Yes. Thank you very much, convener. I hope that my statement is reasonably short.
I thank the committee for inviting SNH to come back to provide it with further information and to respond to other submissions that you have heard. We have listened to a range of responses to the SNH review of deer management, and we have no doubt that members will want to ask us many questions.
We are pleased that the report has stimulated considerable interest and widened the focus from just red deer in the uplands to all species of deer throughout Scotland. Deer are a huge asset, a vital part of the natural heritage and our ecology, and a valuable economic resource that contributes to tourism, food, culture and jobs. That is important context for our work.
We do not think that anybody has disagreed with our overall conclusion that deer are having an adverse impact on the natural heritage, and we are more than content with the report’s conclusions on the findings, as they were based on the best available evidence, robust analysis and scrutiny of that analysis.
The evidence was drawn from a number of sources. We would never claim that the evidence base was perfect, but we do not think that there are any fundamental gaps or errors in what we have presented, and we see no reason to redraw the conclusions. We can explain that. Members have heard views to the contrary, which we will pick up on.
The five pieces of evidence that we have relied on are the James Hutton Institute’s work on population trends data, the native woodlands survey, the site condition monitoring data, section 7 analysis and last, but certainly not least, the assessment of the performance of the deer management groups since 2013.
There have been generic and specific comments on the report. I will address some of the generic comments to start with.
There was a question about the timing of the review. Given that more information was due to be delivered to us in 2017, it was asked whether we should have deferred publication. That would have put us outwith the commissioned timetable that the previous minister set and would not, in our view, have added greatly to the findings. Nevertheless, we will continue to review information that comes to us and take it into account over the following months.
One thing that we were not asked to do was to produce recommendations; in fact, we were specifically asked not to do that. However, it might be helpful to consider options, and we would certainly be happy to explore next steps, not at the stage of recommendations, but to carry forward the debate that has now been started.
We are conscious, however, that it is not necessarily on the issue of evidence that more needs to be done to resolve the conflicting demands for deer management. It is vital that we make use of the various policy statements, documents and guidance that exist to deliver action on the ground but, more than anything, we perhaps need clear, settled priorities to bring that into account. I argue that that is the most important piece of work that needs to be done.
There has also been a question about the experience that SNH has brought to the work. SNH has a lot of experience as a deer manager. We own and manage a number of significant estates where deer are a major component of the wildlife. We have staff who have practical experience of deer management, who provide advice to others and who have been integral in preparing documents such as “Scotland’s Wild Deer: A National Approach”. We have a strong science base, with experienced wildlife managers and others who can address complex ecological and data issues. Our review involved people from all those backgrounds—thankfully, several of them are here today. However, we did not do the work alone. The conclusions are ours and we stand by them, but we were greatly assisted by others in the process. In that regard, I put on record our particular thanks to the Association of Deer Management Groups and to Richard Cooke, without whom we would not have got a lot of the data that we required for the work.
I want to make it clear that the report is not universally critical. There is a wealth of good and practical experience out there, on which future arrangements might be based. There are examples of attempts by managers of private land to deliver on the public interest objectives. However, we did not find a consistent standard or consistent evidence of progress.
I suspect that I have taken up enough time just on an introduction, but I ask Claudia Rowse to pick up on a couple of other specific areas in relation to which criticism has been levelled at SNH.