the worst weather of all

Thu, Feb 25, 2010

Above 100m the air is haemorrhaging snow. Thick wet flakes and the forecast is for 50cm (a foot and a half!) for the east. I also heard a sound I haven’t heard in ages. The sound of the wind roaring through skeletal branches making trees dance macabre jigs and reels to a backdrop of grey curtains of snow across the Sound of Sleat, hiding the mainland. White horses roar down the black sea. It’s a day to be indoors at the fireside. It’s been a real winter this year but the consequences are lethal with another avalanche on the Buachaille last night and distressing as thousands of deer starve to death on the hills. There’s no escape from the weather either as below 100m is that horrible horrible freezing rain. It soaks you and the wind removes any remaining warmth lingering in your sodden gear. If the spring is true to form the deer population is going to take a real hammering. Walkers have been urged not to approach wildlife as even the birds are hunkering down, trying to preserve what little food stocks are out there.

The Deer Commission are urging estates to continue culling weak deer after the hind season ends but I saw an interview with a stalker on the tv where he explained that was a bad idea. Shooting a starving deer causes the other starving deer to bolt and use up what little resources they have and you’re left with deer in even worse straits. With their food source under several feet of hard snow and their habitat destroyed long ago it will be a bleak outlook for them. Interestingly, when the reports of thousands of deer starving to death first appeared, the first thing to be said was that it wasn’t the estates’ fault and that they weren’t dying through mismanagement. I think that statement speak volumes about how our countryside has been “managed” to this day. Deer are forest animals and we have no forests left for them. We proudly show off regeneration schemes that are fenced off and sterile. We boast of rewilding long extinct species while our native ones starve to death under our watch.

When the snows finally recede I fear our hills will be severely depleted of wildlife and the act of walking itself could be enough just to force those that survived the winter, over the edge.