... but there we were suddenly thrust into the bright lights ... a never ending sea of tables full of diners ... a noise level to match any crowded bar and with temperatures long forgotten about ...
... it was more Las Vagas than Village Pub ...
Cat Barlow started telling us about the project ... and in impressively confident style ...
With £1.3 million of Lottery funding and some ( luckily already banked ) EU cash this is a big deal ... it has some impressive backing from worthy bodies like the RSPB , Scottish Natural Heritage and the Forestry Commission Scotland. And also from some rather worrying bodies like the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust ( where the use of the word 'Conservation ' has a rather different meaning ! ).
There are also some very impressive people associated with the project - Roy Dennis as we all know has been at the forefront of reintroduction schemes of White-tailed Eagles and more ...
... I was interested to see Stephen Murphy's name up there ... I had great respect for him when he came to the latter stages of some Hen Harrier nest sites that we had been wardening in order to fit satellite transmitters ... but then there was all the trouble about withheld data in association with Natural England and so I think ... Hmmm ...
Duncan Orr-Ewing is in there too ... he was good at the Hen Harrier Day in central Scotland.
We were shown several charts and one was a bar chart representing the perceived threats to the introduced Golden Eagles ... there was brief mention by Cat of one of the mid-height bars but one bar stood out above all the others - that of PERSECUTION - and that got no mention at all.
We were shown a map of the area where birds would be introduced ...
... anyone who has followed reports of illegal raptor persecution ( notably on RPUK which comes top of my blog list ) will be very familiar with those two hot spots for raptor persecution - the Lowther |Hills and the Lammermuir Hills ... the proposed site for the Golden Eagle releases lies right between these two Black Holes ...
... so how much of a good idea is this while illegal killing of many species of raptor including Golden Eagles continues unabated ?
Certainly Raptor Persecution UK has serious reservations about the project for this very reason and Dr Ruth Tingay the highly respected academic and raptor fieldworker is the voice of RPUK.
It would be wonderful to see Golden Eagles thriving in the south of Scotland and wonderful also if this area were to become a place known for its wildlife and be valued for that as a tourist destination.
Cat Barlow was a redoubtable and impressive speaker but is that confident dismissal of the threats that these young Golden Eagles will face one that is well placed ?
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