Bounty bar for Shetlands ferrets

05 March 1998

Bounty bar for Shetlands ferrets

SHETLAND will end a bounty scheme next year targeted at a plague of ferrets which has overrun the area.

The £4,000 budget will be used for “more pressing causes” such as the island farming industry.

Andrew Harmsworth, agriculture development officer, said the bounty scheme was originally supposed to be a one-year pilot that had run for three years. The ferret problem had not been solved but people now know how to trap them, he said.

Ferrets had been blamed by crofters and farmers for eating their poultry.

• The Scotsman 05/03/98 page 10