I drove round the corner, spotted what was ahead, and slammed on the brakes. A guy was stood in the road, blasting a shotgun in the air.
Pellets dinged down on my car roof. Off to my left was the glen floor. It was filled with other gunmen. They’re all firing skyward, punctuating the air with shotgun pellets.
Fat, daft grouse were being scattered from the undergrowth by unseen agents.
Unawares of the mechanised death that awaited them, the birds beat themselves frantically forwards on stubby wings until they entered the kill zone.
The guy in front of me on the road glanced down briefly to check when I stopped my car. Then he raised his gunsights and went back to the task at hand.
Guns blast. Birds tumble.
What – and I’m asking you this directly my dear reader – the hell was all that aboot?
So much of our local area is turned over to shooting grouse that we have to take our share of responsibility for it continuing to happen.
Grouse are bred to be shot. Much wildlife that actually exists in these grouse areas is killed illegally, likely due to its interference with the shooting ‘industry’.
We should also really be asking what sort of weirdo such a mad event attracts.
Who would be so vain, and so bullying and callous, that they would want an entire glen’s ecosystem converted into a monoculture for their amusement?
Who’d want thousands of birds bred in captivity purely to be shot for a laugh? And would then stand in the middle of a public road to do it?
Who is attracted to such landscapes? And such weird pursuits?
Well, Russian billionaires, for one.
Russian bigwig’s got his mitts over our bit
The Courier and others ran the story that Vladimir Lisin, the Moscow-based billionaire, may face sanctions that impact on his multi-million pound Perthshire estate.
Lisin loves shooting. He is president of the International Sport Shooting Federation.
He built a massive shooting range in Russia, which was selected to host the 2022 World Shooting Championships. This guy basically lives in a haze of barrel smoke.
And he owns a fat chunk of bonniest Courier country.
As the old Soviet Union collapsed, various men carved up the state-owned assets and amassed vast fortunes. Many stuck it into Swiss accounts. Others bought up Scottish land.
Wealth developed by the workers in the Soviet Union, industry amassed through honest hard darg by women and men across the many states in the east, was pocketed by a few and funelled off into the glens. We allowed all this, and allow it still.
Lisin is one such guy. Andy Wightman, former MSP and land rights campaigner says he is aware of at least four “big Russians”, three who are oligarchs, that own tracts of our countryside.
It really is a shame for modern Scotland to allow our most beautiful areas to be used as wealth sinks. It is doubly a shame that we allow them to turn those areas into grouse wastelands for the amusement of a very few.
The treble shame comes from the fact that we PAY THEM TO DO IT.
Lisin has been paid hundreds of thousands of pounds of government money over three years to help out at his estate.
Mental.
But it is not the only thing leaking out of Russia and poisoning the glens.
Propaganda is scourge of the glens – not grouse
We have heard much about Russian disinformation since the invasion of Ukraine began. Russians and sympathetic agents try to dominate the conversation in news cycles and on social media to spread pro-Russian narratives, and particularly to discredit their detractors.
Similar tactics have played out around grouse shooting.
Data shows the Angus glens and other grouse moors are hotspots for the intentional killing of endangered birds like the glorious golden eagle.
Please legislate to make this stop @lornaslater @MairiGougeon @MairiMcAllan. It’s the only way to end this awful blight on Scotland’s natural environment. @Ian_M_Thomson https://t.co/gyaJjWV4RV
— James Reynolds (@JimbobR01) December 29, 2021
To obscure these facts, the grouse moors themselves produce propaganda designed to flood internet searches and public discourse. They spread the message that the moors are somehow good for wildlife.
This is not true.
RSPB Scotland spokesman James Reynolds said of one particular press release that it was “A pile of risible, make-believe tosh, and that “they are prepared to pedal such nonsense, flying in the face of repeatedly proven facts and official surveys, shows the degree of desperation that they are prepared to go to in order to try and make this damaging industry respectable.”
I’m not saying that the guy stood in front of my motor firing his shotgun on a public road was a Russian billionaire. Nor do I seek to demonise everyone involved in the entire industry.
Maybe in a better Scotland there will remain space for some grouse shooting.
But we must stop the destruction of our ecosystem for the amusement of a few shadowy elites, and we must stop our most beautiful airts being sullied by the cash of the super rich of Russia and elsewhere.
