Ill Fares the Land

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade,
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.”

The Deserted Village – Oliver Goldsmith

Foreword

An earlier version of this paper was first presented for the Smithsonian Institution at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC in March 1982, entitled The Balmorlity Epoch: The rise and fall of the Great Victorian Sporting Tradition in the Highlands of Scotland, and also as part of the Royal Society for The Protection of Birds Centenary celebrations at the McEwan Hall, Edinburgh, in September 1989. An extract of the present paper was published in the Field magazine Vol 282 Number 7080 June 1994 under the title Securing a Future for the Highlands. Taking the Long-Term View by HRH The Prince of Wales was also first published in the same edition.

As awareness of degradation of the Highland hills has grown, so the true historical perspective of how man has arrived at the very low levels of productivity now being experienced has assumed increasing importance. In recent years a number of initiatives by Scottish Natural Heritage, the Forestry Authority, RSPB, Scottish Wildlife Trust and others have promoted the concept of natural habitat restoration in the uplands; a process of restoring whole ecosystems which wildlife and game can recolonise to produce a far richer environment for man and wildlife together. The idea of promoting a sustainable land ethic to be adopted by land managers and owners based upon the principle of habitat restoration and built into the sporting tradition for which the Highlands of Scotland is so famous, has been a hobby-horse of mine for many years. It seems to me that the UK government’s 1994 published commitment to the Sustainability and Biodiversity Action Plans, arising from Agenda 21 of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, provides an excellent opportunity to open up the public debate on upland land use.

John Lister-Kaye
Aigas House
April 1994

Extract

P14 & P15

An extract from the Topographical, Statistical and Historical Gazetteer of Scotland for the year 1853 is a gripping insight into what was really happening on the ground: ‘Glengarry, until recently the property of the chief of the clan Macdonald…was sold in 1840 to Lord Ward for £91,000 (over £2.5 million today). It abounds in game…but, like most estates…it has also been subject to the ravages of vermin. From the lordly eagle down to the stot and weasel, those destructive denizens of wood and wild find ample room for exertion amidst the vast and unploughed recesses of the Highland glens and forests… Annoyed by the loss of game, this gentleman…engaged numerous gamekeepers…and awarding prizes of £3 to £5 to each of those who should prove the most successful… The keepers pursued the slaughter with undeviating rigour and attention. The result has been the destruction, within the last three years of above 4,000 head of vermin, and a proportional increase in the stock of game.’

The editor of the Inverness Courier of the day was struck by this report and seized the chance to air his own views on moorland management. He was accurately to predict the downfall of the grouse, although perhaps for the wrong reasons, and even more interestingly, warned of the folly of over-burning: ‘We were anxious to learn the extent…of the vermin destroyed …To such of our readers as are fond of natural history, the list will prove interesting; and it also shows how much may be done, by steady and combined efforts, for the production of game. The value of our Northern shootings would be immensely enhanced, if similar exertions were generally made, and proper care be taken that heather be burned only in rotation. The latter system will be found equally advantageous to the sheep-farmer; and if the sportsman does not get a fair chance, the grouse will, in many an extensive range of moor, entirely disappear. The following is the list of vermin destroyed at Glengarry, from Whitsunday 1837 to Whitsunday 1840; 11 Foxes; 108 Wildcats; 246 Martin Cats; 106 Polecats; 301 Stots and Weasels; 67 Badgers; 48 Otters; 78 House cats going wild; 27 White-tailed Sea-eagles; 15 Golden eagles; 18 Osprey or Fishing-eagles; 98 Blue hawks or Peregrine falcons; 7 Orange-legged falcons; 11 hobby hawks; 275 kites; commonly called Salmon-tailed Gledes; 5 Marsh-harriers or Yellow-legged hawks; 63 Goshawks; 285 Common buzzards; 371 Rough-legged buzzards; 3 Honey buzzards, 462 Kestrils or Red Hawks; 78 Merlin hawks; 83 Hen-harriers or Ring-tailed hawks; 6 Jer-falcon or Toe-feathered hawks; 9 Ash-coloured hawks or Long blue-tailed hawks; 1,431 Hooded or Carrion crows; 475 Ravens; 35 Horned owls; 71 Common fern-owls; 3 Golden owls; and 3 Magpies.’

In his 1990 Raleigh Lecture, Professor Christopher Smout, Scotland’s Historiographer Royal, demonstrated that similar exertions were, indeed, being generally made. He describes it as ‘a major modification of the natural world.’ He cites further evidence of the systematic elimination of birds of prey and mammal predators at this time.’…On the Sutherland estates of Langwell and Sandside, 295 eagles were destroyed between 1819 and 1826…and 600 polecat skins brought to the Dumfries fur market in a year in the 1830’s.’

Game book evidence is so widespread for this period that, even if some records are exaggerated by cunning skulduggery like presenting the wings, beaks and talons separately, or passing corpses to neighbouring estates for further bounty, it is clear that all estates held a fervent commitment to the extirpation of all predatory wildlife. It should not be assumed that this phenomenon was restricted to the era of increased importance of sport to the Highland economy in the 19th century. Evidence of organised persecution of wildlife exists from much earlier. In The Present State Of Husbandry In Scotland, Alexander Wright, writing in 1784, cites the precise details of one such campaign: ‘Mr Farquharson (of Invercauld) promoted a plan for destroying foxes, eagles, and other ravenous animals. A sum is raised by subscription for giving a premium for half a guinea for an eagle, the same for a fox, five shillings for a polecat and as much for a wild-cat, half a crown for a hawk, a shilling for a kite as much for a raven and six-pence for a hooded crow. These premiums would by this time have cleared the braes of Mar above a hundred stout men who can enter the lists with any American riflemen for hitting a mark.’ Because such practices were widespread right up to the 1960’s (and persist in isolated pockets today), the fact is that the history of systematic eradication of predatory wildlife in the Highlands has persisted for over 200 years.

The important conclusion Professor Smout correctly draws is that: ‘the volume of prey species in the Highlands’ – voles, mice, hares, small birds and so on…clearly no longer exist (now) at anything like the densities necessary to support such numbers of predators, presumably because of damage done to their habitat by two centuries of modern land-use.’ To anyone who works in the Highland hills this academic caution is unjustified. The evidence is stark.