Findhorn Bay Wildlife Watch

General News

Help us Ban the Shooting in Findhorn Bay Nature Reserve

by

With 5 weeks to go before Moray Council considers the petition to ban shooting on Findhorn Bay, it is really important that we continue to press the point that shooting is a totally unacceptable activity in a designated Nature Reserve, especially near to the well-populated residential area of Kinloss.

IMG_0119

Over 800 people living in the IV36 area of Moray signed the shooting ban petition late last year and it will be considered by the Economic Development & Infrastructure Services Committee at Moray Council on 8th March.

The main arguments in favour of a ban are available to view in the Petition Submission.

Meanwhile, our latest Friends of Findhorn Bay Newsletter provides contact details of the relevant Moray Councillors and local MSP, Richard Lochhead, so that you can contact them easily and quickly.

We need your help to ensure that the voice for peace on Findhorn Bay is heard loud and clear!

 

Friends of Findhorn Bay call First Public Meeting in Kinloss

by

The newly established citizens’ group, Friends of Findhorn Bay, called a public meeting in Kinloss on 14th December to share their vision for the Bay as a local, national and international resource. There was an overwhelming public response with an attendance of over 120 local residents from Kinloss, Findhorn, Forres and surrounding areas. The group, which has a fast growing membership, aimed to bring all interested parties together to discuss and explore the vision and aims of the group and the best way forward for the Findhorn Bay Local Nature Reserve.

So far 800 signatures of residents of Kinloss, Findhorn and Forres have been collected in just 29 days on a paper petition that is calling for a total ban on shooting in the Findhorn Bay Local Nature Reserve. At the public meeting, lead petitioner, Lisa Mead, highlighted the strength of public feeling that had been articulated during the collection of signatures.

A local piper welcomed the meeting attendees on arrival to a varied and pleasant evening of talks, film footage, poetry and open question time.  A presentation by local ornithologist Richard Somers Cocks  gave an indication of the variety and rarity of the wildlife of the Bay. He noted that a number of bird species that visit or inhabit Findhorn Bay are recorded as ’Near Threatened’ on the IUCN Red List, including the Long-Tailed Duck, Curlew Sandpiper, Oystercatcher, Bar-tailed and Black-tailed Godwit and the Knot. An enlightening presentation was given as to the relevant legislation that protects the Bay, at least in theory, and to the fact that Findhorn Bay is not only designated as a Local Nature Reserve, but also as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and as a RAMSAR site.

It was outlined that under Criterion 5 of the RAMSAR Sites Criteria, Findhorn Bay has international importance for bird migration, which could also be of value in terms of sensitive ecotourism. Both individual bird species and habitats are also protected under the EU Natura 2000 directive. Many wintering species, including waders, need the South East corner of the Bay to feed and roost. Gelda MacGregor, a Steering Group member of Friends of Findhorn Bay, noted in her talk that the RSPB rated it as “one of the best places for wildlife in the UK”. The RAMSAR site designation report states that “in the educational use of the Findhorn Bay its potential value is high”.

Some evocative film footage of the beauty of the Bay and the migrating geese was shown by Rev. Louis Bezuidenhout. Included was some disturbing footage of the shooting of Pink Footed geese, with one falling onto the B9011 Findhorn Bay Road at Kinloss. It narrowly missed being hit by a bus and fell close to where school children wait at the bus stop. The fallen goose staggered along to a ditch, repeatedly trying to fly, but failing. Other local residents have also related discoveries of injured birds dying a painful death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELSab5vTN_g

Following the presentations there were animated discussions, with points of view expressed by a diverse audience, which included several local wildfowlers. All who shared expressed heartfelt interest in and concern for the future of the Bay. Frustrated residents of Kinloss and Findhorn complained of waking up to the sound of shotgun fire for almost six months of the year and of effectively being unable to access the Nature Reserve to walk or birdwatch when the shooters are present, which is often during the morning, daytime and evening.

The audience were made aware that Friends of Findhorn Bay is now open for membership and has a website, www.findhornbay.scot, where further information can be found and also a Facebook Group – Findhorn Bay Goose Watch – which can be joined. This Facebook Group has been set up primarily so that people with concerns about shooting on the Bay or incidents to report can have their voices heard.

For further information please email: nature@findhornbay.scot

Friends of Findhorn Bay is born

by

It is hard to believe that only five weeks ago Friends of Findhorn Bay had not even been dreamed of, and now here we are with our own website, a Findhorn Bay Wildlife Watch Facebook page with 133 members, an inaugural meeting happening in a few days time at the Kinloss Church Community Hall, and over 500 signatures collected on a formal petition to Moray Council, calling for a ban on the killing, injuring and maiming of geese and ducks in the Findhorn Bay Local Nature Reserve. Phew!

P8012119bAs I pause for breath to reflect on what has been quite a hectic month, I recall what drew me to attend that first meeting of concerned residents of Kinloss, Findhorn and Forres on a very chilly 5th November 2015. The invitation came from a friend to attend a meeting of a small group of local people, who were becoming increasingly concerned about the escalation of shooting in the Findhorn Bay Local Nature Reserve and also in the number of dead and injured geese being found around the Bay.

I remembered back to when it dawned on me that shooting was happening on Findhorn Bay. I was shocked that this kind of activity would be allowed in an area designated as a nature reserve, since shooting seems so fundamentally incompatible with the words “nature” and “reserve”. So I started researching the legal position relating to the shooting and I attended a meeting with a few local people who were concerned about the issue in late 2013. One of the group had recently moved to Kinloss and was really disturbed by the intermittent, persistent, almost daily gunfire and the men in camouflage walking around the area carrying shotguns. Well, who wouldn’t be? 

There was significant concern amongst us, and so we started to gather information about the situation, such as who owns the land around the Bay, how far the Local Nature Reserve extends, its other legal designations (it is also a Ramsar site, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and an EU Special Protection Area and Special Conservation Area), why there had been no movement in relation to the establishment of shooting byelaws for the Bay, even though the Findhorn Bay LNR Committee voted in favour of shooting byelaws back in 2005. 

shooterIn December 2014, some local people went to the quarterly Findhorn Bay LNR Committee meeting (which is open to the public) to express their concerns at the increase in shooting. This resulted in a rather heated exchange with the Chair of the Findhorn Bay LNR Committee, who happens to be a keen wildfowler himself and who is – let’s put it this way – not exactly impartial or unbiased on the subject of “wildfowlers’ rights”.

Meanwhile the shooting situation on the Bay continued to get worse, with the season since September 2015 being the worst to date in terms of numbers of shooters and dead and injured geese being found around the Bay. Enter stage right the Rev. Louis Bezuidenhout, who became the Church of Scotland minister for Kinloss and Findhorn in January 2015. Louis and his wife Elsie love the Bay and its birdlife and Louis is a keen photographer and nature video maker. He became increasingly shocked by the situation and by the number of people shooting in the nature reserve. Ministers talk to a lot of people of course, but Louis says that he felt rather alone with the shooting issue for quite some time, as did I. Was no one else concerned about the shooting in the nature reserve we both wondered, at opposite ends of the Bay…

In mid-October 2015 Mary Vines started an online petition on the Care2 website, calling for an end to the shooting of the geese on Findhorn Bay. My ears pricked up – this online petition had already gathered several hundred virtual signatures by the time I signed it, and to date 870 people have ‘signed’ it. This petition could not however be officially presented to Moray Council, because their rules on petitions require them to be in writing, and signed only be people living in Moray and on the Electoral Register.

The informal meeting in Kinloss on 5th November gave five residents from Kinloss, Findhorn and Forres the chance to share with each other how we felt about the shooting. By the end of the meeting we had agreed to launch a formal, written petition, with me as the lead petitioner, or “lead goose” as I briefly became known! We had to decide early on whether to call for regulation of the shooting or a total ban. In the end we decided to call for a total ban, because in our hearts that is what all of us would prefer, for the sake of all life within and surrounding the Bay. Our V-formation was very quickly established, and things have been flowing very gracefully between us so far (maybe I am tempting fate by saying that?!)

Two Greylag

Since the first meeting three more local people have joined the fledgling Steering Group that we decided to form in order to move things along, so now we are eight. The most heartening thing is that over the last month each of us has stepped forward on different occasions to take the lead with different tasks. The decision to establish a more formal group was taken at our third meeting on 23rd November and the name Friends of Findhorn Bay was unamimously agreed. The decision to hold a public meeting was taken then too, and here we are, 2 days from our inaugural meeting, which will take place just 39 days after our first meeting.

The result of our collective endeavours has been quite astonishing – so much has already been accomplished in so short a time. We realise that the road we are travelling may be long, but when you think of the thousands of miles that a goose migrates each year, one flap at a time… Somehow this puts things a little more into perspective.