite our strongest arguments, applications for licences to control ravens for wildlife reasons are never granted.”

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The rest of this article appears in 17 April issue of Shooting Times.

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