Ms Oonagh Duggan:

To be honest, we know that mink are having localised impacts in some areas but our assessment is that they are not the number one issue to address when it comes to helping ground-nesting birds. The biggest issue there is providing habitat for them and that involves farmers working to help them with their habitat. There are predators out there that have an impact but they would be more in the line of corvids and foxes. That is why we need to be very careful about where we put trees because trees provide cover for foxes and crows. We really need to make sure that trees are not planted in places that are important for ground-nesting birds because otherwise we will lose even more of them. That is one issue. There is no issue in relation to buzzards. Buzzards are not a threat to our ground-nesting birds. The main diet of buzzards is rats, rooks and rabbits, the three Rs, so we would not consider them a threat to ground-nesting birds at all.