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Call for national pine marten cull

GAMEKEEPERS are calling on Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) to introduce licences to kill pine martens, or face losing the endangered capercaillie – the largest bird of the grouse family – from Scotland for a second time.

The move comes after the fourth national survey into the estimated size of the Scottish population showed a decline of 35% from the previous study.

The new survey estimates the number of individual birds to be 1285, a marked drop from 1980 recorded using similar techniques in 2003/04.