Wildlife Management (Grouse) Bill consultation response

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY UGH­DAR­RAS PÀIRC NÀISEANTA A’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH

Sam Turn­er Wild­life Man­age­ment Team Nat­ur­al Resources Divi­sion Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment 3H South, Vic­tor­ia Quay Edin­burgh EH6 6QQ

14 The Square Grant­own-on-Spey Moray PH26 3HG (t) 01479 873535 (f) 01479 873527 enquiries@​cairngorms.​co.​uk www​.cairngorms​.co​.uk @cairngorms.co.uk

Date: 8^th Decem­ber 2022

Dear Sam,

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Response to the Wild­life Man­age­ment (Grouse) Bill consultation

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (CNPA) wel­comes the oppor­tun­ity to respond to the con­sulta­tion on the Wild­life Man­age­ment (Grouse) Bill. Moor­land makes up over 50% of the Nation­al Park and its man­age­ment plays a sig­ni­fic­ant role in how land man­agers in the Park can con­trib­ute to achiev­ing nation­al land use ambi­tions and policy priorities.

The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan sets out how the CNPA and part­ners plan to work with moor­land man­agers to adapt to and mit­ig­ate against the twin nature and cli­mate emer­gen­cies, while work­ing to main­tain the socio-eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies asso­ci­ated with sport­ing estates. In par­tic­u­lar the object­ive A5 to ​“Increase the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of moor­land man­age­ment to ensure great­er spe­cies and struc­tur­al diversity” and asso­ci­ated tar­get to see ​“A meas­ur­able and sus­tained increase in home range, occu­pa­tion and breed­ing suc­cess of golden eagle, hen har­ri­er, mer­lin and per­eg­rine across the Nation­al Park”.

CNPA see effect­ive Grouse Moor Licens­ing and Muir­burn Licens­ing as integ­ral to achiev­ing out­comes and object­ives in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, and thus the region­al pub­lic policy and priorities.

Your sin­cerely

Andy Ford Dir­ect­or of Nature and Cli­mate Change

Licens­ing of Grouse Shooting

1. Do you agree that the licens­ing of grouse shoot­ing should be intro­duced to deter rap­tor per­se­cu­tion and wild­life crime linked to grouse moor management?

Yes. This is in line with the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan Object­ive A5 and the asso­ci­ated actions. There is strong evid­ence that rap­tor per­se­cu­tion con­tin­ues to be an issue and that cur­rent reg­u­la­tions are not an effect­ive deterrent. We think a Grouse Moor Licens­ing sys­tem has the poten­tial to be an effect­ive deterrent.

1. Do you agree that the landowner/​occupier/​person respons­ible for or account­able for the man­age­ment decisions and actions should be respons­ible for acquir­ing and main­tain­ing the licence for the tak­ing of grouse on a par­tic­u­lar piece of land?

Yes. The per­son who holds the shoot­ing rights for grouse should apply for the licence and be the named licence hold­er. This makes for a trans­par­ent pro­cess which aligns liab­il­ity clearly with own­ers or ten­ants who have ulti­mate man­age­ment respons­ib­il­ity; min­im­ising the risk of employ­ees or rep­res­ent­at­ives tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity in the event of a breach of licence conditions.

The licence should apply to the indi­vidu­al who holds the shoot­ing rights for an area of land and that licence should be attached to a map show­ing the bound­ar­ies to which the licence applies. Remov­al of a licence would mean that no grouse shoot­ing could take place on that ground until the mat­ter had been prop­erly con­sidered by the licens­ing authority.

It is import­ant that there is a strong rela­tion­ship between a Grouse Moor Licence, landown­ers and sport­ing ten­ants. Legis­la­tion should ensure that a sport­ing ten­ant who loses a licence can­not simply be replaced by a new ten­ancy, without prop­er con­sid­er­a­tion by the licens­ing authority.

Con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to ensur­ing clar­ity in the licence where there are over­lap­ping respons­ib­il­it­ies between landown­ers and sport­ing tenants/​partners on a grouse moor.

1. Do you think that the per­son wish­ing to shoot grouse on land that they do not own, or occupy, should be required to check that the per­son who owns the land has a licence which allows for the tak­ing of grouse on that area of land?

No, not if they are a shoot­ing guest.

If you answered ​‘No’, please state what oth­er option/​s you think we should con­sider (max 150 words).

The estates which shoot grouse are well known. Loc­al inform­a­tion is gen­er­ally suf­fi­cient for pub­lic agen­cies to know on which estates grouse shoot­ing takes place and there­fore soon be able to detect where unli­cenced grouse shoot­ing is tak­ing place. The risk of unli­cenced grouse shoot­ing occur­ring would seem low. Guest income is a key part of the grouse moor busi­ness mod­el. Require­ments on the guest could be per­ceived as oner­ous and a licens­ing scheme should look to keep poten­tial bar­ri­ers to income gen­er­a­tion at a min­im­um. An assur­ance that the estate has the neces­sary licens­ing in place could be provided by the estate as part of their com­mer­cial cli­ent operations.

A breach of the licence by a guest should poten­tially carry sanc­tions against the licence hold­er. It should be the respons­ib­il­ity of the licence hold­er to ensure all oper­a­tions relat­ing to grouse shoot­ing on their land are car­ried out leg­ally and responsibly.

1. If we intro­duce a licens­ing scheme, do you agree that NatureScot should be the licens­ing authority?

Yes

1. Do you think that a licence should be gran­ted for a max­im­um peri­od of one year (renew­able on an annu­al basis thereafter)?

No.

If you answered ​‘No’, please state what oth­er option/​s you think we should con­sider (max 150 words).

CNPA does not see a need for an annu­al licence. Hav­ing an annu­al licence cre­ates admin­is­tra­tion and cost, to little or no per­ceiv­able bene­fit towards achiev­ing the object­ives of the licens­ing scheme. A licence should be applied for by the hold­er of the shoot­ing rights for each area of land where people want to shoot grouse. That licence should then be held per­man­ently until either the hold­er of shoot­ing rights changes or the licence con­di­tions are breached.

1. Do you think that the civil rather than the crim­in­al bur­den of proof is an accept­able test for the applic­a­tion of sanc­tions in rela­tion to grouse moor licences?

Yes. His­tory shows it is very dif­fi­cult to secure con­vic­tions for wild­life crimes as crimes are com­mit­ted in remote areas where there is little chance of being wit­nessed. Tech­no­logy in some cases makes it easi­er to detect crimes, but it also makes it much easi­er to com­mit undetec­ted crimes. A civil bur­den of proof has been applied suc­cess­fully to the issue of Gen­er­al Licence restric­tions and it should also be applied to Grouse Moor Licence sanc­tions. The loss of a licence should not be con­sidered the only sanc­tion which could be applied. Inspec­tion regimes and pay­ment in rela­tion to those regimes are also options which could be applied.

1. Do you agree that record keep­ing or report­ing require­ments should be part of the licence conditions?

Yes. The pur­pose of the Grouse Moor Licence is to act as a deterrent to rap­tor per­se­cu­tion, there­fore it would make sense for licensees to keep and share records regard­ing rap­tor pop­u­la­tions. The tar­get for sus­tain­able moor­land man­age­ment in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan is ​“A meas­ur­able and sus­tained increase in the home range, occu­pa­tion and breed­ing suc­cess of golden eagle, hen har­ri­er, mer­lin and per­eg­rine across the Nation­al Park.” A require­ment to sur­vey and mon­it­or rap­tor pop­u­la­tions as part of the licens­ing scheme would greatly help meas­ure pro­gress towards this tar­get and more widely, the suc­cess of licens­ing in elim­in­at­ing persecution.

There is also a risk that data gath­er­ing and report­ing are per­ceived as an unne­ces­sary bur­den on legit­im­ate busi­ness activ­it­ies, where the pur­pose of data col­lec­tion is not clear. It is not obvi­ous to what pur­pose grouse bag, trap­ping or oth­er such data would be put.

1. Do you agree that, where a per­son holds a val­id licence, and there is suf­fi­cient evid­ence to show that, on the bal­ance of prob­ab­il­it­ies a wild­life crime has been com­mit­ted on their prop­erty, NatureScot should have the power to impose the fol­low­ing pen­al­ties: • Issue a writ­ten warn­ing • Tem­por­ar­ily sus­pend a licence • Per­man­ently revoke a licence

Yes to all pen­al­ties above, sub­ject to an appro­pri­ate appeals pro­cess also being put in place. Thought should be giv­en to a slid­ing scale of pen­al­ties depend­ent on the sever­ity of the crime and the level of proof that a crime has been com­mit­ted eg a con­vic­tion for rap­tor per­se­cu­tion should lead to per­man­ent revoc­a­tion of a licence. A crow trap without an appro­pri­ate ID label might lead to a writ­ten warning.

Muir­burn

1. Cur­rently a licence is only required to under­take Muir­burn out­with the Muir­burn sea­son. Do you agree that a licence should be required to under­take Muir­burn regard­less of the time of year that it is undertaken?

Yes. This is in line with the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan Object­ive A7 and the asso­ci­ated actions. Muir­burn for all object­ives requires to be bet­ter regulated.

1. If we intro­duce a licens­ing scheme, do you agree that NatureScot should be the licens­ing authority?

Yes, but it is cru­cial that CNPA is a stat­utory con­sul­tee on muir­burn licens­ing in the Nation­al Park to ensure that it ties in closely with the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

1. Do you agree that there should be a ban on muir­burn on peat­land unless it is done under licence as part of a hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion pro­gramme approved by NatureScot?

Yes. How­ever, the defin­i­tion of peat­land as a hab­it­at must be cla­ri­fied. Cur­rently the defin­i­tion of peat­land is not clear or com­monly under­stood. This could lead to dis­crep­an­cies and mis­un­der­stand­ings with the risk of those car­ry­ing out muir­burn being pen­al­ised for act­ing with­in their inter­pret­a­tion and scope.

1. Oth­er than for hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion, pub­lic safety (e.g. fire pre­ven­tion), and research, are there any oth­er pur­poses for which you think muir­burn on peat­land should be permitted?

No.

1. Do you agree that the defin­i­tion of peat set out in the muir­burn code should be amended to 40 cm?

CNPA feels there is not suf­fi­cient sci­entif­ic basis for a clear con­clu­sion to be drawn. Whilst it is gen­er­ally accep­ted amongst prac­ti­tion­ers that peat is rarely set on fire by muir­burn, there is some evid­ence that muir­burn allows the top lay­er of peat to dry out, becom­ing hydro­phobic and poten­tially redu­cing the func­tion­al­ity of the whole peat column. CNPA’s recom­mend­a­tion is that a pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ciple is applied.

In prac­tice, car­ry­ing out, mon­it­or­ing and reg­u­lat­ing muir­burn based on sys­tem using peat depths is likely be very chal­len­ging. Peat depth can vary across the land­scape at a very fine scale, a fire may not pre­cisely fol­low the pre­scribed path and prob­ing to determ­ine peat depths in advance of light­ing a fire may be dif­fi­cult. A clear, detailed and work­able meth­od­o­logy would be required.

It is pos­sible deep peat could be iden­ti­fied based on overly­ing veget­a­tion and on the pres­ence of indic­at­or spe­cies e.g. Sphag­num and Erio­phor­um, acknow­ledging that whilst suit­able in most situ­ations there are areas of deep peat under pure heath­er swards which could go undetec­ted by a search for indic­at­or spe­cies. CNPA also recom­mends fur­ther invest­ig­a­tion of the pos­sib­il­ity of estab­lish­ing veget­a­tion cov­er and peat depth by remote sensing.

1. Any fur­ther comments?

CNPAs pref­er­ence would be for a Muir­burn Licens­ing sys­tem based on con­straint maps where CNPA is a stat­utory con­sul­tee on con­straint maps with­in the CNP.

Every land­hold­ing where burn­ing is planned should have a con­straint map which should define areas where burn­ing is allowed and where it is not. Con­straints should include blanket bog, steep slopes, areas of wind clipped heath­er, juni­per, mont­ane wil­lows and oth­er red and amber lis­ted spe­cies, water courses, nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tion and areas of deep peat where these have been iden­ti­fied. There may be oth­er poten­tial con­straints which should be con­sidered to achieve more struc­tur­al and spe­cies diversity in moorlands.

Each con­straint map should be agreed between the land­hold­ing and the Licens­ing agency. Maps should be re-nego­ti­ated and/​or renewed every 3 – 5 years. This will allow con­straints to be amended as site based know­ledge improves, spa­tial pri­or­it­ies change or as sci­entif­ic know­ledge is updated.