Meanderings of the week

Stock Take, 2020-2025

In the next few days (or weeks, depending on my state of botheration) I shall begin adding more photos to the blog. I've set aside over a thousand to upload here. Taken over the last five years, they represent a visual record of my weekend wanderings. Looking back through, it strikes me just how lucky I am to live here. A bone of contention is the distance we are from the sea, but home is the Chilterns escarpment, a traditionally farmed landscape, nature reserves, SSSIs and old villages between the watercourses of the Thame and Great Ouse. It could be worse.  

*This is an old article of mine. It remained unpublished, because my two contacts in the sporting press wouldn't touch it with a bargepole - not because it was badly written, but because of its critical tone. Of course, the controversies were a matter of public record and relatively easy for a layman to unearth, but this was back in 2018, before Country Squire, when the rural press was seeking to build bridges with its enemies. It is the story of the colonisation of the Orkney Islands by Mustela Erminea, the stoat. As you'll see, it's a classic case of how government wastes millions through quangos and their partners - partners who have a vested interest in failing to resolve the problem. I should explain that I used to have a croft in Orkney, hence my interest in a situation many miles from home. As of November 2025, the estimated cost of the stoats' eradication is £15,668,279.71. 

Invasive Native Predators

We're all familiar with the threat posed to British wildlife by non-native species – think Japanese Knot weed, American Mink, Monk Parakeet and Signal Crayfish. However, a lesser-known problem is posed by certain species which, although native to and common in the UK, are not resident in some areas.
Up in Northern Scotland, the Orkney Islands have recently been colonised by that arch-villain of land managers, the stoat. Orkney's situation is unusual in that a comparative lack of predators call the islands their home; there is usually just one of the mustelidae here - the otter, and the islands are devoid of foxes. Generative topographical features such as widespread wetland and moorland, a traditionally farmed landscape prevalent in permanent pasture and unimproved, rough grassland have enabled many avian species to flourish. Against the national trend, Orkney has maintained a position as a particular stronghold of ground-nesting species. By virtue of their location, the islands are also a crucially important 'pit stop' for migratory birds, with many rare and threatened species visiting the islands' abundant and diverse habitat.
Something had to spoil the party, and 2010 the stoats' arrival was reported. It is thought that they were transferred from the Scottish mainland within straw bales or farm equipment. Despite a large population of expendable rabbits, the islands' bird life, and additionally the Orkney vole – a unique subspecies - was now under serious threat from what is strangely an invasive, but technically native, predator.

The authorities were depressingly slow to react. It was not until 2014 that Scottish Natural Heritage acknowledged the problem, and commissioned a report from Aberdeen University to assess the impact of stoats upon Orkney's native wildlife. Due process aside, the fact is that the potential dangers for native wildlife were obvious – as was the solution. Yet it was to be six years before furtive efforts to remove the stoat commenced, when in 2016 SNH began a pilot trapping programme. Staffed by volunteers, the trial was found to be inadequate in scale - inevitably, stoats had colonised.
Subsequently, SNH established a partnership with RSPB Scotland, having recently cooperated in undertaking a large cull of hedgehogs from North Uist and eradication of rats from the Shiant Isles. Their five-year venture, entitled the 'Orkney Native Wildlife Project', successfully bid for funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the EU's 'Life Fund' in order to eradicate the stoat.

RSPB Scotland have a substantial presence in Orkney, their reserves covering some 10,000 acres across several islands - to put this into perspective, they are the islands' largest landowner, with holdings extending to c10% of the islands' total area. Despite this dominance, Orkney Islands Council were invited to join the partnership in 2018, specifically to “facilitate land access and maintain public relations with landowners.” Their entry into the partnership is conspicuous, as the RSPB has a difficult relationship with the Orkney farming community. The clash of cultures is highlighted in Ian Mitchell's 2004 memoir 'Isles of the North', wherein the author quotes one of the operational objectives of the RSPB Hoy Nature Reserve management plan:

'Patrol the reserve and the whole of the SSSI regularly. Document any breaches of SSSI PDOs (potentially damaging operations) and inform SNH.'

Mitchell goes on to explain that as the Hoy SSSI is considerably larger than the RSPB reserve itself, this objective therefore officially instructs staff to check neighbouring landowners' ground in order to ascertain whether any rules imposed by SNH have been broken.
It is fair to analogise that in Orkney, RSPB Scotland is seen as a particularly invasive non-native species. Many Orcadians naturally reject organisations such as the RSPB as part of a wider conscious distancing of themselves from certain exports of the Scottish mainland. The complexities of cultural differences being what they are, a 'big-money' entity from down south purchasing large tracts of land and assuming environmental supremacy over an overwhelmingly rural population unsurprisingly continues to be met with great suspicion. In any case, RSPB Scotland's record in Orkney is far from a resounding success. Their preponderance for credit-taking where none is due is not well-known enough, nor as is the case with their significant conservation failures. On Egilsay between 1997-2006, RSPB Scotland presided over a total loss of Corncrake on their reserve, a feat matched on Copinsay, and Coll in the Western Isles - where neighbouring landowners alleged that staff monitoring activities had coincided with dwindling numbers.

In 2017, eradication efforts got serious. RSPB Scotland employed pest control contractors to deliver the grandiosely titled ‘Orkney Mainland Predator Invasion Biosecurity Project' in order to stop stoats spreading to the Outer Isles. Though ONWP state that stoats are apparently capable of swimming up to two miles at sea, happily no sightings have been verified on the Outer Isles, signifying that the stoats are contained for now. Running concurrently with the Outer Isles project, ONWP undertook a trapping trial on the mainland (the colloquial term for the largest island of the archipelago) resulting in the capture of 42 stoats, as reported by The Orcadian newspaper the following year:

"In December 2017, active lethal humane traps were positioned at three trial sites west of Kirkwall. In order to determine their effectiveness, a range of trap types and trap housings and a range of habitats were tested." Stoat density across the three sites at that time was estimated at 2-4 per km2. ONWP later clarified: "42 stoats were caught in total over two trapping periods, the spring/summer (13 stoats) and in the autumn (29 stoats)." OIC stated in 2018 that "During the full eradication programme traps will be set every 250m across the Orkney mainland and linked isles."

Seemingly, it was finally clear to officialdom that the stoats' presence was going to damage the local wildlife, and that trapping was the most viable method of control (a fact that has been proven by land managers all over the UK for more than a century.) In February 2019, ONWP had 10,260 wooden housings constructed, with 75% holding two DOC200 traps, and began their distribution. It's a familiar tale: the academic approach taken by governmental departments, their partners and others, consistently resulting in long delays - during which time, of course, the situation is ever worsening. In the case of eradicating stoats from Orkney, considering that trapping strategies are universally accepted methods of eradication (and historically implemented by the RSPB themselves), a delay of nine years seems particularly inadequate.
To date, ONWP (a five-year project employing less than 30 staff, with a mere 10 in trapping roles) has received a staggering £3,064,600 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and a further £3m from the EU's 'Life Fund.' Suggestions are that funding will eventually total £7.3m.
If the RSPB were to have foot the bill themselves, they may have risked enforced self-funding of future projects – yet it is difficult to accept that ONWP's operations can possibly cost so much money. Whatever may be the case, Orkney's uniquely rich biodiversity has suffered for eight years as a result of the route taken by the partnership in applying for outside funds.

As a rather incredible footnote, in May of last year Police Scotland were informed by the Scottish Gamekeeper's Association that ONWP's traps were illegal, due to the internal dimensions of the inner baffle and excluder aperture (allegedly being in contravention of the 2018 Spring Traps Approval (Scotland) Amendment Order.) This oversight would allow non-target species to enter the trap and be killed – an illegal act which the RSPB continually accuses gamekeepers of. In the event, RSPB issued vehement denials while ONWP immediately advertised three positions for workshop staff - undoubtedly to modify traps to the current legal specifications. It remains to be seen whether convictions for wildlife crime(s) will be forthcoming – notably, ONWP publicly disclosed that rats (a non-target species) were caught during the initial trial periods in which the offending traps were used.
The latest of ONWP's woes is that Orkney farmers have begun to refuse them access to their land. It is believed that this is a reaction against their partner SNH's ineffective management of culls of resident greylag geese, which numbered 65,534 as of 2018 - though some (myself included) are unlikely to ever condone ONWP's apparently profligate ineptitude by allowing access to our ground. This rare occurrence, of landowners taking direct action against the activities of a remote government department in alliance with a pressure group, leads us to the question of why RSPB Scotland appears to be SNH's default partner in circumstances such as these? Should Scottish land managers not expect a representative voice at government level? The inevitable question is this - if SNH had entered into partnership with a gamekeeping organisation, would the eradication job now have been complete and at a fraction of the cost to the taxpayer?

*All statistical information and chronological content within is public record.

Below: we used to live at Calvert, next to a wood. As such, the buddleia would attract better than the usual run of the mill leipidoptera. And a sparrowhawk. I think these were the first photos I took of butterflies & moths.