The black plague sweeping our waters

[Guest David Johnson]

Originally posted by Ferret1959:

Raptors? What raptors in the UK are big enough to handle a cormarant????

The largest around here are Buzzards and they are as rare as rocking horse poo.

Any chance of importing a breeding pair of Bald Eagles from across the pond. You can have them back as soon as we have an established population.

 

You're right, few of the UK's native Raptors will take a cormorant. But they do seem to scare them anyway.

 

 

I'm not sure but weren't our raptors wipped out during the war 'cos they were taking messanger pigeons that were being used by the forces??

If not please tell me why we have none.

 

I don't know about the war, but Raptors in the UK have been on the decline for a number of reasons. Many have been poisoned by landowners as they were considered a threat to game species (rightly or wrongly), many have been lost through habitat loss and loss of nesting sites or prey species (as well as egg collecting). PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) have also been blamed as these have caused reproductive problems. PCBs are now banned in most western countries and so this problem is slowly in decline. The good news is that in many areas the populations of the larger Raptors is recovering. Buzzards and even Red Kites are slowly returning to many lowland areas in the UK.

 

However, many landowners still see Raptors as a threat and poisoning continues. I once spoke to a farmer who was leaving poisoned mice out for Sparrowhawks. I asked him why and he insisted he'd seen a Sparrowhawk take one of his smallest newly born lambs! This would have to be one of the worlds strongest Sparrowhawks or worlds smallest lamb (mouse sized)

 

Cheers

 

Dave

[Guest Nightwing]

You are serious?

No wonder you all have such problems with comorants.

Killing raptors here will get you fined if your are lucky, and more likely jailed for any number of months or years. But, few if anyone believe raptors are a problem, so almost no one thinks of shooting them. The result is that hawks, owl, falcons, and even eagles are relatively common sights, and huge rafts of cormorants are not.

Maybe if you left the hunters alone, and went after the raptor killers, you would see some improvement in your situation.

[davidP]

Nightwing:

Killing raptors here will get you fined if your are lucky, and more likely jailed for any number of months or years.

It is certainly illegal in the UK as practically all birds of prey are protected, but that doesn't stop it happening.

 

One of the big differences between the UK & US is that the vast majority of land in the UK is actively owned & managed - there is very little 'wild' habitat. For centuries large amounts of land has been set aside and specifically managed for hunting and shooting with minimal public access. Thus the gamekeepers could basically get away with whatever they wanted and during this time anything that could kill the quarry (ie pheasant, partridge, grouse, trout etc) was pretty ruthlessly hunted. Add to this an attitude almost verging on paranoia from (particularly sheep) farmers and you begin to see why several species have been hunted to extinction in parts of the country (ie red kite in England, osprey & peregrine falcon practically everywhere).

 

Times have changed though and attitudes amongst the general population have now moved on. Sadly however there are still a hardcore of farmers, gamekeepers & country land-owners who still operate the "kill 'em all" policy. And they're very difficult to catch because the land is private so obtaining the necessary proof is almost impossible. As an example, a few years ago a lot of money was spent to reintroduce the red kite back into England, particularly into the Chiltern Hills. I used to see them fairly regularly driving down the M40 (that's while I was driving, not the birds) between Oxford & High Wycombe. After a few months though you didn't see them any more, and I read a small article later about the fact that they'd found a couple of the birds poisoned. And this is hardly in the wilds of Britain, it's about 40 miles from London!