Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): You are welcome this morning, and I thank you for the material that you provided. We ask you to brief the Committee, after which we will open it up for questions.

Mr Merlin Becker (The Irish Grouse Conservation Trust): Morning, everybody. My name is Merlin Becker, and I am here today representing the Irish Grouse Conservation Trust (IGCT) with my colleague Ian Glendinning, the managing director of the IGCT. We are grateful to be here this morning, folks. I will time myself to make sure that I keep to my allocated time slot, because I can talk for Ireland on the subject. [Laughter.]

Right, folks, I will get stuck in straight away, because I have a limited time frame in which to give the presentation. We have 20 years' worth of data covering the tenure of the Glenwherry hills project, so I will try to deliver as succinct and clear a message as possible. I hail from the Wicklow Mountains, but I am privileged to be the head gamekeeper in Glenwherry — the famous conservation project that is arguably the most successful conservation project in Ireland, north, south, east and west. The picture shows me there with my top dog, Freya, a German short-haired pointer who helps me do a lot of my day-to-day work. Folks, I will rattle through the information quickly. I will not go into huge detail on who we are and what we do. I am here today to give succinct evidence on why we feel that hunting with dogs is so vital in the Northern Ireland environment.

First and foremost, the Irish Grouse Conservation Trust is probably the leading upland organisation for the conservation of grouse, obviously, and all the other species that come with that, such as Irish hare, breeding waders and raptors. We have the best mountain in Ireland from which to see the nine species of raptor that we have around the island. We are privileged to be able to work on that amazing project.

You have information leaflets; I thank Committee staff for passing them around. They provide background information for you guys to read in your spare time. The project at the core of all this is run by the Glenwherry Hill Regeneration Partnership. It is a partnership between three main partner organisations. One is the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE), which owns the hill farm. It is the farming entity and physically owns the land. The Irish Grouse Conservation Trust delivers the predator control and habitat management services, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) delivers the bird monitoring work, because we have a plethora of birds on the mountain. We are also involved with the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI). That is underpinned by a fantastic number of farmers — about 18 — around the 6,000-acre block that we look after. It is an amazing example of pioneering and partnership working for landscape-scale nature recovery and nature success.

All the pictures that I am showing were taken at Glenwherry. All those species reside there. We have merlin, Irish hare, curlew, golden plover, snipe, red grouse, Irish red grouse, lapwing, meadow pipit and skylark. The place is absolutely alive with wildlife. If anybody here wants to come and see the best nature recovery zone on the island, you would be welcome at any time, but particularly in April and May, when all the birds come back to the hills to breed, which is normally a very good time of year to see it.

Our success is driven by two main factors: best-practice predator control, which we will talk a lot more about today, and practical habitat management. We have been talking about predator control for a number of years. In general terms, the environment in Northern Ireland and many parts of Ireland and the UK is extremely unbalanced. In Northern Ireland, we have approximately 50,000 foxes and around 120,000 grey crows, versus the numbers of red-listed species that you can see in the presentation, which are right on the verge of extinction. This is no joke and no lie: we are in the last chance saloon with all those species. It is hard enough as it is for those species to survive. Anything that would hinder that, including the Hunting with Dogs Bill, given that it would limit our options to control predators, would be extremely detrimental to those species, which are hanging by a thread.

I will highlight the importance of predator control. There are long-standing studies on the subject, probably the best example of which is the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust upland predation experiment. All the information should be in the leaflets that were handed out earlier; you can read it in your own time. Basically, there is scientific proof that, with best-practice predator control on the ground, such as hound work, terrier work, shooting, trapping, snaring — all the legal methods — you will have three times more ground-nesting wildlife in the area than you would without such predator control. Again, I will not go into too much detail; there is a lot of information in that booklet, which you can read. It is a really great example of how, when predator control is done effectively, there is lots of wildlife.

The slide shows all the examples of predator control that we carry out on the Glenwherry hills. Lamping, thermal night shooting and snaring are among the main elements of what we do, coupled with terrier work and lurcher work at key times of the year. We do trapping with Larsen traps for corvid control; tunnel trapping for small ground predators; hunting with hounds to humanely flush to a team of guns, which is an important element that we will talk about in more detail; and terrier and lurcher work to control foxes, particularly in the springtime. As was said in discussion with the Irish Working Terrier Federation, that is the most humane and most effective method of controlling breeding foxes, particularly vixens and cubs in the springtime.

Anything to do with the natural environment needs to be looked at holistically. You cannot pick and choose one or two little things. As I said, it is such a hard task to do at the best of times. If we did not have all of those tools in the box, it would be virtually impossible. Without all those management tools, the Glenwherry hills nature recovery zone that we have today would cease to exist.

I will go into our vermin and predator records in more detail. Folks, some of you may be offended by some of the photographs, but I want to show you the real, hard coalface of nature conservation. Whether you are conserving black rhino in Africa, Dall sheep in the States or Irish red grouse in the Glenwherry hills, it is all the same: true nature conservation is bloody and difficult and expensive to deliver. Please excuse me for showing images of dead animals, but it is important that people fully understand why we need to control those animals. As I like to say, there is always a little evil for a greater good. No matter what form of land management you do in the countryside, there will always be some form of drawback, but, as I always say, it is about what we leave behind, not what we take out. That is important.

In my first year, we took out 634 predators from the 6,000-acre Glenwherry hills area, including 212 foxes. A fox can eat 1·5 lb of food per day. Taking out those 212 foxes — that one predator — has left 52 tons of biomass in that nature area. That is a huge factor. The reason why we have massive issues with ground-nesting bird conversation across the island of Ireland is that there is a huge volume of predators out there, and they need to be controlled. Foxes are one of the most abundant ground mammals on the island. Fifty-two tons of biomass is a serious amount. That is a lot of curlew eggs, lapwing chicks, carrion, rabbits and leverets. Fifty-two tons of anything means that a serious number of animals — it is a scary fact — are getting killed every year.

These are some of the lows that we have experienced throughout my tenure. I will show you some examples of terrier work in the springtime. The next slide is a graphic photograph of a vixen and her cubs, but we have to highlight the necessity of the job that we do. That vixen had the potential to wipe out five or six breeding curlew in that area, as well as a number of grouse pairs. We went in there, and, within a 24-hour period, the dog foxed the vixen and the dead cubs were removed. As I said, it is a little evil for a greater good. I take no form of enjoyment from any of this sort of thing, but I want to see red-listed species surviving versus the abundant fox.

In the next slide, the fox is carrying two dead curlew chicks back to two vixens with separate litters. That is another example of when we found the location of the den and managed to get in there. It is not pretty; it is hard to discuss it with people to get them to understand what we do. We look after these things and control those animals for the greater good and the whole environment rather than just one or two singular species.

I now turn to the highs: this is what we are really doing it for. The next slide shows curlew chicks in the centre. We have had big broods of grouse. We had eight grouse chicks in one brood, as you can see in the bottom left photograph. We had three lapwing chicks from one brood and four chicks from one curlew brood. The 2022 breeding year was absolutely phenomenal; we had so many curlew chicks. That was a record-breaking year: we fledged 69 curlew chicks in one year, which was a wonderful success.

Let us get down to the mechanics, folks. I have managed to draw all the scientific data from Glenwherry from the past nearly 20 years of fox control records. You can see a graph showing the fox control figures for the past 20 years. You can see the really important part at the bottom left of the screen. We are shooting approximately 50% of the foxes and trapping 40% with snares, with 10% being controlled by way of dog work. That is not a big part of it, but the time of year when it is carried out is important: in the springtime, when lambs are lambing, curlew and grouse are on the nest and pipit and skylark chicks are starting to appear. It is a critical time of year. Over that 19-or-20-year period, we have controlled 2,150 foxes. If you calculate the equivalent in biomass, it amounts to around 500 tonnes of biomass that has been left in that area, comprising curlew and snipe chicks and all the rest. There are huge numbers in the data.

I will give you some examples for the purpose of comparing part-time and full-time predator control. On the part-time side, a predator control operator may set a few Larsen traps for crows or shoot the odd few foxes, but he does not use everything in the toolbox. He does not use hounds or snares and does not do terrier work. There is then very low productivity from nearly the exact same pair of curlew versus the rate resulting from our full-time work. You can see the figures from the 2022 breeding season: it is night and day, folks. If you get a chippy in to build your house, he will do it in five or six years, while a professional will do it in eight to 12 months and do a far better job. This is exactly the same principle.

Animal welfare has been discussed on a number of occasions. The IGCT is a champion of animal welfare, and we always like to see improvements in the animal welfare sector. We find, however, that we are potentially getting lost in the term "animal welfare" rather than focusing on the animals that we are trying to protect. I always ask myself this question: why are we protecting green-listed species that have massive populations but forgetting about all the red-listed species that are on the verge of extinction? In my eyes, that makes absolutely no sense and is detrimental to our efforts on the ground to save those species.

Conversely, since the Hunting Act 2004, the fox population — these are British Trust for Ornithology figures; it is not our data — has decreased. People argue that bringing in a ban will save species, but that has had the opposite effect. At the time, a lot of anti-hunting bodies in the UK predicted that the fox population would go up: it did not. It has continued to decline. Closer to home, the ban on coursing in the Wildlife and Natural Environment Act (Northern Ireland) 2011 has seen hare numbers decrease across the country. That is an interesting fact that you might not have thought was the case, but illegal hare poaching has become 10 times worse. As with anything else in life, if you ban something, it will go underground and become difficult — actually a lot worse — to manage. A Queen's University study showed that hare numbers were 18 times higher in coursing areas than in those that were not coursing areas. If you ban the coursing, you lose the hare. What we are doing with foxes makes for a similar situation. That is just an example of the unintended consequences of ill-thought-out legislation, when doing something to save one thing means that a load of other things fall by the wayside and populations reduce.

We have the best historical grouse counts in the country, stretching back to 2007. Rather than going into huge detail, I will just show you some of the numbers. We have had a lot of lows over the years. There was one amazing year in 2023, but our 2026 numbers have come right down due to a number of mainly environmental factors. The heather beetle has been a huge factor. The lows are difficult to manage, and, without the tools in the box to get the numbers back up, we will really struggle.

The next slide shows songbird numbers. There has been a 453% increase in meadow pipits over the course of the project and a 510% increase in skylarks. On the vast majority of mountains in Ireland — north, south, east and west — skylarks are no longer heard singing, even on low ground. They are just not there, which is so sad. The Irish hare population is probably Glenwherry's biggest indicator of success: its density is the highest in the world. The average hare population density in Ireland is one to three hares per square kilometre. The 2025 data showed that we had 64 hares per square kilometre, which is amazing. Again, without all the tools in the box, we will struggle to keep those animals.

I have a short video of what nature recovery looks like. Thermal imaging footage from a night patrol when we were out controlling foxes showed 72 Irish hares in one 25-acre silage field. In my eyes, that is what nature recovery looks like. As I said, if all the tools are not in the box, that success will be lost, which would be a travesty because it has taken 20-plus years to achieve. It did not happen overnight, and it is amazing to see. In an area where hares are not normally seen in daytime, there is hare after hare to be seen at Glenwherry. If you ever want to see a hare and take one home, please come to Glenwherry, because there are plenty there and plenty to spare.

The nature recovery blueprint covers a wider area that we have been managing over recent years. It kicked off with the Curlew LIFE project, which took a landscape-scale approach to an area of 20,000 acres. On less than 1% of Northern Ireland's landscape, we produce 60% of Northern Ireland's grouse population, 23% of its curlew population, 15% of its Irish hare population and 7% of its lapwing population. That is in one, tiny concentrated area. If that blueprint were rolled out in the Sperrins, the Mournes and everywhere else, it would be absolutely wonderful.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Merlin, I will stop you for a moment. We need to wrap this up to have an opportunity for questions, if you would not mind.

Mr Becker: Yes. I have just two more slides. Sorry: again, I could talk for Ireland on the subject.

This is the second-last slide. Is there audio on this? That is the most important slide for the video. No, there is no audio. The idea behind playing the audio was to let you hear the birds calling, so I am sorry that you cannot hear that. Videos are always a nightmare in presentations.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): We were not aware that there would be a video with audio. If we had known, we probably could have facilitated it. Maybe we should just move to questions.

You have made valid points. You said that banning hare coursing drove that practice underground and that illegal hare poaching was worse than ever: why do you think that the Bill will lead to more illegal hare-coursing activity?

Mr Becker: I was not comparing like with like. It was just an example of what normally happens in Northern Ireland — in England, it is the same — when something is banned to show some of the consequences that we could face.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): A total of 645 foxes were culled across a 6,000-hectare nature recovery zone in the Glenwherry hills. Could the conservation work be maintained through methods of pest control other than hunting with dogs?

Mr Becker: No, as I mentioned, it is the springtime months, in particular, that are critical. When a vixen goes down to have her cubs, there is no replacement for that type of work, as has been mentioned by the Irish Working Terrier Federation. Shooting does not cover that. You will be shooting the dog fox and the vixen, and they will have dependent young, which, as has been discussed, is extremely cruel.

It was shocking to hear the League Against Cruel Sports say that it is happy to leave a dead cub in the ground. I certainly would never like to leave anything dead or suffering for a long time. The short answer is that there is nothing that can replace the taking out through dogs of, as it was in your example, 12% of the foxes.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you. Merlin.

Mr McAleer: Thank you for your presentation and thanks for allowing the Committee to visit you up there — I think that it was last June.

Would the Bill, with the suggested exemptions, have an adverse impact on the work that you do?

Mr Becker: Yes, most certainly. For example, I have three German pointers, two lurchers and two terriers in my dog pack, and I normally hunt them as a pack. Normally, the German pointers find the fox, and the lurchers are able to catch and dispatch the fox. If I were using three of my German pointers on their own, I would technically be breaking the law: that is crazy. The microphones and laptops that you guys use in your work are the equivalent to my dogs in my day-to-day work. Could you do your job with no laptop, pen or microphone? It would be difficult. You probably could, but you would probably have to shout all day, and it would make your life hell. In essence, it would not be workable.

Mr McAleer: Would you be encouraging of an amendment that would allow you to continue with your work? How would you amend the Bill?

Mr Becker: How long have you got? [Laughter.]

As the Bill stands, it is completely unworkable for my day-to-day work. You would have to put in several amendments — not just one — because the Bill covers more than one element of the work that we do. There are several examples: we are flushing foxes out of cover; hunting on the open hill; terrier work for denning time; and terrier work in snow, because we normally trace foxes in the snow to locate them when they are going to ground. The amendments would be lengthy, and I would not have enough time to discuss them today. How long is a piece of string?

Mr McAleer: Thank you very much for your presentation and your time.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): We have Gareth and then Daniel.

Mr Wilson: I am curious about your overall take, given your impressive presentation. You used the words "predator" and "vermin": do you think that the Bill seeks to elevate the status of predators and vermin? How does that sit with you, given what you are trying to achieve versus the impact of predators and vermin?

Mr Becker: That is a good question. It deeply, deeply upsets and frustrates me. I have been working Glenwherry for five years, and I have to knock my pan in almost every year to achieve some form of success. Normally, everything is stacked against you, and you could do little things to help. I always say that the likes of NIEA and politicians should be trying to help our cause, not fighting it and hindering us. The Bill is doing exactly that. Going out lamping, checking snares and using dogs night after night is not an easy role. It is very hard, and then you get little things like this.

It is the same situation for farmers. They are trying to produce top-quality food in this country, but they always seem to get hit. Managing the land is a difficult job. You need all the help that you can get.

Mr Wilson: There was a Committee visit before my time on the Committee. Is it open again?

Mr Becker: Yes, I would love to get you guys up. The biggest fault when the Committee visited was that we did not have time to get out and see the hills. We were stuck inside. I do not do well in the indoor environment. If you guys want to come up, the late summer months are a good time to visit. The curlew are there. We would not be able to walk anywhere, but we would drive the tracks on the hill. It is a wonderful place to see breeding curlew, breeding hen harrier, snipe and everything else. It is an open invitation to the Committee. It would be great to show you round.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): I am being told that the members did go out. They saw the traps on the hills.

Mr Becker: Was it in June? Forgive me, I was remembering a different group. I do not think that we saw any wildlife though, did we? We did not see any curlew. It was a wet day.

Mr Ian Glendinning (The Irish Grouse Conservation Trust): The weather was poor that day.

Mr McAleer: It was June last year.

Mr Becker: OK. You are more than welcome back.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): That was before my time too.

Mr McCrossan: Gareth took my question, but thank you for the presentation. It has been helpful. It is important for us to hear the wide-ranging evidence that we have received on the Bill and the concerns, which seem to be consistent from most of our stakeholders.

Declan asked about potential amendments to the Bill. I appreciate that, with the time constraints today, it is not possible to discuss how, you believe, it could be improved or fixed or whether it could be. However, I would appreciate it if you could share your thinking on exemptions or otherwise with the Committee.

Mr Becker: Yes.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): If you could share the presentation that we saw today, we would appreciate that too.

I will pass to John, who is the Bill sponsor.

Mr Blair: I will be brief. One of the documents that I received in advance of the meeting is marked "Restricted", so I will exercise some caution around the questioning. However, there is another matter that I raise with some regret. Hopefully, we can resolve it today and put the record straight. I have had to refer to it here before. It is a personal matter, and I will reply personally to the sender of a copy of the correspondence that I have here, which, I believe, contains a personal attack and makes an accusation that I am anti-hunting, anti-farming, anti-conservation and other things. It also refers, not for the first time, to my absence from a meeting that the Committee held at Glenwherry; it was referred to a moment ago. Are you prepared to put on record today that you now accept that I was not at that meeting because of the loss of my father?

Mr Becker: I did not —.

Mr Blair: I understand that those on the ground that day were told that. I will explain it to you very simply. It was one week after my father's funeral. I am the eldest son. You can imagine what I was dealing with at that time. I came back to the Assembly for two days to carry out Deputy Speaker duties. I did no other duties that week and resumed my bereavement leave on the Wednesday. I came back here only because it was the last two days before the summer recess at the end of June. Can I have an undertaking that it will not be referred to again? My apology was given at that meeting and subsequent meetings because of the bereavement. I hope that you will accept that and stop referring to it.

Mr Becker: First and foremost, I was not aware that you had suffered a bereavement at the time, so deepest condolences. I would not want to press anybody at such a difficult time.

Mr Glendinning: We appreciate what you say. You are welcome to visit so that we can assure you of what is taking place there.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you. I appreciate that, John. I hope that that puts the matter to rest.

Thank you for joining us this morning. It was helpful to hear your presentation.

Mr Glendinning: Is there any possibility that I could pass around a photograph? Maybe you do not have time for that. It is an old photograph. There is a small page to go with it that refers to it. I shall pass that around.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): You can leave them on your way out.

Mr Blair: There is only one copy.

The Committee Clerk: We could look at it during the break.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): We will take a five-minute break, and members can take a look at it. Thank you very much.

Mr Becker: Thank you, everybody. Thank you for your time.