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Open country this week goes to Scotland to ask what on the surface seems a simple question, what value do we put on the countryside? The answer is of course - it depends who you are. If you are a gamekeeper and need to conserve Red Grouse on a shooting estate in Scotland then the value is measured ultimately in money. If the grouse chicks are eaten by predators then there will be no shooting and the estate will lose revenue.

If you are a member of the Scottish Wildlife Trust whose main attraction is a Peregrine Falcon and her week old chicks then preserving their habitat becomes the most important thing in your life. If you are a wildlife policeman exposing the criminals who steal birds in their thousands because they can be sold on for a few pounds each, then the value attached to nature can be glaringly obvious.

Richard Uridge meets Wildlife Trust member Stephen Kane at the falls of Clyde in the village of New Lanark. Stephen takes Richard up to the Gorge just beyond the falls to show him the pride of the reserve, a pair of breeding Peregrine Falcons and their two chicks. He tells Richard how the birds can attract over four hundred visitors in one week-end and how the birds have become so used to people he has to discourage them from becoming too trusting. Stephen sleeps in a Caravan on the site to keep a twenty four hour watch over the birds to protect them from egg snatchers.


P.C. Phillip Briggs is part of the Strathclyde Wildlife Liaison Team. In his work he comes across crimes ranging from the poisoning or even shooting of birds of prey by landowners and gamekeepers to the stealing of song birds in their thousands by organised gangs. Phillip is also a falconer who uses his interest in birds of prey in the Airbourne initiative. Aimed at young offenders the Airbourne initiative uses nature as a way of teaching boys from inner cities about the undiscovered world around them. Phillip hopes by taking them out of their usual environment and getting them interested in the countryside that some boys may begin to re-assess their life and turn away from crime. He says the results have been positive and it can make a real difference to some.

Alex Hogg is a gamekeeper on an estate just outside Peebles on the Scottish borders. Alex looks after the Grouse moor on seven thousand acres of rolling hills. It鈥檚 his responsibility to keep the moor clear of predators including foxes. He says he shoots one hundred foxes a year and if he didn鈥檛 they would wreak havoc on the Red Grouse population particularly at breeding time when the chicks are especially vulnerable. Alex claims by keeping the foxes under control he can protect other species of birds like curlew and lapwing which otherwise would be devastated. Richard asks him whether any pressure is put on gamekeepers to kill birds of prey? Alex says that frustration can lead some people to kill birds but that it is the few bad apples in the gamekeeping fraternity that do it and that negotiations are underway to see if all sides in the raptor dispute can come to agreement.


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