BY CALUM CAMPBELL
Let’s cut straight to it. The Cairngorms National Park is shouting from the rooftops about a 30% increase in capercaillie numbers this year. They’re claiming their £12-13m Emergency Plan is working. But scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find something rather inconvenient.
Kinveachy Estate – which is part of Seafield and Strathspey estates – saw their capercaillie numbers leap from 25 to 43 this year. That’s a 72% increase. Meanwhile, the RSPB’s Abernethy estate managed just 35 birds, up from 30 – a 16% increase.
Here’s where it gets interesting. If you remove Kinveachy’s 18 extra birds from the Cairngorms total, the rest of the National Park only managed a 16% increase.
So who’s really doing the heavy lifting?
2 Very Different Approaches:
The RSPB/Cairngorms Connect Method:
- £4.36m on “woodland grazing” with Highland cattle
- £4.23m on robocutting
- £1.4m on forest bog restoration
- Diversionary feeding of pine martens (still unproven)
- Zero tolerance on deer – shooting them 24/7 with thermal scopes and soon drones
- A total spend of around £12-13m
The Kinveachy Method (Traditional):
- Legal predator control – foxes and crows are killed
- Sustainable deer management – healthy deer population maintained
- No robocutters – deer do the job naturally
- No diversionary feeding – “there’s no point helping increase the number of predators”
- Gamekeepers running the estate as they always have
The Elephant in the Room:
The NatureScot Scientific Advisory Committee reported in 2022 that the main driver of capercaillie decline was predation – primarily pine martens, but also badgers, foxes and crows. They recommended predator control as a priority.
So why has the Cairngorms National Park dumped most of their £12-13m budget into habitat work and almost nothing into predator control? Just £5,000 for lethal control of foxes and crows. That’s it.
Meanwhile, they’ve spent millions on “rewilding” projects that seem to ignore what the science actually said.
The Diversionary Feeding Question
The RSPB and their partners are pushing diversionary feeding as a success. Yet trials with 720 artificial nests showed:
- 51% of nests were still predated where diversionary feeding took place
- Pine martens took 38% of nests (268 nests)
- Badgers took 6.9% (50 nests)
When I challenged Jack Bamber (the lead researcher) about whether pine martens would kill young chicks, he admitted I had more “on the ground experience” than him. When I asked what the target number is for pine martens to be considered “recovered” and what happens when they reach it – he couldn’t answer.
What Kinveachy Proves
Kinveachy’s gamekeepers refused to participate in diversionary feeding. They continue to control predators legally. They keep their deer population at sustainable levels. They don’t use robocutters because their deer do the work.
And they’ve had a 72% increase.
The gamekeepers were under enormous pressure to join the diversionary programme but point-blank refused. Their traditional methods are delivering results that the multi-million pound “emergency plan” can’t match.
The Public Deserves to Know
The RSPB and Cairngorms National Park are claiming all the credit for this year’s increase. But the figures tell a different story. The traditional estates are doing the heavy lifting while the conservation organisations spend millions on habitat work that the science says isn’t the main issue.
The Kinveachy Factor – the gamekeepers wanted me to run this story in May, but I said no. Better to wait for the full lek count figures, then do my own twist on it. The Kinveachy boys wouldn’t want to upset their neighbours. I have no such qualms.
The capercaillie aren’t safe yet. With predators increasing – pine martens, badgers, goshawks, and now wildcats – we need a steady rise from all quarters. But the traditional way still works. Full credit to the gamekeepers who are having to work against the tide of increasing protected predator numbers.
The question is: will the conservation establishment finally admit that traditional estate management might just know what it’s doing?
Links:
- Capercaillie Lek Count Results
- Cairngorms Capercaillie Emergency Plan
- NatureScot Scientific Report
- Diversionary Feeding Study
Calum Campbell is a commentator on rural and environmental issues in Scotland.