240322CNPABDPaper3Managingdeerconsultation

Form­al Board Paper 3 22 March 2024 Page 1 of 4

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Man­aging deer for cli­mate and nature: consultation

Pre­pared by: Colin McCle­an, Head of Land Management

Pur­pose

This paper sets out the Parks Authority’s response to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment con­sulta­tion on ​‘Man­aging Deer for Cli­mate and Nature’ — Man­aging deer for cli­mate and nature: Con­sulta­tion (www.gov.scot)

Recom­mend­a­tion:

The board is invited to:

a) Approve the response to the ​‘Man­aging Deer for Cli­mate and Nature’ con­sulta­tion set out at Appendix 1

Back­ground

1. This con­sulta­tion builds on the Deer Work­ing Group recom­mend­a­tions that were accep­ted by Scot­tish Government.

2. The Park Author­ity policy pos­i­tion is clearly set out in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2022 — 2027.

3. Object­ive — Reduce the neg­at­ive impacts of red deer and oth­er herb­i­vores across the Nation­al Park to enable wood­lands to expand, heath­er loss to be reversed, peat­lands to recov­er and wider biod­iversity and land­scape enhance­ments to take place.

4. Tar­get — Aver­age open range red deer dens­it­ies in each deer man­age­ment group are a max­im­um of five to eight per km2 by 2030.

5. Tar­get — Non-nat­ive sika and fal­low deer will be con­tained with­in their cur­rent dis­tri­bu­tion in the Nation­al Park by 2030

Form­al Board Paper 3 22 March 2024 Page 2 of 4

1. This con­sulta­tion provides an oppor­tun­ity to ensure that the nation­al frame­work helps the Park Author­ity and part­ners to achieve its stated object­ive for the nation­al park on deer management.

Con­sulta­tion Structure

1. The con­sulta­tion is broken down into 6 themes. These are:

• Theme 1: Enhan­cing the nat­ur­al environment.

• Theme 2: Com­puls­ory powers and compliance.

• Theme 3: Deer welfare

• Theme 4: Changes to the close seasons.

• Theme 5: Venison

• Theme 6: Kept and farmed deer

1. The Park Author­ity pro­posed response to the con­sulta­tion is set out at Appendix 1.

Form­al Board Paper 3 22 March 2024 Page 3 of 4

Appendix 1 — Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Con­sulta­tion Response

Intro­duc­tion

1. The con­sulta­tion on Man­aging Deer for Nature and Cli­mate is of great import­ance for the long-term man­age­ment of deer with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. This includes the man­age­ment of red deer in the open range and with­in expand­ing wood­lands, the man­age­ment of roe deer in agri­cul­tur­al land and wood­land and the abil­ity to con­trol invas­ive spe­cies, such as, sika deer.

Theme 1 Enhan­cing the nat­ur­al environment

1. The Nation­al Park Author­ity sup­ports the prin­ciple of Deer Man­age­ment Nature Res­tor­a­tion Orders (DMNROs) that provide Nature Scot with a power to require nature enhance­ment in addi­tion to their exist­ing powers to pre­vent dam­age. The move from just con­sid­er­ing dam­age to look­ing for enhance­ment is cru­cial to tack­ling the twin nature and cli­mate crisis and rec­ti­fies some of the inad­equa­cies of the cur­rent reg­u­lat­ory approach.

2. How­ever, there is a lot of detail that needs to be con­sidered and the Nation­al Park Author­ity would like to see fur­ther inform­a­tion on the detail around where DMNROs would be applied and what the cri­ter­ia would be for select­ing these areas, how DMNRO’s would be applied in areas with a sig­ni­fic­ant mix of herb­i­vores and how DMNRO’s tie in with exist­ing sec­tion 7, 8 & 10 powers for NatureScot, as well as, oth­er powers such as Land Man­age­ment Orders?

3. There is also a need to ensure that the devel­op­ment of DMNROs are linked with the devel­op­ment of long-term deer man­age­ment incent­ives to ensure that where deer levels are taken down to levels where sport­ing income falls there is sup­port for main­tain­ing deer man­age­ment to deliv­er pub­lic policy out­comes e.g. wood­land expan­sion, peat­land res­tor­a­tion etc.

4. The Park Author­ity would wish to be a stat­utory con­sul­tee on the intro­duc­tion of any DMNRO with­in the Nation­al Park and would expect DMNROs in the Nation­al Park to be linked to the deliv­ery of the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan out­comes and targets.

Form­al Board Paper 3 22 March 2024 Page 4 of 4

Theme 4: Changes to the close seasons

1. The Park Author­ity sup­ports the date for the close sea­son for hinds being moved from 16 Feb­ru­ary to the 31 March but does not sup­port the move­ment of the date from the 20 Octo­ber to the 30 September.

2. Any change to the close sea­son for female deer is an attempt to bal­ance the abil­ity to reduce deer dam­age with the need to pro­tect depend­ent deer calves. Any change to the deer sea­son still leaves the decision of when to shoot at the dis­cre­tion of each landown­er. Extend­ing the open sea­son for all spe­cies of female deer up to end March will enable those who wish to shoot females to do so without increased wel­fare con­cerns, but will not com­pel those who do not wish to cull female deer to do so.

3. How­ever, shoot­ing female deer with depend­ent calves in Octo­ber can cre­ate deer wel­fare prob­lems. Any calf orphaned in Octo­ber will almost cer­tainly die from expos­ure, inad­equate nutri­tion and / or lack of know­ledge on how to cope with severe weath­er events etc. There is a reas­on­able argu­ment for retain­ing the date for the end of the cur­rent close sea­son for all female deer as 20^th October.

Theme 5: Venison

1. The Park Author­ity would like to see far more work car­ried out in Scot­land to pro­mote and expand the use of ven­ison espe­cially with the increase in cull­ing that is pro­posed to be car­ried out in Scot­land over the com­ing years. There is a real oppor­tun­ity to look at brand­ing and to look at more mar­ket­ing of the product in Scotland.

2. The pro­pos­al to abol­ish the Ven­ison Deal­ers Licences (VDL) and to treat deer sim­il­arly to oth­er game has some mer­it. Cur­rently the emphas­is is placed on those who buy ven­ison to hold a VDL. There may be some mer­it in switch­ing that emphas­is so that deer man­agers who sell ven­ison have to hold that licence and there­fore have to report culls more com­pre­hens­ively than currently.

3. Over­all there is a need to ensure the sys­tem provides good levels of trace­ab­il­ity and safe­guards the ven­ison sector.