Raptors not farmers are to blame

Dear Editor

I write to you on a subject raised in Keith Graham’s Country View column (Observer, July 27, 2018) in which he bemoans the demise of ground nesting birds on farmland.

Your correspondent trots out the same old tired excuses that this is largely down to us,the farming community, for our use of chemicals and changed farming practices.

Once again an opportunity has been missed to give an accurate ‘country view’ in favour of using the usual claptrap.

The demise of the said bird life is universal in the country even on farms such as where I live and work and we use no chemicals and have not changed any farming practices in the last 25/30 years.

How would your correspondent and others of his ilk explain that away ?

Easier to take the blinkered well travelled path of ‘blame the farmers’ than face up to the realities that have been imposed by those ‘in the know’ – RSPB, SNH and the like – who have deemed it desirable or necessary to place protection orders on all raptors (feathered or otherwise).

Where a sighting of badgers was once a rare occurrence it can now be a daily sighting if you desire, and as for the wealth of winged raptors then there is little wonder to those of us who have a daily country view as to why the there is a dearth of ground nesting birds.

It would seem to this simple me that if you protect all the raptors – and they are not noted for their vegan tendencies – then you will have signalled the death of the species on which they prey.

Iain Wragg Crianlarich