There is an air of desperation about the relentless lobbying of MSPs by the rewilding/reforestation lobby in final efforts to use the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill as a means to take all deer management into full public control regardless of cost to the tax payer and the sweeping deer culls they envisage. Misinformation based on long out-dated assumptions about red deer numbers and their impacts on the environment really cannot go unchallenged.
Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) estimated on the basis of their series of counts that there were 275,000 red deer (not 400,000) in the Highland open deer range, when they reported to the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee in 2013. That equates to an average of 8.4 deer per sq km over 3,260,000 hectares. There are 815,000 breeding sheep in the same area, summer population 2,090,000 (Scottish Government data 2014).
As to environmental impacts, 85.3% of the features on designated sites in the red deer range are in “favourable condition, recovering due to management or unfavourable but with site condition monitoring herbivore targets being met” (SNH 2015).
SNH analysis of the Native Woodland Survey of Scotland (Forestry Commission 2014) indicates that 49.6 per cent of native woodland lies in the red deer range, 161,011 hectares. Of that total 36,668 hectares (22.8 per cent) are in unfavourable condition owing to impacts by wild and domestic herbivores. So there is plenty of room for further improvement but this is already better than the Government 2020 target of 60 per cent.
The argument against temporary deer fencing to jump start regeneration, of which there are countless successful examples, is spurious. Even if deer populations are reduced to the very low levels advocated, the last handful will always go to a regenerating forest where they find food and shelter in hard weather, and that is when the damage occurs to unprotected woodlands and plantations. And, by the way, deer were not to blame for the recent devastating flooding.
Can we please leave the mythology behind and look at the evidence? It is possible for deer and trees to coexist and for those who care deeply about both to work together to deliver a healthy environment, integrated land management and sustainable employment. So let’s make a start.
Yours etc
Richard Cooke
Chairman
Association of Deer Management Groups