Amongst the most contentious proposals are extending the female cull season and the introduction of Deer Management Nature Restoration Orders (DMNROs)
In this Guest Article for The Scottish Gamekeepers Association website, Victor Clements suggests another way to avoid an unnecessary headlong fight with Scotland's professional deer managers, for little or no gain
DEERIE ME! IT’S A DEER ARGUMENT THAT WE DON’T NEED TO BE HAVING
by Victor Clements
Introduction
Over the next few months, you are likely to see a lot of argument/ debate taking place about how best to manage our deer in Scotland. “Nothing new about that!”, you might say, but the dividing lines this time are likely to be much deeper and more fundamental, centred around deer welfare and statutory intervention, but with this based on opinion more than evidence.
The Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) is “fundamentally and unanimously opposed”, with the Association of Deer Management Groups (ADMG) speaking out as well, and lawyers are already briefed. It is likely that those on the deer side of the argument will win, but perhaps not without a lot of noise first. There is a way of avoiding that, which I am going to set out here.
There is a lot of pent up anger coming to the surface now, largely because practitioners have had their views dismissed on this over many years, with Scottish Government Ministers seeming to do whatever they want to do anyway. There is a growing consensus among practitioners that “if you are not going to listen to us, then we are not going to listen to you”.
The SGA, who represent the vast majority of those charged with managing deer in Scotland have refused to take part in the current consultation, or to give that credence of any sort.
Background
In early 2020, a report was produced by the Deer Working Group (DWG), charged with making recommendations on improving deer management in Scotland. Scottish Ministers chose the authors, which included no deer practitioners or deer management group personnel, and there was no consultation.
The 99 recommendations went to the Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham MSP, who considered them and gave a Scottish Government view. This was published in spring 2021, the day before parliament broke up for re- election, with the Environment Secretary not standing again, thereby avoiding any responsibility for the process she started.
There had been no opportunity to debate in parliament, so no scrutiny, and no checks and balances. Nature Scot, formerly Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), were then to take forward the recommendations, some of which needed legislative change, and some of which just required different ways of working. There has still been no debate in parliament.
Now for the first time, we see a consultation taking place, preparing the way for primary legislation in 2024/25, as stated in the recent Programme for Government.
However, there has been a foretaste of things to come, and the signals are not good. The Scottish Government removed the closed seasons for all male deer last autumn under secondary legislation. Almost all practitioners were opposed, but the notable feature of this was that the “consultation” ended at 5 pm on a Friday afternoon, and ScotGov announced its intention at 10 am on the Monday morning.
We can be fairly certain that they were not working all weekend processing the results. It is this fake consultation, legally questionable, which has persuaded people that there is no point in taking part in a similar exercise again now. The government’s card has been marked, and busy working people are not going to waste their time with it.
Areas of argument
There are two main issues involved with this:
If ScotGov would listen, then it should be possible to resolve the first relatively quickly, and maybe thereby earn some goodwill to deal with the second proposal in a more considered way.
The hind season
The Scottish Government are proposing to extend the current season for culling hinds, both earlier and later in the season. Practitioners object on the grounds that earlier intervention risks orphaning dependent calves, as well as it being distasteful to cull calves which are so young. In the spring time, culling later means a much bigger foetus, and this is where the emotional strain and indeed disgust comes in for many people.
However, this is an unnecessary argument to be having, and the Scottish Government do not need to go here and risk alienating people and making everything else much more difficult. There are a number of reasons why.
First and foremost, there already is flexibility in Scotland for stalkers in the lowlands and in forestry to extend the season, if necessary, under the General Authorisation, and this works well, with little administrative input required. Anyone with legitimate woodland or agriculture protection concerns can do this, and no-one objects to that.
This provision does not exist in the uplands on open hill ground, but this is where the difference between the Highlands and lowlands/ forestry needs to be understood.
In lowland Scotland where deer have access to both trees for shelter and farmland to graze on, the animals can hide in the trees, making it harder to count, locate or cull them. Often, the population is under- estimated, and deer often lie up and semi- hibernate in the depths of winter, making them difficult to target.
They may only become apparent in March when grass is greening up in the fields. Such an environment has low mortality and high recruitment, and there is a lot of potential for doing real damage to trees and crops. Some flexibility in these situations makes sense, with the greater evil being to let deer populations get away to a point where they become difficult to control.
The open hills are different.
By definition, you can see your deer, you can count them, you can stalk them and you can shoot them without obstacles in your way. Mortality is higher and recruitment is lower. All these things make it easier for you to control your population, and there are few stalkers in Scotland who cannot achieve their hind cull in-season.
Of course, Nature Scot / ScotGov are very aware of all of this. They are simply targeting the Highlands to make it look as though they are doing something, while struggling to get to terms with where the real deer problems actually are. For those who don’t know, three quarters of all deer in Scotland are in the lowlands and in forestry, not on the open mountains of the Highlands. All the data that is available supports this view.
Further reading:
I am involved with several reduction culls at the moment, including some estates having to take double their normal cull or more, for woodland or other environmental reasons. Almost all have been delivered within season with no controversy, with a few with access to forestry needing to go on to 31st March for a small proportion of their numbers. The key is to focus on your target, agree an allocation with your neighbours, and then resource your efforts to make sure it is completed. Everyone can do this. If you do not achieve your cull, you can do more next year if you think you need to.
We have all seen people who do not get on with their hind cull early in the season, and are suddenly trying to catch up in late February and March, and having to apply for authorizations. This is bad practice and bad management. Better focus is the answer, and if you have got that, then you are producing venison when it is in better condition and in higher demand, with higher weights and better prices, and everything works much more effectively. Spring shot hinds are a poor advertisement for the venison industry, which needs all the help it can get at the moment. We need to encourage good practice, not reward bad practice, and yet government seems determined to back the wrong approach.
The Scottish Government have adopted this line now of saying, “Well, no-one is forcing you to do this”, and to an extent, that is correct. Almost no-one will. However, if you are the employee of a public agency, or an NGO, or a contractor working for them (often SGA members), you may well be compelled to do so, risking your job or income if you don’t. Some of the new “green lairds” may also decide this is the thing to do to ingratiate themselves with the environmental lobby, and bringing pressure to bear. The SGA certainly has had feedback and complaints to this end in the past, and people have left the industry because of it.
The Scottish Government can avoid this argument very easily by simply recognizing the difference between upland and lowland/ woodland situations, accepting that provision is already in place for the latter, and encouraging co-operation in the uplands as required, using their other statutory measures to achieve this if necessary.
Legislation or change is not the answer to every problem. You use the tools you have first.
Deer Management Nature Restoration Orders
The argument here is different, and it is worth discussing what is actually required. That is a useful thing to do.
The proposal to introduce DMNROs is the centrepiece of the new potential legislation. They are an additional statutory instrument that allows Nature Scot to intervene in a geographic area.
Nature Scot already have such powers, of course. Under the Deer (Scotland) Act 1996 (as amended) they can enter your land, kill deer and send you the bill, and can do all sorts of things less than that. They can insist on you delivering a deer management plan, either agreed with you, or decided by them. They can also fine you or even jail you if you don’t do this. The current legislation allows Nature Scot to intervene whenever there is damage taking place, or there is a threat of damage.
It allows them to intervene in one way where landowners are in agreement with them but need help, and in another if they are not engaging or are being obstructive. I would say that current legislation allows Nature Scot to intervene in just about every conceivable situation, and the 1996 Act is arguably 25 years ahead of its time. It is certainly a much better piece of legislation than what is being suggested now.
However, some bright spark in Nature Scot (or Scottish Govt) has made the intellectual differentiation between damage and restoration ie: improvement above the current condition.
The problem with this is that what is best suited to a particular piece of land can often be subjective. So, legislation based on evidence and checks and balances is to be replaced with new legislation based on opinion. This is why the lawyers will almost certainly strike it down. Just about everyone can see that at this stage.
Now, we do of course want to restore habitats, but the best way of doing this is to incentivize restoration, and to send people clear signals on what you want them to do.
There is a large and consistent budget put against peatland restoration in Scotland at the moment. Landowners have responded to that by restoring peatland. There is a target for planting 18,000 ha of woodland, but a budget for only 9,000 ha. That can’t work. If government wants to see trees being grown in particular, it needs to be consistent and coherent, and it needs to fund such behaviour. This is how you achieve restoration, and landowners will buy in to this if you have got the mechanisms right.
However, we do have to recognize that in the natural world, many situations are not black and white. There are many shades of grey, different things may or may not happen in different combinations of circumstances, and time, or perhaps more time, is often the key factor, something which politicians seldom have. The average working life of an environment- type minister in the Scottish Parliament is not very long. We have had so many since 1999, with most of them being long forgotten.
Recording what is there at the moment on a particular piece of ground is one thing, but recording what might be there in the future but which is not there now is another matter entirely. There is no way of doing that.
When debating what legislation is required to restore our uplands in particular, whichever minister is responsible needs to envisage themselves in that courtroom, where the judge will be focused on evidence, not opinion.
Part of me thinks it would be best just to let ScotGov walk into a trap of their own making, and then they can repent at leisure, but this is expensive for the public purse, and disruptive for land managers.
What we really lack in Scotland is not the necessary legislation, but the will to use the powers that we have already got. Nature Scot simply need to intervene just once using the 1996 Act with full cost recovery, and people will quickly change their tune about them, and might perhaps come to admire them for having the resolve to do this. The need for evidence is the check & balance that we need to keep things right, so the provision cannot be improperly applied.
Conclusion
How can you introduce legislation based on opinion when our opinions are all different? You can’t. It is not possible.
The judge will not be persuaded by that. We can all see that at the outset.
If there is a legislative window available for this, then use it to close any loopholes in existing legislation, and allow Nature Scot to operate with greater confidence. That would be a much better way to go forwards.
That would also provide some evidence that the Scottish Government are listening and that people have been heard, and that would be progress too.
Victor Clements is a native woodland advisor working in Highland Perthshire. He is secretary to the Breadalbane DMG among others and has worked extensively on deer management plans throughout Scotland over the past fifteen years, and on native woodland schemes for long before that.
