Counties like Norfolk and Lincolnshire boast big and often quite stunning skies. Places like the Camargue in southern France and Extremadura in Spain do so too but also something better – soaring, circling birds of prey suspended from nothing high in the air. Numbers of raptors are much higher in France, Germany and Spain than they are in the UK yet on Saturday, Songbird Survival called for Britain’s native raptors including sparrowhawks and buzzards to be killed because their numbers had risen too high. In a letter to The Times, the organisation said that uncontrolled predation by raptors had become a major cause of garden and farmland bird declines. This is not true and Songbird Survival’s claims are neither backed by accepted research nor an objective view of the health of Britain’s wildlife. The populations of sparrowhawks, buzzards, and marsh harriers and peregrine falcons for that matter, are significantly higher than they were 50 years ago. The outlawing of pesticides like DDT, crackdowns on illegal persecution, the recreation of habitats to replace those lost and, in the case of buzzards, higher numbers of rabbits, have helped these birds recover to something like their natural levels. These birds will not go on rising in number though – buzzard and sparrowhawk populations are already stabilising - and research published last week by the British Trust for Ornithology showed the sparrowhawk population had in fact fallen. The RSPB has written to The Times to put right the claims Songbird Survival has made. Only when its statements are based on science not prejudice and on modern rather than old-fashioned attitudes to wildlife, might it win the credibility it may crave. And only when our skies host the raptors they once did, can we rest in the knowledge that at last these birds are safe.
The Times letter is here