SAVING A NATIVE SPECIES

The pine marten, one of Britain’s rarest native mammals, is slowly making a comeback, thanks in part, to the largest carnivore recovery programme of its kind.

In autumn 2015, The Vincent Wildlife Trust, with support from other key conservation organisations, began a pilot project to bring pine martens from Scotland, where they are thriving, to mid-Wales. With the help of local volunteers, the martens are monitored and tracked daily. Similar plans are on the cards for England. This elusive relative of the weasel, polecat and otter once thrived in Britain’s woodlands. After a dramatic decline during the 19th and early 20th century, the pine marten has made a successful comeback in Scotland, but in England and Wales it has shown no such sign of recovery and the outcome looked bleak. Now there is a chance that it can be brought back from the brink. Find out the latest: www.pine-martenrecovery-project.org.uk.

“It is so heartening to know that these animals are back in their former haunts once more” Iolo Williams, Naturalist and TV Presenter Contact information - www.vwt.org.uk, enquiries@vwt.org.uk, 01531 636441 investment had mostly saved the remaining estates. Many ‘keeper’ positions were retained after the second war, as estates remained viable. Game and wildlife conservation benefited and the gamekeeper profession, if it didn’t show growth, at least remained static.

Inheritance tax laws introduced decades later saw the fragmentation of many surviving estates on a scale not seen since the Great War. However those land-holding aristocrats that remained managed to keep their holdings together and led the way in what became a real game-shooting renaissance in the 1960s and 1970s. A new breed of landowners joined them too. Successful entrepreneurs turned sporting enthusiasts, or ‘new money’ in old parlance, have paradoxically used the fickle taxation laws to buy up vast, often unproductive acreages and give a much-needed cash injection to the rural economy. From baronet to duke, oilman to manufacturing mogul, the nation’s diversely owned shooting estates are thriving thanks to hardworking keepers and a modernisation in management practices.

The investment in currency, belief, sweat and tears has benefited the economy and wildlife of our country massively. Indeed shooting as a whole injects £2 billion into the UK economy, and the sport provides the equivalent of 74,000 jobs. Gamekeepers truly are the custodians of our countryside. Without them I am certain we would not have the biodiversity of wildlife that we currently enjoy today.

Nowhere is this more so than on our heather moorlands. A dedicated work ethic and due diligence to the law by our nation’s hill keepers, assisted by modern advances in parasite control, has at last shown the way to avoid the traditional peaks and troughs of our grouse population’s abundance and paucity. This has been a long time coming. Predictable grouse shooting forecasts may well become the norm. Of course Mother Nature never shows her hand and unseasonal weather conditions can still devastate wild game bird broods, but modern-day grouse shooting is paying its way and providing a safe haven for many other species that would surely be lost without it. That said, there is no doubt that exciting times are ahead for our nation’s hill keepers.

Scotland has always been a mecca for the sportsman, be that a stalker, fisher or game shooter. Fieldsports enthusiasts are a large slice of the tourism revenue generated north of the border, but the next and possibly final break up of the last remaining estates in Scotland may well be down to the current ruling political elite at Holyrood. The last General Election saw an SNP landslide in Scotland at the expense of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties north of the border.

I have no doubt the political momentum was carried over from the SNP’s previous leader, Alex Salmond, and his muchpublicised crusade for Scottish independence.

I’ve never had much faith in politicos myself, but the SNP’s trouncing of both Labour and the Liberals made me particularly uneasy about Scotland’s immediate future

– especially in regard to its sporting estates, the resident custodians’ livelihoods, and visiting sportsmen who support the game and wildlife therein.

As far as the rural populace goes, it looks like the Scottish electorate has been sold some fishy promises from the likes of Salmond and his replacement Nicola Sturgeon. I’m all for credible patriots, national pride and democracy, but common sense must prevail.

Neither Salmond nor Sturgeon is a Bruce or a Wallace. British democracy may be built on fundamentally fair foundations, but the first-past-the-post system we use to populate

Westminster every five years certainly has its quirks, and last time around in 2015, it gave a disproportionately large helping hand to the SNP. However, we voted to keep it, or rather, the relatively small number who bothered to vote in the AV referendum did. The SNP wants to ban or limit traditional country pursuits, stealing the Highlands and islands from the landowning aristocracy – feudal lairds, new money or long-standing ones. The loss of the last great estates won’t be the only casualty of this war – the remote rural populace that these estates support and the game and wildlife therein will be the real losers.