{"id":156547,"date":"2025-09-14T16:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T16:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/156547\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T16:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T16:56:08","slug":"highland-estates-clash-with-nature-campaigners-over-wild-deer-culls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/156547\/","title":{"rendered":"Highland estates clash with nature campaigners over wild deer culls"},"content":{"rendered":"

It takes five hours traversing ridges and rough heather \u2014 battling swarms of midges in the morning and torrential afternoon rain \u2014 for Duncan to fire an easy shot at his unaware quarry, an ageing red deer stag.<\/p>\n

In the shadow of Perthshire\u2019s Schiehallion mountain, he bleeds the 65kg \u201cbeast\u201d, its entrails left for ravens and raptors. He then drags the carcass down the hill, where an all-terrain vehicle provides a bone-crunching ride back to the larder.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople ask me why I shoot deer,\u201d said the 29-year-old stalker for a local estate. \u201cWhat are they having for dinner? Chicken raised in a crowded shed.\u201d<\/p>\n

In rural Scotland, landowners and environmental campaigners are clashing over the practice of deer management, with some estates fearing the loss of traditional hunting incomes as campaigners argue for more culling to protect forestry and peatlands.<\/p>\n

An estimated 1mn-plus wild deer in Scotland are jeopardising nature restoration efforts by eating saplings, damaging habitats and trampling peatland, which releases carbon emissions and contributes to climate change. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Scottish government has set ambitious targets on nature and climate,\u201d said David Fleetwood, policy director at the John Muir Trust, a conservation charity. \u201cTo meet them,\u00a0deer\u00a0densities need to reduce to levels that allow for natural regeneration.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 2030, Scotland aims to halt biodiversity loss and achieve widespread ecosystem restoration by 2045, in line with its net zero emissions target.<\/p>\n

\"AFor many estates, sporting income offsets the costs of hiring a deer stalker \u00a9 Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert\/FT<\/p>\n

The government hopes raising the cull rate of deer could help meet this ambition. <\/p>\n

It could also reduce the cost of mitigation measures, such as fencing, and boost the venison industry, providing more of the lean, climate-friendly protein into the national diet.<\/p>\n

Yet the difficult and exhausting process of shooting deer, often in gruelling wintry conditions, is a practical obstacle to nature agency NatureScot\u2019s target of increasing the estimated total annual cull of about 200,000 by 50,000.<\/p>\n

Protect the Wild, which campaigns against hunting, said \u201cwildlife management\u201d should not be outsourced to \u201ctrophy hunters and armed tourists\u201d. Any control should be through non-lethal methods and by re-establishing predators into the ecosystem, it added.<\/p>\n

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But with 80 per cent of the annual deer cull carried out mainly by estates, charities and individuals, the natural environment bill is proposing tighter regulation via mandates for landowners to cull more deer if nature restoration efforts are threatened. <\/p>\n

The bill introduces new powers to support deer management where high herd numbers prevent work to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises from being effective, the government said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole point of bringing deer numbers down is to meet climate targets and restore degraded nature \u2014 we are in bad shape in terms of biodiversity,\u201d said Ariane Burgess, a Scottish Green MSP who sits on the rural affairs committee. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The legislation was unclear about the conditions under which NatureScot could demand landowners cull herds, said Ross Ewing, director of moorland at Scottish Land & Estates. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be perilous for them,\u201d he added. \u201cWe can\u2019t say whether the legislation will be reasonable and proportionate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Environmentally focused estates that concentrate on growing trees and restoring peatland have an interest in larger culls than landowners who want to maximise the sporting potential of stalking. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The estate where Duncan works, which engages in farming sheep and Highland cattle as well as stalking, fears that incentives are being overshadowed by regulatory mandates. <\/p>\n

That lack of balance threatens to upend the voluntary system of deer control needed to manage herds that wander across property boundaries, he said.<\/p>\n

\"RollingWild deer in Scotland are jeopardising restoration by eating saplings, damaging habitats and trampling peatland \u00a9 Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert\/FT<\/p>\n

\u201cDeer management has been portrayed as polarised, but we have more in common than we used to think,\u201d said Tom Turnbull, chair of the Association of Deer Management Groups. \u201cWe are somewhere on a spectrum heading in a similar direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

His estate near Loch Fyne is engaged in agriculture, forestry and peatland restoration, while also relying on some income from stalking guests. Over-regulation could undermine the voluntary nature of collaborative deer culls, he added. <\/p>\n

\u201cStalkers themselves know if they reduce numbers too much, they are shooting themselves out of a job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For many estates, sporting income offsets the costs of hiring a deerstalker and \u00a31 a kilo loss on every carcass sold for venison.<\/p>\n

Of the 553,000 people involved in shooting in 2022, almost a quarter were deer stalkers, according to a British Association for Shooting and Conservation commissioned report. Shooting contributed \u00a33.3bn to the UK economy and supported 67,000 jobs, it said.<\/p>\n

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Ewing, himself an amateur stalker, said incentives for increasing the cull in lowland areas could be \u201cmore radical and ambitious\u201d, including payments per carcass, especially of females, as well as building more community larders to facilitate sales into the venison market.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can often generate more from sporting guests,\u201d he said. Guests pay up to \u00a31,200 to shoot a stag.<\/p>\n

NatureScot is piloting incentivisation schemes, including paying \u00a370 for each adult female deer culled above a minimum threshold of five deer per 100 hectares. <\/p>\n

If the government succeeds in reducing the deer population, eating habits may also have to change.<\/p>\n

Venison, once the preserve of specialist butchers, is increasingly found in supermarkets, fuelling a 35 per cent increase in sales over five years for Dundee\u2019s Highland Game products, including burgers and steaks.<\/p>\n

When Christian Nissen founded the company in 1997, it processed 15,000 deer a year \u2014 almost all of which was exported. Now, only a fifth of its 75,000 deer a year are exported as the domestic market has developed.<\/p>\n

But any increase in what Highland Game describes as the deer \u201charvest\u201d would require further investment into the marketing and processing infrastructure of companies such as his.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine what we could do if we could raise the profile and benefits of venison and get our protein up the agenda,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It takes five hours traversing ridges and rough heather \u2014 battling swarms of midges in the morning and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-156547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}