Harnessing Tension

Rob Yorke

Rob Yorke is a commentator who seeks to present a balanced view of a wider environmental debate.

He has a keen interest in the Understanding Ppredation project.  He attended the Project review Seminar in Edinburgh, and will be attending the final seminar at Battleby on 3rd May.

His blog post on 5th April has Harnessing Tension as its title, and it provides some background to the article 'Ending the Conflict' that was published in the April edition of The Field.  The article covers a range of issues covered by Understanding predation and 'explains why we must work together'.  There is a direct reference to the project in the middle column on the third page.

Common Ravens - addition to General Licence

Photo: Danny Bisset

Readers of this blog may be interested in the petition that was started by Danny Bisset to have Ravens included on the General Licence.  At the time of adding this post, the petition has received 1,513 supporters.

Although I have not looked at this in detail, it appears that farmers are by far the biggest sector represented by the supporters.

For more information about the General Licences, see the SNH website.

Environmental impacts of driven grouse shooting

Photo: Patrick Laurie

IBIS, the international journal of avian science, has published a paper on the environmental impacts of driven grouse shooting.  The lead author is Pat Thompson, from the RSPB, and he is supported by other authors from the RSPB; Martin Harper has introduced the paper in his blog post: "A view from the hills: reaction to new paper published on the environmental impacts of driven grouse shooting".

In many ways, the Understanding Predation project has addressed many of the issues and concerns highlighted in the report.  Looking at it today, it is obvious that this report would be expected to include a reference to the project.  The paper has extensive reference to predation, and it is disappointing that there is no reference.  I suspect that a reason for this is the gestation time for reports of this nature, and the project report would not have been published when this paper was finalised.  However, a reference to what was coming would have been welcome.  After all the toil and strife to produce the report, reference to the work at every opportunity will be welcome!

This paper will be of general interest to the followers of this blog, but Martin Harper's post also refers to the Curlew recovery programme that the RSPB is leading.  

The final act of the Understanding Predation project will be a seminar on 3 May, and we will be looking to identify and consider opportunities for collective, adaptive action to apply the principles established by the project.  As Curlew is one of the six focal species covered by the project report, and identified as being in serious decline, the species recovery programme will be of relevance to the discussions.

Hen Harrier Action Plan launched in England

Although it only covers England, this Joint Action Plan that has been published by Defra may be of interest to those following the Understanding Predation project.

I have placed links to key documents and other information on the Heather Trust's blog.

It is interesting to note that the Joint Action Plan contains details of the most recent full survey of the UK population of Hen harriers, which was carried out in 2010 .  This found 633 territorial pairs in the UK, and estimated 505 pairs in Scotland; 57 in Wales and 12 in England.

I do not suggest that these figures are an excuse for a sense of complacency in Scotland, but they do serve to indicate that there is scope to increase the population in England.

A Response to Questions

I promised Alan Tilmouth a more substantive reply to the questions he posed before Christmas in response to the opening Blog post.  I then got laid low by a plague that has kept me out of the picture through January. However, signs of life are returning, and with apologies for the delay, I am now pleased to provide more detail in response to the questions he posed.

Q1. Who will make up the Steering Group and what are their qualifications and experience of interpreting scientific papers? 1.  I have published details of the Steering and Research Groups on the Project’s webpage on the Moorland Forum website. There is no shortage of scientific clout within these groups.

Q2. You state "People with an interest in the impact of predation on wading and wild game birds will be encouraged to provide their views and comments throughout the project". Does 'people' include interested individuals only within Scotland, only from members of forum membership organisations or the wider general public? 2.  As I mentioned in the initial response, I will be happy to receive comments from anyone by any means. The initial workshops are being set up with the member organisations of Scotland’s Moorland Forum as a means of achieving cross-sector input. An addition is SongBird Survival, as this organisation responded to the Questionnaire that was circulated last year. The three Project Review Seminars that will be held in October and/or November this year will be open to all, and I will circulate details on this Blog, in due course.

Q3. You write "The reported decline of wading birds is a cause of great concern, and this project will provide a better and shared understanding of the role that predation has had in this decline." This seems to suggest that you have pre-determined that predation has played a role in the decline, is this the case?

3.  The project will consider all the available data in an objective manner – there is no presumption about the impact of any particular issue and the report from the project will be based on evidence. The information to be considered will include published data, unpublished (grey) literature and the local knowledge collected during the workshops. To consider the status of wading bird populations, predation must be considered as a potential factor, but this will be considered alongside all other potential factors.

Q4. When you talk about "investigating the often-controversial disparity between scientific knowledge and local knowledge arising from the direct observations of local people on the ground." How do you propose to weight these in terms of how they influence the study? How will the study recognise the depth and value of scientific research vs anecdotal observation?4.  The weighting of scientific evidence against local knowledge was identified as an issue in the Project Proposal, which has now been adopted as the Project Plan. The best way to answer the concerns that have been raised is to quote from paragraphs 1.4 & 1.5 of this Project Proposal. These quotes address the benefits of including local stakeholder input and then the way that the project will deal with the different information:

“…decision-making processes based only on scientific knowledge (regardless of the quality of such research) may be rejected by local stakeholders, if regarded as ignorant of local conditions”.

“Despite the widespread acceptance of multi-stakeholder knowledge bases, concerns may be expressed from scientists and government organisations regarding the integration of local knowledge in the management of natural resources (Wynne, 1992; Innes and Booher, 2010). These may be linked to issues of power-sharing between state and non-state actors (Taylor et al., 2012) or to the perception that local knowledge may be “insufficiently objective and insufficiently rigorous in terms of methods and documentation” (Failing et al., 2007), thereby somehow lacking in scientific merit (Close & Hall, 2006). This project will therefore integrate local ecological knowledge using peer-reviewed methodologies recognised as robust for the inclusion of local ecological knowledge.”


I hope that addressing these questions in more detail will answer Alan Tilmouth’s concerns but also be helpful for others. This is important work and time and effort has gone into developing a process that will address concerns, provide a balanced approach to the issues and hopefully add value to the debate. We cannot expect to answer all the questions but with the open engagement of people who have opinions and/or concerns about the topics we will be addressing, I hope that we can move the debate forward.

More comment, please.

BBC Shared Planet discussion - 'It's all about people'

Although broadcast last October, I recommend this 30 minute programme.  Monty Don interviews Dr Juliette Young (CEH and Understanding Predation project), Simon Lester (Langholm Moor Demonstration Project) and Professor Bill Sutherland (University of Cambridge).

Although badged as addressing Hen harrier issues, the discussion covers the value of what we are referring to as local knowledge in this project (anecdotal evidence in the interviews) alongside scientific evidence.  Bill Sutherland is particularly interesting on this around minute 20 in the interview.

All this is very relevant to the concept behind Understanding Predation.