There’s been a bit of a buzz on Twitter this evening about the Scottish Land and Estates-led initiative, Wildlife Estates Scotland. Apparently the accreditation scheme was launched today by Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse and SNH Chairman Andrew Thin. Nothing yet on the Scottish Land and Estates website but no doubt they’ll be making a big song and dance about it in the coming days.
Hmm. So what do we know about this grand scheme? We blogged about it in 2011 (see here).
We know the main objective is “to demonstrate unequivocally that estates and farms across Scotland are producers of integrated solutions for positive land management and biodiversity“. (Producers of integrated solutions? Christ, who writes this stuff?)
We know that the scheme was first mooted at the end of 2010, just when it looked like the Scottish Government might have been persuaded to endorse an estate-licensing scheme to combat the continuing problem of illegal raptor persecution, as part of the WANE Bill discussions. Coincidental timing? Probably not. The game-shooting industry were up against the ropes and recognised they had to do something to prevent an estate-licensing scheme being forced upon them. Da-da! The Wildlife Estates Initiative was born and the Scottish Government dropped any thoughts of an estate-licensing scheme, for the time being at least.
Since then it has been run as a pilot scheme on a few named (safe) estates in Scotland (see here for the SLE aims and objectives) and now, apparently, it’s being rolled out for other estates to sign up to.
We also know that the WES already has “250 signed up members, from small and medium-sized farms, up to large estates and reserves” (see SLE briefing note here).
It could be a credible scheme, but some answers need to be provided before anyone believes it:
1. Who is going to undertake the biodiversity evaluation of these signed-up estates to ascertain whether they merit accreditation as a Wildlife Estate Scotland?
2. Will the evaluator(s) be an independent body or an organisation with close links to the game-shooting fraternity?
3. Who are the ‘250 signed up members’? Unless the names of these 250 are released for public scrutiny, then this scheme has zero credibility. There needs to be 100% transparency for anyone to take this seriously. Without it, it looks like just another failed attempt at making the game-shooting industry look like they’re cleaning up their act (a bit like this).
We look forward to Scottish Land and Estates publishing the details of the 250 signed up members in due course and we especially look forward to scrutinising each and every one of them.
UPDATE 21st Feb: Scottish Land & Estates have put out a press statement about their ‘conservation crusade’ here.
Environment Minister Paul Wheelhouse’s full statement can be read here.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Just received a tweet from an SNH staff member: Apparently accreditation is open for application. No accreditations yet. ‘Expect announcements when awarded’.
Further clarification last night on Twitter from the Environment Minister. We had asked whether touting the scheme as having ‘250 signed up members’ was a tad misleading?
@PaulWheelhouse: You may be talking cross purposes – there are 250 signed up at level 1. New announcement relates to accreditation at level 2.
@RaptorPersScot: Thanks. To clarify then, there aren’t any accredited estates yet?
@PaulWheelhouse: New process announced as of today with funding to get level 2 accreditations going in earnest. Will watch with interest.
So, thanks to Paul Wheelhouse and to Roger Burton (SNH) for helping us to understand. The line ‘250 signed-up members’ simply means that 250 members want to be seen as a Wildlife Estate but accreditation is still some way off. And we’re yet to find out who will be evaluating the biodiversity of these estates. Hopefully someone independent and not the bloody GWCT!
i wonder if this is coming about due to several readers of this and other blogs writing to the EU asking for prosecution of the United Kingdom for not protecting birds of prey! As Scotland is not independent it would mean them as well.
Sounds like another smoke screen to me to buy them another few years to carry on as usual. there was a report on the news the other night stating Deer poaching was on the increase in a few isolated areas, they were at pains to point out that this was probably the work of organised gangs and the money made from these acts would probably help front other criminal activities. the recent maps showing poisoning incidents in England and Wales and ones produced last year for Scotland show us that banned poisons are being used by gamekeepers the whole lenght of the country, not just a few roague gamekeepers then is it, more like organised crime on an industrial scale. as John pointed out, we need to get the European parliment involved
It is hard not to view this as anything but another cynical delaying tactic by the game-shooting crowd. Much like the letter that over 200 landowners sent to the Environment Minister in 2010 claiming they were against illegal raptor persecution, and much like the six-year long Hen Harrier Dialogue process – lots of fine words but meanwhile down on the ground the killing continues on a widespread industrial scale…
Credible or crap?
Probably crap!
Unknown to him, I was once in the company of a Scottish Land & Estates board member, and this person was spouting the usual nonsense about the need to cull Sparrowhawks and Buzzards.
The 200+ estates/farms/companies has been touted since March 2011, so I am at a loss as to why we don’t know the names of all these estates/companies. With a bit of digging, I have been able to find the following estates/farms/companies as participating in the scheme, which isn’t much considering the SLE and Wildlife Estates Scotland were searched, as was Google;
Abercairny (Crieff)
Abernethy
Allargue
Alvie
Arniston (Midlothian)
Atholl
East Neuk Estates (Fife)
Edinglassie
Glenfalloch (Stirling)
Glenlivet
Langholm
Monymusk Land Company
Possible participants – Mar Lodge, Remony Estate (Perthshire)
Regarding this lack of available information on participants, apart from the Atholl Estate, it is unclear if any other SLE board members have signed up for the project.
Furthermore, considering that the RSPB Abernethy Forest reserve is one of the named estates, I would truly hope that they would not allow such organisations as the GWCT to evaluate the scheme. In fact, if these estates have nothing to hide, then why not allow the RSPB, the BTO or SWT to carry out the evaluations?
And as for the “producers of integrated solutions” garbage, they probably saw that on the side of a van or lorry!
A couple of updates now added to the blog entry:
Press statement from SLE and a copy of the Environment Minister’s full speech.