Tag: scottish parliament

The Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Bill, currently at Stage 2 of its progression through the Scottish Parliament, makes a provision that when assessing whether to issue a grouse shooting and/or muirburn licence the relevant authority (in this case, NatureScot) must consider whether the licence applicant is complying with the relevant new codes of practice.

These new codes of practice, designed to support the new legislation, are anticipated to include detailed guidance on issues such as the use of wildlife traps, medicated grit, muirburn specifications etc and to clarify what will be a statutory requirement and what will be considered guidance as ‘best practice’.

Under the leadership of NatureScot, two working groups have been established to draft these new codes of practice – one group for general grouse shoot management and one group for muirburn. The terms of the new codes will be thrashed out by these groups.

Minister for Environment Gillian Martin MSP has recently written to the Rural Affairs & Islands Committee to provide an update on the formation of these two working groups and the progress they’ve made so far. Here’s her letter:

I was amused by the Minister’s claim that ‘there is broad agreement amongst the members of each Group as to what should be included in the Codes‘.

Really?

Given the organisations involved in the working groups (see the annex at the end of the Minister’s letter), I’d be utterly amazed if there is ‘broad agreement’ about anything!

All the usual suspects from the grouse shooting world are there (BASC, Countryside Alliance, GWCT, Scottish Land & Estates, Scottish Gamekeepers and the Regional Moorland Groups (which are basically subgroups of the SGA and SLE)) and many of them have been vocally opposed to the Bill since it was first introduced last year (e.g. see here).

Are we really expected to believe that they’re now working in harmony with pro-Bill groups such as the RSPB, the Scottish Raptor Study Group, Scottish Wildlife Trust and Cairngorms National Park Authority without making any attempt to water down the terms of the new codes?

Its laughable.

Further to yesterday’s blog about the suddenly-announced two week delay to the Rural Affairs Committee’s deliberations over the Stage 2 amendments of the Wildlife Management & Muirburn Bill (here), an explanation for this delay has now been provided.

And it’s pretty unconvincing, to be honest.

The Convenor of the Rural Affairs & Islands Committee, Finlay Carson MSP (Scottish Conservatives) opened this morning’s meeting by explaining to Committee members that he’d taken the decision to defer due to ‘the weather’.

He felt that as one or two Committee members weren’t able to attend in person, he didn’t want to risk running a hybrid meeting (where members who couldn’t attend in person could attend online) because of the ‘challenges and risks’ that would bring to proceedings.

This explanation was seen as unsatisfactory by two SNP Committee members, Alasdair Allan MSP and Jim Fairlie MSP, who spoke about how hybrid meetings had become common practice since Covid, and indeed that other Committees have managed to handle Stage 2 proceedings perfectly well using this system.

Both SNP members chose their words carefully and clearly wanted it on record that the decision to defer for two weeks was not made by the Committee, but by Finlay Carson alone, as is his prerogative as Convenor. Indeed, both SNP members said the decision had come as a surprise to them and registered their dissatisfaction with the decision.

Alasdair Allan asked for the decision to be taken to a vote by the whole Committee:

“Can I suggest we move to a vote on whether we revert to the original agenda or not?“

Finlay Carson replied:

“That’s not competent. Thank you. We’ll move on…“

That was the end of the discussion and proceedings moved on to an entirely different topic.

If you want to watch this four minute discussion you can see it on the Rural Affairs Committee’s slot on Parliamentary TV (here), starts at 9.06am.

It was interesting to note that as far as I could see, just two Committee members weren’t present at the meeting – Beatrice Wishart MSP (Liberal Democrats & Deputy Convenor of this Committee) and Rachael Hamilton MSP (Scottish Conservatives).

Beatrice Wishart hasn’t played an especially prominent role in this Bill’s proceedings to date but blood sports enthusiast Rachael Hamilton has, and, like her fellow Conservative MSP Finlay Carson, has not been reticent about expressing her fundamental objection to the general principles of the Bill. Indeed, I’d argue she’s been one of the Bill’s fiercest critics (as is her right), at least on this Committee.

Hmm.

Was this huge disruption to Parliamentary proceedings triggered by Rachael’s unavailability? I do wonder.

The good news about this two-week delay is that next week, REVIVE, the Scottish Raptor Study Group and the RSPB are holding a joint reception in the Scottish Parliament which will provide an excellent, and timely, opportunity for MSPs to receive further briefings from those of us who support this Bill and who want some of the more potentially damaging amendments voted down.

Nice.

Earlier this evening I blogged about a two week deferral of voting on the Stage 2 amendments of the Wildlife Management & Muirburn Bill (here).

This deferral decision was made at very short notice and no reason was given for it.

As the evening’s worn on, I’ve heard from a number of people inside the Scottish Parliament who have indicated that political shenanigans may be at play.

To protect confidences I’m not at liberty to say any more at the moment, other than you might want to watch the proceedings of the Rural Affairs & Islands Committee tomorrow morning at 9am (this is the Committee that was due to begin its considerations of the Stage 2 amendments tomorrow). The meeting’s current agenda is here.

The Stage 2 amendments may be returned to the agenda tomorrow morning, or if not, it may become clear why they’ve been removed from tomorrow’s agenda…

Regardless of whether or not deliberations begin tomorrow, it’s quite clear that the Committee’s consideration of the Stage 2 amendments will need to take place over a number of sessions/weeks given the number of lodged amendments so far.

As it stands at the moment (Stage 2 amendments not due to even begin to be considered until 7 February), this goes against a Parliamentary motion passed just last week, ‘That the Parliament agrees that consideration of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill at stage 2 be completed by 9 February 2024‘.

The Rural Affairs & Islands Committee opens for business at 9am tomorrow (Weds 24 Jan) and should be available for viewing on Scottish Parliament TV (here).

UPDATE 24 January 2024: Decision to defer Wildlife Management Bill Stage 2 amendments unconvincingly based on ‘weather’ (here)

Just before Christmas a new scientific paper was published by experts from Leeds University, revealing that burning on deep peat is widespread on many Scottish grouse moors, and that, surprise surprise, land managers were ignoring the new (voluntary) Muirburn Code which suggests burning on peatland should be avoided (see here).

Today, one of the study’s authors, Dominick Spracklen, Professor of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions at the University of Leeds has written an easy-to-understand blog about the study to help the public (and I daresay politicians engaging with the Wildlife Management & Muirburn Bill) understand the importance of minimising the extent of these peatland fires.

It’s well worth a read – here.

A blog reader who works as an upland peatland specialist has written the following blog.

With the Wildlife Management and Muirburn Bill passing through the Scottish Parliament we are soon to see a tightening of the regulation around grouse shooting and burning in the Scottish uplands. This is long overdue, but welcome, nonetheless. So many have fought for so long to get to this point; but the Bill is not over the line yet, with changes possible over the coming weeks.

A recent post on this blog highlighted some of the sorts of changes that could be made by pointing to the amendments lodged by Edward Mountain MSP and one of those jumped out as important. It seems innocuous and inconsequential but the suggestion to change the definition of peat depth from 40cm to 60cm does have implications.

Why does that matter so much? It matters because the Bill is designed to offer protection to peatlands and amendments such as this would weaken that protection.

Under the terms of the Bill, an owner or occupier of land will have to apply for a licence to undertake muirburn, but they can only burn for specific reasons and these reasons are different on different types of land. Where the land is peatland, the owner or occupier may apply for a licence for the purpose of restoring the natural environment, preventing or reducing the risk of wildfires, or research. Where the land is not considered to be peatland, they can apply for a licence to burn for sporting, farming, conservation, wildfire management or research purposes. In effect, burning on peatlands is restricted; land managers will not be able to burn on peatlands for sporting or farming purposes.

Consequently, since the Bill is structured to treat peatlands differently, the definition of what is, and what is not, a peatland, really matters. It determines where different sets of rules apply.  

At present the Bill defines ‘peatland’ as “land where the soil has a layer of peat with a thickness of more than 40 centimetres” (where “peat” means soil which has an organic content of more than 60%).

In one way this definition does represent an improvement on the status quo because the current Muirburn Code refers to 50cm and the lower the threshold the larger the area that is considered to be peatland where the restricted rules apply. But, more fundamentally, these depth thresholds can have perverse consequences because they create artificial thresholds that don’t really exist. The consequence of this definition is that extensive areas of shallow peat of a depth less than 40cm will effectively be treated as ‘not peatland’, despite the fact that they are functionally part of a peatland and actually the most vulnerable areas. The IUCN Peatland Programme calls these areas the ‘lost peatlands’:

Despite these areas containing substantial carbon stores and often being vital to the wider ecology and hydrological function of connected deeper peat deposits, we, for the bureaucratic purpose of setting rules around burning, say that they are not peatlands. The result is that, under the terms of the Bill, a land manager will legitimately be able to burn on shallow peat for grouse shooting or farming purposes.  

The crux of the issue is that the legislation is clearly designed to try and protect peatlands by treating them differently, but at the same time the definition of a peatland limits the benefit.

If we look again at the Edward Mountain suggestion to change the depth definition from 40cm to 60cm, the effect would be to reduce the area that is considered peatland and so reduce the area where the greater restrictions apply. Conversely it would increase the area where burning for sporting and farming purposes would be possible. This would seem to run counter to the intention of the legislation.

Arguably, the best option would be to just stop defining peatlands (for the purposes of burning) by depth and say that we shouldn’t be burning on peat/peaty soil for sporting and farming purposes (noting, of course, that burning for the purpose of nature restoration, wildfire prevention and research would still be allowed). At the time of writing there is still time for this reasonable approach to be taken forward through amendments at Stage 2 or possibly later at Stage 3, so it remains to be seen whether the rhetorical importance that our politicians give to peatlands translates into real decisions in law.

The Scottish Government’s Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Bill is making its way through the parliamentary process. For new readers, this is proposed new legislation to regulate grouse shooting and its associated management practices by way of licensing schemes, introduced because of the continued illegal persecution of birds of prey on many Scottish grouse moors.

The Bill passed Stage 1 on 30 November 2023 (here) when the Parliament voted to approve the general principles of the Bill.

Stage 2 is now fast approaching. This is the stage where any MSP can lodge amendments to the Bill (there is no restriction on how many may be lodged and, given the contentious nature of the Bill, it is anticipated that there will be hundreds of them).The cross-party Rural Affairs & Islands Committee will begin to consider the amendments at a meeting on 24th January 2024.

This may cause some alarm, given that some prominent members of the Rural Affairs Committee, including its Chair, voted against even the general principles of the Bill, but whatever amendments the Committee chooses to accept/reject at Stage 2, there will be an opportunity for amendments to be challenged/overturned at Stage 3, especially where they go against Government policy. [For a useful guide to what happens during the progression of a Bill in the Scottish Parliament, see here].

The deadline for submitting amendments for Stage 2 is 18 January 2024 so as you can imagine, there is a huge amount of background lobbying going on at the moment, both by conservationists and by the game shooting sector, in an attempt to (a) strengthen the Bill [the conservationists] and (b) weaken the Bill [the game shooting industry].

The tabled amendments are all being published on this page so it’s well worth keeping an eye on this over the coming week.

Two MSPs have tabled amendments so far – some are very sensible, others are simply bonkers (but entertaining, nevertheless). To help you interpret the amendments, you’ll need to refer to the details of the Bill (as introduced in March 2023) to understand the context of these amendments. Here’s the Bill (as introduced) to help you:

A sensible amendment has been tabled by John Mason MSP (SNP), who is suggesting that any fees charged to those applying for a grouse shooting licence ‘must be sufficient to cover any expenses and costs incurred by the relevant authority in carrying out its functions‘.

I’ve got no disagreement with that at all. Ten years ago journalist George Monbiot pointed out that the taxpayer already subsidises shotgun licencing in the UK as well as grouse moor owners – the Scottish Government needs to ensure that its grouse shooting licensing scheme is fully funded by the industry and not subsidised by taxpayers.

Edward Mountain MSP (Conservative) (who has featured on this blog previously here, here, here and here) has tabled 44 amendments, a few of which are sensible, but most of which are predictably designed to undermine the strength of the Bill.

Here are some amusing examples that I picked out from Ed’s amendments (this is not an exhaustive list by any means, just ones that jumped out).

Ed’s amendment #10 suggests that any trap user over the age of 40 years and who has used the trap in question for at least 10 years consecutively can skip having to complete an approved training course and should just get a trap licence automatically:

Eh? Why should anyone over the age of 40 years be exempt from completing a training course?! Nobody should be exempt if they are using traps to kill a sentient being, let alone anyone over the seemingly arbitrarily-chosen age of 40! Given the wide age-range of gamekeepers convicted for wildlife crime, including trap offences, there’s no evidence to support an exemption from training for the over 40s.

Moving on, Ed’s amendment #17 appears to be an attempt to prevent the ability of the Government to add pheasants and red-legged partridges to the licensing scheme if required:

As you may recall, the Government has not included pheasants or red-legged partridges in its proposed grouse moor licensing scheme, despite the recent upsurge of these gamebirds being released on grouse moors (see here), but the Bill does provide the capacity for these species to be added (i.e. a licence would be required to shoot them) if evidence emerges that wildlife crimes are being committed on grouse moors where these species have been released for shooting.

Ed is proposing that only gamebirds listed on the Red or Amber list could be added to the licensing scheme, which would obviously exclude the addition of pheasants and red-legged partridges as these are not endangered in any way – they are non-native, invasive species released in their millions each year for ‘sport’ shooting. The whole purpose of the licensing scheme is not to protect ‘rare’ (Red/Amber listed) birds – it is to enable the sanctioning of estates who commit wildlife crime when shooting these species. I hope this amendment is treated with the contempt it deserves.

Ed’s amendment #21 is to ‘leave out Section 8‘ of the Bill:

What is Section 8? Ah, that’s the Government’s proposal to extend the investigatory powers of the Scottish SCPA:

Given the Scottish Government’s (long awaited) commitment to extending the powers of the SSPCA (see here), this amendment is just a last-ditch attempt to prevent it from happening. Even if it gets past Stage 2, I fully expect it to be overturned at Stage 3 as it goes directly against Government policy and the Minister’s repeatedly stated intentions.

The remainder of Ed’s amendments focus on muirburn licencing where first of all he proposes excluding entire sections of the Bill relating to this (thus removing the requirement for a muirburn licence), but then goes on to suggest changes to the very sections he wants removed, presumably because he knows that the Government will never agree to removing the requirement for a muirburn licence!

Amongst the changes he proposes are the definition of peat depth to be changed from 40cm to 60cm, the ability to extend the muirburn season to 30 April at landowner discretion, and the management of gamebirds to be included as a legitimate reason to burn on peatland. He also suggests a public register of muirburn licences – that, at least, is a sensible amendment. As for the rest, they’re hard to take seriously in light of the climate crisis and I can’t see the SNP, Labour and Greens being supportive.

These amendments provide us with a flavour of what to expect from certain MSPs over the coming week – I dare say there will be even more outlandish attempts to overturn the provisions of the Bill given the ferocity of the grouse shooting industry’s objections to the Bill’s general principles. Let’s see.

UPDATE 15 January 2024: The National picked up on this blog post and published an article about it (here).

A new peer-reviewed scientific study has revealed that burning on deep peat is widespread on many Scottish grouse moors.

This is despite a revision to the national guidelines (the Muirburn Code) in 2017 which states that burning on peatland should not take place unless it is part of a habitat restoration plan approved by the statutory regulator, NatureScot.

It’ll come as no surprise whatsoever to regular blog readers that these findings suggest that the revised guidelines ‘have not been widely adopted by land managers‘.

The paper, Assessment of peatland burning in Scotland during 1985-2022 using Landsat imagery, was authored by B.D. Spracklen and D.V. Spracklen and was published on 14 December 2023 in the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence.

Here’s the study area, which includes a large portion of Scotland’s grouse moors:

Here’s the abstract:

This new paper should help inform MSPs and Ministers as we approach Stage 2 of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill in January, where proposals to introduce a licensing scheme for muirburn are set to be challenged by the grouse-shooting sector, which seems to think that burning the moors to facilitate excessively large numbers of red grouse for a few selfish people to shoot for fun is more important than the global climate crisis.

Yet again, what this latest paper does is to demonstrate that any licensing scheme will require robust monitoring AND enforcement measures for it to be effective because if that’s not in place, the entitled ones will simply carry on as normal.

The paper is open access and can be read/downloaded here:

UPDATE 17 January 2024: Wildlife Management & Muirburn Bill – will it properly protect peatlands? (here)

UPDATE 23 January 2024: Extent of burning on Scottish peatlands, including many grouse moors, is why regulation is needed urgently (here)

RSPB Scotland has just published a podcast discussing whether the Wildlife Management & Muirburn Bill will finally bring an end to the illegal killing of birds of prey on Scottish grouse moors.

Some of it was recorded at REVIVE’s national conference in Perth last month, and some of it immediately prior, and after, yesterday’s Stage 1 debate of the Bill. It includes contributions from RSPB Scotland (Duncan Orr-Ewing and Ian Thomson), the REVIVE coalition for grouse moor reform (Robbie Marsland), Biodiversity Minister Lorna Slater, Chris Packham and me, with Stephen Magee from the RSPB hosting the discussions.

It’s available to listen, for free, HERE.

That landmark vote in the Scottish Parliament last night, in support of the general principles of the Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Bill, was a significant milestone in what has been a long and often challenging campaign.

And although it’s a long way from being over, we should all take a breath and take the time to celebrate this achievement, as well as contemplate the years of hard grind that brought us to this point.

At the heart of it, and indeed was the trigger for putting this proposed legislation on the table, has been the ongoing illegal killing of birds of prey on driven grouse moors, despite raptors supposedly having full legal protected status since the 1954 Protection of Birds Act, almost 70 years ago.

I’ve heard several MSPs in the last few months, and indeed in the Chamber yesterday, talking about how we all owe a debt of gratitude to the gamekeepers and their lords and masters in the grouse shooting industry. I’d agree to a point, because without that industry’s ongoing criminality against birds of prey it would have been even more difficult to achieve yesterday’s result.

I don’t believe that they’re all ‘at it’; I personally know a few who feel as strongly as I do about protecting birds of prey, but unfortunately they are in the minority and not enough of them were prepared to stand up against what has become a pantomime of denial, attempting to mask what can only be described as archaic savageness. The world has moved on and now that industry must, too.

There are indeed people to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude and foremost amongst them are the members of the Scottish Raptor Study Group (SRSG), not least to those who argued so persuasively when they presented their petition for gamebird licensing to the Scottish Parliament back in 2016.

But also to all those SRSG fieldworkers who have dedicated years, sometimes decades, of their lives to voluntarily monitoring the status of birds of prey across Scotland, whose hard-won data allowed many talented academics to join the dots and present a compelling argument that the scale of illegal persecution was so extensive it was having population-level effects on the distribution and abundance of a number of species across Scotland, notably the golden eagle, hen harrier, red kite and peregrine.

Without those data, and the subsequent scientific publications on which they’re founded, the Scottish Government would not have had the incontrovertible evidence it needed to be convinced that raptor persecution on some (many) Scottish grouse moors continues, even to this day.

There are many others who also deserve credit but I’m going to save that until we reach the end and the Bill gains Royal assent (I do wonder whether the bloke in the crown will be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, given his long-standing personal involvement in grouse shooting).

And yes, there is still a long way to go with this Bill but the bottom line is that a licensing scheme for grouse shooting, in whatever form it takes, will now become a legal requirement. I don’t think any of us doubts for one minute the struggles that lie ahead at Stage 2 against those who will seek to water down the restrictions as far as they can – representatives from the grouse shooting industry have made no secret of their intentions and judging by some of the comments made in the Chamber yesterday, they have the ear of not just the Scottish Conservatives to ease their way.

In the end though, only 32 voted against the general principles of the Bill and 82 voted to support it. Of the 32 who voted against it, 31 were Conservatives and 1 was the SNP’s Fergus Ewing:

But in the bigger picture, even if the industry succeeds in weakening the Bill and this new legislation turns out to be as unenforceable as all the previous attempts have been to make this industry accountable for its criminal and environmentally damaging actions, then it will simply make the case for a ban on grouse shooting all the more appealing, and, actually, achievable.

If you missed yesterday’s debate you can watch a video archive here and you can read the official report below (starts at page 31). The Tory contributions weren’t quite as dishonourable as those we saw on display in the Westminster debate on grouse shooting back in 2016 (here) but some were still decidedly unpleasant: