For more than 15 years the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) has adopted a fatally flawed policy of trying to naturally regenerate vast areas of hill land without fencing out the traditional herds of red deer which live on Mar Lodge estate in Deeside.
And now, after spending at least £750,000 of public money and killing 12,000 deer, the Trust has finally admitted to the SGA that it has been unsuccessful.
Despite the relentless culling the project has produced virtually no new trees. The unbrowsed rank heather is now six feet high in places and is so dense that seed has no chance of germinating. NTS says is is now going to listen to the four estate stalkers who are advising burning or cutting the longest heather and planting trees rather than waiting for natural regeneration.
SGA spokesman George MacDonald has called for an enquiry into what he describes as a total waste of taxpayers money.
"What steps are being taken to ensure that this fundamentally flawed management plan which was condemned as unworkable right at the beginning will not be attempted again?" he asked. "NTS should now be forced by the Government to pay compensation to neighbouring land holdings for their losses of sporting revenue over the years."
Between 1995 - 2008 SCottish Natural Heritage (SNH) contributed £672,977 for stalking and shooting at Mar Lodge and has provided a total of £2,768,486 for a variety of projects during the Trust's 15 year ownership.
Since 1995, when the 70,000 acre estate was brought under the management of the NTS, neighbouring estates have been appalled at the day and night, year-round policy of slaughter on sight. The red deer herd has plummeted from 4500 in 1995 to around 1500 today, and an average of 800 animals has been killed every year. This season roe deer have also been culled to an unprecedented level.
The Trust's Group Manager with special responsibility for Mar Lodge, Alexander Bennett said that when the land had been acquired in 1995 it had been degraded by excessive numbers of deer. The Trust's aim was to restore the Caledonian pine forest by natural regeneration but without erecting fences to stop the deer from browsing the young trees, because fences were "visually intrusive".
SGA committee member Peter Fraser, a stalker on a neighbouring estate who has made a consistent case for the use of deer fences to protect forestry projects, dismissed Mr Bennett's argument. He said: "Mobile phone masts, wind turbines and hydro pylons are all visually intrusive but they're there for a reason and it has been perfectly obvious right from the beginning of the project to people with any experience that fences would be fundamental to its success."
After years of complaints from tourism operators in the village of Braemar that the red deer visitors love to see have all been culled, NTS is now considering stocking a fenced enclosure on the flats near Mar Lodge so that visitors can again view the iconic animals. But Peter Fraser said such a move would go against everything the NTS and SNH claim to stand for.
He added: "There's nothing natural about putting deer on show inside an enclosure. People come here to walk on the hills and see deer moving around in the wild, not look at them as though they were in a zoo."