‘Just 433 people own half of Scotland: here’s why that’s wrong & must change’ (Opinion piece by Max Wiszniewski, REVIVE Coalition)

There’s an opinion piece in The Scotsman today written by Max Wiszniewski, Campaign Manager for REVIVE, the coalition for grouse moor reform.

The article is open access here.

Max’s article contains some interesting details such as:

‘Despite taking up 57 per cent of rural Scotland, private estates provide just three per cent of rural homes. This figure was obtained from recent research published by Scottish Land and Estates. The same report showed that 78 per cent of estates were still involved in ‘country sports’ like grouse and deer shooting‘.

And

‘Despite claims from the industry that sport shooting is good for the economy, it only contributes about 0.03 per cent of Scotland’s economy. In other words, if Scotland’s economy was the height of Ben Nevis, sport shooting’s contribution would be the size of a bottle of Irn-Bru. Is this worth all the animal cruelty and environmental devastation that sport shooting still causes to this day?

Land use is about choices, and the consequences of these choices define whether Scotland’s rural economies and rural ecologies thrive or not. Currently, the concentrated ownership of Scotland’s land means that these choices are made by very few people. For the benefit of whom?‘

The article is a primer for the REVIVE Coalition’s national conference this weekend at Perth Concert Hall, where the focus is on land reform and will see the launch of a year-long initiative called the Big Land Question, to identify how the ownership and management of Scotland’s land could be improved for the majority rather than just a few large landowners.

Tickets cost £8 (£5 concession) and are available from the venue HERE.