Seal Slaughter

[paulb]

is there any active salmon farms on the westside at the moment. if not then it was just an idiot who has a gun. now that is something to be worrid about.

[skaterboy]

Sorry mitzy but just because your family down the road think seals are cute and cuddly we are left to suffer from a blight of them. The same goes for bonxies maybe not many of them down the road so they are protected by a one size fits all ban on shooting them.

The one thing this shows is that folks from the south or soothmoothers if you prefer should mind their own business. It is their blind interfering in things they don't comprehend that is screwing up this planet, not just Shetland.

Take a trip out to Foula you wont hear many birds singing, as the few that survive have learned to keep quiet or get killed by Bonxies, it wasn't like that twenty odd year ago.

for years Shetland folks have shot bonxies and seals to control their numbers and yet they are still here, now if we carry on as we always have we would be jailed and pilloried by the likes of you.

[Ghostrider]

^^ The sheer irony of the bonxie situation, where "conservation" has caused it to evolve in to the exact same predatory vermin that it was allowed to live to prevent, gets on my last nerve, yet appears to be right over the heads of conservationalists.

 

The original bonxie colony was on Foula, the old Foula men could very easily have snuffed it out and nobody back then would have been any wiser,or even cared. They didn't, and for very good reason, prior to the bonxie's arrival the Sea Eagle was a serious predator of livestock, there are even some old tales of young children being carried off by them. It was noted that the bonxie was capable to seeing off the Sea Eagles, where the bonxie frequented, there were none, hence to folk relying in part on their livestock the bonxie was an asset. Especially as at that time the bonxie fed exclusively on fish..... For a while the Foula folk regulated the numbers of bonxies with no help from the outside world, ensuring enough survived for the colony to be of a healthy useful number without it growing outwith the areas it was established in.

 

Then along came outside interests and declared that the bird was so rare that all must be preserved, regardless of what effect that had on anything else. Sooooo.....with increased numbers, new areas required to be colonised, and, with greater competition for food, new food sources were sourced, the bonxie stopped being an exclusive fish eater and became part carnivore as well....smaller birds, farm livestock etc, in short it has become as big a pest as the Sea Eagle it was kept to get rid of.

 

The bird that exists today, unless in physical appearance is no more like its ancestor that was "conserved" as night is like day. Its ancestor was an exclusive fish eater who only became aggressive when protecting its nest, its modern day equivalent is a mostly carnivore, predatory piece of vermin. Yet conservationalists pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves about the "successful preservation" of the species. I do not comprehend that attitude in the slightest. Nothing has been preserved unless physical appearance, by letting numbers run amok for no particular reason than "because we can" they have created a bird that has a wholly different dietary habits and is of a very different temperament to its ancestor. In effect "conservation" has turned the species from relatively benign in to a monster. This is not preserving anything in my mind, its just one more way that man is through his behaviours forcing nature to evolve in certain directions. What "monster" will be created next by "conservation"?

 

I'm sure plenty would bleat about it if a number of shot bonxie crangs were found someplace, just the same as folk are bleating right now over a few dead selkies. Where are you when the beaches of Shetland are littered with those who have died from starvation in winter? For that is the alternative when a species is allowed to multiply to infinity, a massive natural cull in times of little food. Better a lump of lead in the head than a long lingering decline, but that's just me.

[bresail]

"The one thing this shows is that folks from the south or soothmoothers if you prefer should mind their own business. It is their blind interfering in things they don't comprehend that is screwing up this planet, not just Shetland.

Take a trip out to Foula you wont hear many birds singing, as the few that survive have learned to keep quiet or get killed by Bonxies, it wasn't like that twenty odd year ago.

for years Shetland folks have shot bonxies and seals to control their numbers and yet they are still here, now if we carry on as we always have we would be jailed and pilloried by the likes of you."

 

There is nothing better than to read an argument that is comletely false!

Why not change your name to Skutti strauker or alan.

 

What on earth have the bonxies done wrong?

 

"The first record of Bonxies being in Shetland dates from 1774 when George Low found three pairs in Unst and six or seven pairs in Foula. He reported: “In Foula this is a privileged bird, no man will nor dare shoot it under the penalty of 16s. 8d. Ster., nor destroy its eggs; when they meet it at sea, whatever fish they have in the boat Skua always gets a share, and all this out of gratitude for beating off the Eagle, who dares not venture to prey on the island during the whole breeding season.â€

 

Please get your facts straight and read your history.

As for there not many songbirds in Foula think about why?

Regards,

Rex. (another soothmother, who is not blind).

[bresail]

" Better a lump of lead in the head than a long lingering decline, but that's just me."

Don't do it ghost.

Things will get better!

Why are bonxies under fire?

Regards,

Rex.

[skaterboy]

read GR post bresail.

and their were plenty of different types of birds on Foula till the Bonxies were given free reign.

 

The first record of Bonxies being in Shetland dates from 1774 when George Low

 

the first record for a soothmoother maybe, 6 or 7 pairs enough to keep the sea eagle away but not enough to destroy every other thing there, seems the Foula folk knew more about conservation in 1774 than the soothmoothers do today.

 

Please get your facts straight and read your history.

 

who's history when it is written by soothmoothers I put very little faith in the written word

 

Rex. (another soothmother, who is not blind).

 

Skaterboy, (a Shetlander that has watched the effects o blind interference fae sooth in his lifetime screw up the balance achieved here over millennia)

[bresail]

How many millenia?

Regards,

Rex.

[skaterboy]

a few, they reckon a tsunami went right over the top of us 7000 years ago and it was probably a fair while till any one came here after that but i would certainly reckon on a few.

I know my family have been here and Orkney for at least a 1000 years if that's any help to you.

[Ghostrider]

What on earth have the bonxies done wrong?

 

Try being in charge of a flock of lambing sheep, or a herd or kye calving outdoors, you'll soon have that question answered many times.

[hoosn]

The one thing this shows is that folks from the south or soothmoothers if you prefer should mind their own business. It is their blind interfering in things they don't comprehend that is screwing up this planet, not just Shetland.

 

 

skaterboy, as a "soothmoother" myself,am kinda resenting being tarnished with the same brush as these people who it seems have no clue as to the ways of country. as someone who has seen the havoc one fox can reap in a hen house etc. i agree with culling whole heartedly. where im from the incomers who detest fox hunting etc are usually "townies" who thought country living would be idealic,and full of cute little bunnies(the very same cute little bunnies who can trash a veggie plot that someone has bust a gut creating in hours) and maybe the odd glimpse of vixen playing merrily by a stream with her cubs and sweet little lambs skipping around.where as the reality of it is much harsher. if an animal is interferring with livelyhood,then yep i say shoot the damn thing be it a rabbit,fox,seal or bird. I TOTALLY agree that if you move somewhere you cant/shouldnt try to change their way of life. So please dont put us all in the same box. and fellow soothmoothers,please think before you speak,you came here because you liked the place and you liked the people,and as much as you may think some of the ways are wrong,its not your place to try to change things that have been going on for a long time. and whats more bear in mind that the bacon you had for breakfast this morning or the chicken you had for sunday lunch was too once a living breathing animal that was killed for you to eat!!

[Guest Anonymous]

its along the same lines as the pretty cute little skipping bunnies with thier lovely long whiskers are actually flaming vermin, worm n flea infested destructive vermin. Same can be said about baa heads. In an island culture where the folk who have fishing and the sea in thier blood the seals will always be the enemy never mind how big or round the eyes or cutsie the face is , truth is they are vermin to fishing orientated people p.s. i dinna have access to a rifle

 

Really? What exactly have they done to bother you? You say that they are vermin, but for what reason? Yes we are an island culture but we have moved a long, long way from a group of fisher folk with a yoal or a sixareen trying to sustain a family.

Tell us, fleabee, what exactly it is about the seals or rabbits that bothers you so much and makes it OK for us to get rid of animals simply because they kinda get in our way.

 

methinks you have no kell yard n never rely on the eala for a bit of fish? i assume you're more into salary n celery ?

[bresail]

There is a rumour that bonxies peck out the eyes of lambs/sheep, the same for crows and ravens and most large gulls. I do not doubt that a sickly lamb may be pecked to check if it is live or dead. Could even a bonxie kill a lamb I would like some proof of this. They will pick up the afterbirth however, which is a good way of keeping the flies down. This has also been going on for millenia.

Shepherds used to stay with their flocks constantly, now they use binoculars.

If you value your sheep then look after them.

As for the example of rabbits eating our veggies and salads, with correct fencing techniques rabbits can be excluded.

I will agree that the rabbits shoud be culled at the moment but that is good husbandry and has to be ongoing.

The supposed increases in seals could be that fish factories sluice their offal into the sea.

If you shoot rabbits, then take them home, this will prevent, " vermin", from proliferating.

How many thousands of rabbit carcases are left to feed the bonxies and gulls each year?

If you just want to shoot things join the army, your country needs you.

The only problem is you may be shot.

Don't allow your bloodlust to cloud your judgement.

Regards,

Rex.

[Ghostrider]

There is a rumour that bonxies peck out the eyes of lambs/sheep, the same for crows and ravens and most large gulls. I do not doubt that a sickly lamb may be pecked to check if it is live or dead. Could even a bonxie kill a lamb I would like some proof of this. They will pick up the afterbirth however, which is a good way of keeping the flies down. This has also been going on for millenia.

Shepherds used to stay with their flocks constantly, now they use binoculars.

If you value your sheep then look after them.

 

"Rumour"....my....left toe.

 

If you sincerely believe what you've written there, you've been suckered right in by the propaganda and spin machine total bull***t spewed forth by "birdy conservation" organisations. Get this, they are heavily biased towards portraying birds as "poor, put-upon beleagured, exploited and abused" creatures, to wring the last possible penny out of anyone who will give them anything.

 

I'll be back to address and refute every one of the points you make. Just now any attempt to do so would have Shetlink's swearie filter in meltdown.

[Girzie]

In the past, Shetlanders shot seals for profit - for their skins, to sell or to use themselves for rivlins, belts, bags, purses and to make use of the blubber. They did not shoot them to leave them to decay on the beach.

 

Bunxies were never a problem near the house as all the sheep were on the hill and it was "survivsl of the fittest" which is the law of the jungle! They do peck the eyes from lambing yowes and other sick sheep but so does the craa and the corbie. That's how they survive. Nowadays, the inbye parks are full of highly bred sheep rather than crops so the bunxies are ever nearer.

[skaterboy]

Hoosn my apologies if you felt my comments were directed at you they were not. from your post I can tell you are not one of those self obsessed idiots that come here and tell wis what we are doing wrong and how they will fix it.

In fact going on your post you seem like a welcome addition to Shetlands dna mix, unfortunately that can not be said for many others that alight fae da boat.

 

bresail you are the prime example of a soothmoother that gives the rest a bad name, you are entitled to your opinion but it is an opinion based on ignorance and not worth squat.

So forgive me if I pay no heed to your inane rantings.