Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Official Report 655KB pdf

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Deer Management

Welcome back. Agenda item 3 is to take evidence from Scottish Natural Heritage on “Deer Management in Scotland: Report to the Scottish Government from Scottish Natural Heritage 2016”. We are joined by Andrew Bachell, who is director of policy and advice at SNH; Donald Fraser, who is operations manager for deer and wildlife; Claudia Rowse, who is head of the rural resources unit; and Des Thompson, who is principal adviser for biodiversity. Good morning, everyone.

I think that Mr Bachell will make a short statement.

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.

Good morning, everyone. Quite a few comments have been circulating about our review. You will be pleased to hear that I will not go through them all, but I would like to clarify for the committee two main areas that have been referred to in the evidence. The first relates to the trends in population. We received the most substantial amount of supplementary evidence, criticisms and questions about the James Hutton Institute work on that. I do not propose to clarify that further, because I feel that Professor Albon’s oral evidence last week and the supplementary submission from the James Hutton Institute fully addressed the issues that were raised; to summarise, they confirmed that the trends over the past 50 years that we showed are based on absolutely robust information and that the questions about the changes in methodology do not bear scrutiny. An issue was also raised about the difference in the modelling scenario compared with the practical counts, but that was within standard tolerance of about 10 or 20 per cent, so that evidence has also been upheld.

The other main area that seems to have attracted additional analysis and some misunderstanding about how the data has been interpreted—as we discussed last time, it is complex and difficult—is the native woodland survey. A couple of specific issues have been raised; they are not new to us, because the survey was published in 2014, so the positions have been fairly well rehearsed. I have spoken to the Forestry Commission, which commissioned the work, and its view is that there have been misunderstandings of how to interpret what is a complex set of data. I will mainly pick up on two issues, although I am happy to answer any other queries that the committee might have about the interpretation of the data.

First, there is no dispute that deer are impacting on native woodlands, or about the headline figure that more than 30 per cent of native woodlands are impacted by herbivores. However, some new analysis was done that used a different data set and concluded that the native woodland survey had incorrectly identified deer as the major driver of the impacts. That additional interpretation identified non-native trees such as rhododendron as a greater threat and as having a greater impact on native woodlands. That is interesting new analysis, but because it used a different data set, it does not apply and is not relevant to the findings of the native woodland survey, and it does not counteract the main finding that 30 per cent of native woodlands are impacted by herbivores.

Secondly, the allegation was made that surveyors had a tendency to overestimate when recording deer as being present. That is incorrect in terms of the guidance that was given to surveyors. Surveyors were asked to do two things for the native woodland survey. As well as being asked to identify the impacts—I have discussed the 30 per cent figure—they were asked whether they could identify which herbivores were present. They were able to identify that herbivores were present only in 77 per cent of cases, and in 23 per cent of cases they could not identify which herbivore was present and none was recorded. For the record, as our review shows, surveyors identified deer in 73 per cent of cases. That is a correct figure. Supplementary information that is provided in the full native woodland survey, but which I do not think that we went into the detail of in our report, shows that surveyors identified livestock in 15 per cent of cases and rabbits and hares in 3.5 per cent of cases. That shows that the allegation about the guidance for surveyors was incorrect.

Thank you. Let us move on.

Good morning, panel. I have a few technical questions about SNH’s deer management report. What was the procedure for selecting external peer reviewers of your report?

Des Thompson can pick that up.

We have a scientific advisory committee, which is composed of a variety of experts. For the deer management report, we chose a member of the committee—Professor Robin Pakeman—to go through the annexes in detail. Professor Colin Adams, at the University of Glasgow, was asked to peer review the report. He is a former member of our scientific advisory committee—indeed, on occasion he chaired meetings of the committee—so he is a very experienced reviewer. He did not have a lot of time to review the report, but he returned it with substantial comments, which we addressed.

In effect, the external reviewers were members of SNH’s scientific community. Was any external advertising carried out to invite people to be external reviewers? Was the role advertised?

No—that is why we have a scientific advisory committee. It is quite standard to use members of our scientific advisory committee and members of our expert advisory panel to review reports for us. Normally, we would get one or two reviewers to carry out such assessments.

You will have picked up what Professor Albon said at last week’s meeting. He suggested that one way forward would be to regard the report as a “beta version”. That is the horrible jargon for the process whereby external consultants are asked to review a piece of computer software before it is fully launched on the market, but it can be applied to any scientific piece of work.

I mean no disrespect to your scientists who reviewed the report, but would you consider that process as being useful in enhancing the report’s viability with the industry generally, in the sense that such reviewers would be seen as independent and external? It is my understanding that, with most academic work, getting external validation from peers is extremely important in the academic community. I presume that it is important in your community, too.

Yes, it is. I am an associate editor of the Journal of Applied Ecology, so I have to deal with the issue of getting reviewers all the time.

I think that what we have done for our deer review is perfectly fine in the context of how we have published other reviews. Indeed, for some such reviews, we might not have gone out to external review. However, I can say that we will carry out a more detailed review for the report that we receive from the James Hutton Institute, because there will be so much more science in that report.

That might relate to the point that Andrew Bachell made about the timescale that the previous minister set and the fact that you were not to make recommendations. Given that you are to get a lot more information, is it possible that you could have a phase 2 report that incorporates the new research?

I do not think that that is necessary. Given the comments that we have received on the report, we do not see any need for that. It is clearly very important that when we get the report from the James Hutton Institute—which we are looking forward to receiving, given the excellent evidence that Professor Albon gave last week—it goes through a detailed review process.

12:00  

Obviously the committee’s role is not to be the Government; we are here to keep the Government in check as well as to give advice to organisations such as yours that are responsible to Government. We are not scientists, but clearly there was criticism of the report. One very practical suggestion was that it might have been a lot more credible had you had more external reviews and a stage 2 report. It is obviously in our interest to ensure that the report is more credible. You might have started on one particular tramline, but we are suggesting another.

Perhaps I can add to Des Thompson’s comments. As Andrew Bachell has, I think, picked up, the five key pieces of evidence still stand in our view. The James Hutton Institute report will be subject to external peer review, but the native woodland survey has previously been published and therefore does not warrant any further peer review. There have been no disagreements over the deer management group assessment, which forms a significant part of the new data that has been collected in partnership with the deer management groups. We have been using our own data for the two other areas: site condition monitoring and the use of section 7 agreements. They are quite small; indeed, the section 7 data set, with 11 agreements, is very small. For the data sets that are not subject to further peer review, the main challenge for me has been how we reach our conclusions based on the evaluation of those data sets, rather than their meriting any further peer review.

I accept that, and scientists gave us that advice at our last evidence session, but if you have nothing to fear with regard to your report, what do you have to fear from further external assessments? I am sure that the scientists who have looked at it were first class, but they were effectively internal because they were part of your scientific advisory committee.

That is quite normal in peer reviews. It is often extremely difficult to find referees whom we do not know. I should add that as we were producing the report we had a small group of scientists advising on a number of the chapters and on occasion we had a deer science group, which comprised three individuals and was chaired by Andrew Bachell. In preparing the report, we were very careful to ensure that we had scrutiny of the science, but I must emphasise that when we get the report from the James Hutton Institute we will be carrying out a detailed review.

I want to stress for the record that I am not criticising the scientists who were advising you—I am sure that they are first class. I am merely making the point. If you do not advertise, it is very hard to know what is out there. Given that there has been some criticism, with a witness suggesting last week that you look again at this, I suggest that you consider advertising in certain specific areas where you think that might be useful and getting someone who is not in SNH to give you another view on the matter. I think that that would help with the report’s credibility.

I am not sure whether Andrew Bachell wants to come in here, but I should point out that the review ultimately represented SNH’s view. We knew that it would; we were asked for our view, and we gave it. I think that that is mainly where the disagreements have arisen, not with the underlying interpretation. As I said, the issue with most of the interpretation of the data is to do with misunderstandings, and I do not think that it would be appropriate to ask for a peer review of something that represents the view of SNH’s board. However, I am happy to explain further how we reached that view, because the thread that runs through each of the five key pieces of evidence is the impact on the natural heritage. Nothing that anyone has said has disputed that.

We have covered that topic in a good deal of detail, so we will move on.

We have already touched briefly on the data sets, but comment has been made that the interpretations do not reflect the evidence. What is your response to the accusation that the report is biased?

I will pick up the general question and let Claudia Rowse speak to some of the detail.

We have brought into the process people in the organisation—an economist, plant ecologists, people who are experienced in deer and so on—who have put at our disposal a raft of skills, and they have all had roles in the review and in monitoring how the work was done. As Des Thompson has already said, we have had the external review; I should point out that all the scientists whom we picked for the advisory panel had to go through the public appointments process. There was therefore that level of external advertising, which we did not mention.

It was important that we brought all those skills into the team that was responsible for bringing the report together. Inevitably, we will make judgments based on the principal functions of SNH as the adviser to the Government on the natural heritage: we would be expected to cover that in more detail than we would cover areas in which we are not expert. If there is a slant in the report towards those areas rather than towards other things, it reflects the brief that we were given and the organisation that SNH is. We would not claim to be experts in those other areas, so I hope that we have not tried to draw unreasonable conclusions.

I thought that you were going to go on to say that it is perceived that there is some bias. Some commentators have picked up that the analysis that flows through the review was not reflected in the conclusions: we seem to have noted many successes in the analysis, but then drawn more negative conclusions. That reflects the fact that we were open. Rather like the group that you have here at committee, our editorial panel included people in SNH who worked very closely on deer management, and others—like me—who came in with a more analytical and robust approach and with a bit more distance from the industry, in order to offer scrutiny and challenge. That is reflected in our management team and on our board.

In terms of the flow, we related the many successes because we were determined that the review would not be seen as criticism of the industry. What we found when we looked at the analysis, particularly of the DMGs, was that there were many successes and that many people are doing the right thing. We wanted to reflect that, but we had to consider the terms of reference—which is where our conclusions came from—which specifically included the impact on the natural heritage. That thread runs through the sections on increasing deer numbers, native woodlands, section 7s, site-condition monitoring and the DMG assessment.

I apologise for interrupting Kate Forbes’s flow, but this is a really important point. As I recall, one of the accusations that was made was that you put the report together but did not talk to people in your organisation or run it by them. To be absolutely clear, did people including Donald Fraser, who have expertise from the coalface, have sight of the report and offer input on it before it was made public?

Yes—although I think that Donald Fraser should answer that.

Inevitably, we were involved in data gathering for the report. We were also involved in some drafting and we saw the report at the end of the process. Obviously, there was an editorial process—the management team saw the report and the board signed it off. The report was seen by the gamut of people in the organisation.

Other colleagues, including our former Deer Commission for Scotland staff, of whom Donald Fraser is one, are represented on our management team and board and were on the senior editorial panel that provided the scrutiny, challenge, examination and balance for the review.

There has obviously been a wide variety of responses to the report. Have any relationships been damaged—for example between SNH and the DMGs? How do you see that relationship being strengthened in the future?

I will pick that up. Donald Fraser is closer to the DMGs and may want to add something. I accept that the report has put strain on relationships. When one says something that is uncomfortable and perhaps not expected, that is bound to be an outcome. It was certainly not SNH’s intention to do that, however.

We acknowledge the input that the deer industry has made to the process and we know that there are no solutions that can be found that do not involve it very closely in next steps. We certainly wish to put that on record.

We have a generally good relationship with the ADMG. We have good and robust discussions with the groups. We have good involvement with the local deer management groups through our local wildlife management officers and area officers. That relationship remains.

There is no doubt that the report has pointed to areas in which the industry and some deer management groups have to look forward. We must consider what the way forward is and what points need to be addressed. What are the next steps? We need to make sure that staff within our organisation and the DMGs and the people in the lowlands are engaged in the process.

Do you have any suggestions or ideas for some next steps to strengthen that relationship?

At a practical level, the report highlights areas in which there are weaknesses. For example, more work is required on some of the environmental aspects of deer management planning. In the past couple of years, we have gone through a robust process of developing deer management plans; the important point is that we have now reached the implementation stage. Our staff can benefit the process by working with deer management groups and individuals, including in the lowlands, to identify the next steps. We need to ensure that we are clear about what is being asked for and that there is a clear route for working together, as we move forward.

This is not a criticism, as you are perfectly entitled to stand by the report, but if you are saying today that you stand by your conclusions and will not redraw them, it will become very difficult to come together to find a way forward, given that the debate is polarised and the other side of the argument is equally firm. Is that a concern? I am not suggesting that you should admit to something that you do not believe to be the case, but it strikes me that there are two arguments that are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

In a nutshell, that is the issue that is front of us. People come to the issue—I was almost tempted to call it a problem—with different perspectives that are often based on their objectives for the land. Those objectives can be very broad, ranging from purely sporting and commercial interests at one end to purely habitat and conservation interests at the other end.

We try in some of our documents, including “Scotland’s Wild Deer: A National Approach” and our good deer management guidelines, to address the fact that people have different objectives, but those documents do not in themselves reconcile the different objectives. The next steps must involve a closer dialogue on setting objectives, and we need to establish a context in which that can be done openly and fairly.

Okay. We will move on to research and knowledge exchange, which we touched on briefly earlier.

We have reviewed a lot of evidence in the past few weeks, and we had academics at the committee last week. However, as I learn more about deer management, it seems to me that issues such as immunocontraception or use of porcine products that prevent deer from getting pregnant have not been considered. That would be a less emotive way to deal with urban deer than shooting them. Were any such biological or surgical interventions considered? They were not explored in the report.

The evidence that we reviewed covered the five key data sets. The potential for control of deer through the alternative methods that you mention rather than by culling is an area of future research that would cover issues including how those methods would be applied and what society would feel was tolerable. For example, there have been recent developments in immunocontraception technology, but we did not include immunocontraception in our review of the data sets because there is no information about its use as a control method.

Ought SNH to look at those areas on an on-going basis? We heard in evidence to the committee that, instead of fencing everything off, devices could be used to scare deer off and so on. Technology and related approaches are evolving and SNH should, as the agency with responsibility for deer management, surely be on top of those developments.

I can add to that, and Donald Fraser may want to come in, too. We are considering those aspects—in fact we anticipate presenting for further discussion a paper on immunocontraception at the next meeting of our scientific advisory committee. There are all sorts of issues around the use, applicability and effectiveness of that method. It is one of several techniques that we have been considering, along with a variety of remote sensing techniques for counting deer and techniques for assessing habitat conditions. We are considering a whole battery of techniques.

12:15  

I emphasise, as Des Thompson said, that we are considering that issue. We have looked at it in the past because it tends to come up in particular with regard to lowland deer that we are trying to manage in an urban context. However, there are a number of practical, resource and—most important—welfare considerations to take into account when using that type of approach, and there are constraints.

Good afternoon to everybody. I want us to turn our minds to lowland deer management, which is obviously a complex issue on which we have taken a lot of evidence in this and the previous session of Parliament, not least during a visit to the Borders.

I have questions for the panel about the efficacy of the current structures for lowland deer management. I will highlight one or two points that were made in evidence to the committee at its meeting on 22 November 2016. Ian Ross said:

“we do not have a collaborative approach in large areas of lowland Scotland ... That is a challenge that we need to address.”

At the same meeting, Eileen Stewart said that SNH is

“making sure that the current patchy performance of local authorities is improved”,

and stressed that

“as yet, we do not have a model”.—[Official Report, Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, 22 November 2016; c 2, 6, 7.]

At the committee meeting on 13 December 2016, Richard Playfair said:

“I would like to think that we promote”

the views of the membership of the lowland deer network Scotland,

“but we do not necessarily know what their views are at any given time.”—[Official Report, Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, 13 December 2016; c 9.]

The committee would appreciate your comments on those remarks, on where we are now and on the way forward, which would be helpful.

I will kick off. On the collaborative approach, we are dealing with a very different context in the lowlands compared to that in the uplands, with a different species of deer and a different land-ownership pattern. Given those two aspects, the collaborative approach that is applicable in the uplands of Scotland might not be—and probably is not—the solution in the lowlands.

There is a duty on public agencies to take account of the code of practice. To be honest, we struggle on engagement with local authorities in terms of deer management, which is down to their resource requirements and priorities. However, they are significant landowners in the lowland areas and we are actively looking at engagement with them. For example, we have sharing good practice events coming up shortly to help local authorities understand better what their duty is in terms of the code of practice and the practical implications of that.

The LDNS is a forum for deer managers and deer management interests in the lowlands, but it is not the equivalent of the deer management group structure in the north. The LDNS is a useful forum for getting information across on, for example, educating the public’s attitudes to deer, understanding what the drivers are for deer management in the lowlands and ensuring that we have a broad range of engagement with the different people involved. However, that is a big task and approaches to it need to be developed. For example, a pilot study has started that will look at the levels of public interest in deer in lowland areas, what is currently in place and where the gaps are. There are quite a lot of gaps in our knowledge in that we have good information on censuses and population work in the upland areas but do not have a lot of that information for the lowlands, which contributes to some of the barriers and constraints for deer management.

We have heard from some discussion that there is a problem in the lowlands, but I do not think that we can be clear that there is a problem. However, we must ensure that we are not creating a problem. We have a lot of work going on in habitat management and woodland expansion in lowland areas, which are prime habitats for deer in the future. We need to ensure that we are managing and planning for that.

Do you accept that the relationship between SNH, Transport Scotland and Forestry Commission Scotland, and the fact that, as I understand it, you fund the LDNS, might be part of the problem? Is the LDNS more focused on you, as its funders, and your views and needs than on engaging with its members and listening to what might be innovative approaches?

I do not think so. I refute the suggestion that that is the structure. Richard Cooke, who is chair of the ADMG, is also chair of the LDNS. There is quite an open forum. The agency funding is there to promote that engagement and discussion. That committee is quite large and has a wide membership with a wide range of views. It is evolving over time to see how it can better deliver.

We have heard suggestions that different approaches and pilot projects need to be developed around making greater use of well-trained recreational stockers, for example. It is clear that we are not getting it right when it comes to urban lowland deer. Do we need to be more open-minded to fresh approaches?

Absolutely. The Lowland Deer Network Scotland is one of the forums that we can use in that respect, but there is a range of planning mechanisms out there to look at wider management of the landscape. Even in the lowlands it is really important to understand what the issues are.

When we were commissioned to produce the report, many people were surprised to find that we put a lot of emphasis on the work on the lowland deer issue, because it was not seen as being the big issue. The report has flagged up the fact that it is certainly a part of the big issue.

At the moment, we do not have the answers, although the pilot projects will certainly help us. We are in the infancy of dealing with deer as an asset and a problem in lowland areas—that includes the rural lowlands as well as urban lowland areas. We are open to suggestions about how we can take that part of the work forward.

I have a slight concern when you say that a collaborative approach may not be the way forward. When you think of the complex pattern of land ownership in south Scotland, for example, if people were not able to work together in a more formal structure, I would be concerned about how that work could progress. I also point out that although south Scotland is defined as lowland, there is often an issue because there are some very large landowners with significant estates. Are those landowners involved like landowners have been involved in the good models of deer management groups in the Highlands?

As you suggest, we are not dealing with the same issue across southern Scotland. I tend to think of a large part of southern Scotland as being upland anyway. The land ownership pattern is part of that. However, we estimate that there are tens of thousands of individuals who are responsible for deer management on their land, and that is a very different picture from the relatively small number of responsible individuals in the Highlands.

I do not want to put words into my chairman’s mouth, but I do not think that we can adopt the same collaborative approach in both areas. However, it is clear that we have to take a collaborative approach and one of the tricks will be engaging that very big potential audience without burdening ourselves with the bureaucracy of trying to micromanage such a large number of people. There is a genuine issue that we have not resolved there.

Thinking about a shared vision of what deer management can achieve, is it clear to deer management groups what they are supposed to achieve on their patch in terms of public interest objectives? Who decides on that?

Donald Fraser will talk about the deer management groups and I will come back on the overarching issue.

A lot of work has been done on that. The deer strategy and the deer code, which was published in 2012, helped to distil what the public interest is. SNH did a bit more work to develop the assessment process for deer management groups, which distilled down what the ask is of them. The latest round of the deer management planning process in the uplands has moved us forward in terms of understanding the public interest at the local level. The public interest will have different priorities from Sutherland, to Inverness-shire, to the west. We need to make sure that there is a clear understanding of what the broad public interests are and their importance at the local level. We have gone a long way towards that.

Your question was about the deer management groups. I did not want to detract from that; Donald Fraser was best placed to tell you about the matter. However, there is an issue that I want to mention. As some commentators have picked up—it was picked up as one of the research gaps in the review by Scotland’s Rural College—there seems to be a lack of awareness of the high-level vision that is set out in “Scotland’s Wild Deer: A National Approach”. It is interesting that that was picked up as a research gap, because there is a national policy and a vision, the priorities and the challenges have been set out and an annual action plan is available on a shared website where all partners and stakeholders can inform and interact on what they are doing to progress the priorities and the vision.

It is notable from the research gaps that we obviously need to do more to communicate what the overarching vision is. That is a slightly different matter from the one that you asked about.

Do deer management groups have the skills and resources to achieve the public interest objectives? What help, guidance and funding is available to the groups?

I would not underestimate the challenge—it is a big one—in delivering the public interest objectives. The resource element—not only the time and the effort, but the cash going in—is significant in that regard.

The primary mechanism for delivering the public interest objectives is largely through the Scotland rural development programme, some of which is incentivised through other funding schemes. However, what that can deliver is limited, and the priorities are set through the SRDP based on where they can be delivered. There are challenges regarding the resources that are required to deal with the matter, but we also need to be clear about what can be delivered and to what timescale. There are big questions in there, but our planning process has helped to articulate what can be done within the timescales that we are looking at.

Has the level of support, particularly funding, remained the same over the period? Have there been any new initiatives? We need to look at what is in the report, as well as what we would have expected to see going forward.

We did not carry out a review of the incentives that are available. I was pleased to hear your question, because it is an essential area that would benefit from further thorough analysis about what is available. We have provided a summary of the SRDP funding, but that is not the full picture.

An area that has been picked up in the research gaps project, through our experience and by the ADMG is that more help is needed to carry out habitat impact assessments. How do we resource and incentivise that in the right way? That question needs further work.

Is funding for habitat monitoring available? If so, when does it come online?

Funding is available, largely for our designated sites, through the SRDP option. For the wider countryside, there is less opportunity for that support to be delivered.

We were able to inject a small level of funding over the past couple of years to assist with the management planning process.

It was clear from Professor McCracken’s evidence last week on the SRUC’s review that more effort and resource needs to go into developing habitat impact assessments, working with deer management groups and members, so that we are much clearer about the adjustments in deer management that are needed in order to meet different objectives. That sounds easy but, on the ground, it is incredibly complex. In his evidence, Professor Albon described what happens when sheep numbers are reduced and how that results in deer having an impact on some habitats.

We should face up to the fact that we are dealing with a complex situation and complex management objectives. If we are going to move matters forward, we need to put resource into training up deer management groups and we need adequate resourcing of monitoring.

12:30  

We heard some evidence last week about the rate of delivery of public objectives. The comment was made that public objectives are being set and deer management groups are working to implement them, but that it is still early days. My understanding of your report is that you are calling for a step change in the delivery of public objectives, but not necessarily for a reduction in deer density. How can that delivery be accelerated? Funding is obviously part of it. Given that it is relatively early days for the establishment of the objectives, do you expect a faster rate of delivery at this point?

That is partly about being clear about the objectives and the sort of management that we need in order to meet them. In itself, that is very challenging, so we have been developing a very important dialogue about that with the deer management groups.

I hope that one of the things that comes out clearly in our report is that, where there are the skills on the ground and a deer management group has the bit between the teeth, it can produce extremely good results over a relatively short time in terms of management planning. We hope and expect that that would be translated into implementation. We know that that model can be made to work.

At the other end of the spectrum of deer management groups, there is next to no delivery of the public objectives—which, again, comes out clearly in the report. We need to look at that and tease out why that is the case; we cannot just go to the groups and blindly criticise them. Is it a capacity, expertise or funding issue? We need to understand from their perspective why they were not able to reach a higher standard so that we can target effort, resource, incentives, support and regulation at the groups that are finding it difficult to move on.

That is probably a fairly charitable view, because you have missed out unwillingness from that interpretation. In reality, to what extent is the problem due to the unwillingness of a deer management group or of individual participants in the group to get down to dealing with the objectives?

I will attempt to answer that, but I will put down a marker that you are asking us to go beyond what the evidence tells us: it was not a behavioural study.

I say with respect that you have placed an interpretation on the lack of delivery and you have listed what you think are factors. I suggest that that interpretation might be overly charitable and that there might be other issues at play.

I put on record that this is not an evidence-based answer; it is more of a qualitative answer, from many years of experience.

You are absolutely right that there is a spectrum of objectives and interests: some people are simply not interested in the spectrum of interests that deer represent, but are focused on one or two outcomes. One might argue that that is reasonable from their perspective, but from the public interest perspective, it will no longer do. From the natural heritage perspective, which is the direction that we come from, our conclusion—which we stand by—is that we do not have evidence that those groups will move forward entirely willingly. That is why we need to establish all the reasons why groups might not move forward before we target those that—to be less charitable—do not want to do so.

It is useful to get that on the record.

On deer counts and trends, there was a bit of debate about the total deer number last week. The report puts it at somewhere between 360,000 and 400,000—there is quite a difference between those two numbers. Last week, the panel members were keen to emphasise the importance of trends as opposed to the total number. Will the work with the James Hutton Institute provide a more accurate and reliable number?

There was also a suggestion last week that local counts should be conducted every five years in order to provide more accurate and up-to-date readings. Would you agree with that?

I agree on both points: I was here last week to hear that evidence. The James Hutton Institute has done an excellent job and its reporting on trends is superb. We look forward to finding out what is driving differences in trends around the country—the institute mentions sheep densities and changes in climate.

It would be very helpful to have a deer population estimate—indeed, there is a statutory requirement on us to have that—but it is much more important to understand the variations in trends across the country and the impacts of those trends on natural heritage interests, which is what we are heading towards.

Historically, the Red Deer Commission did a rolling programme of counts, which went round the country every five or six years, so fairly up-to-date data was available. On priorities, in the early 2000s, a conscious decision was taken to focus our count programme more on designated sites, due to the need to deliver on the “favourable condition” targets.

Over the past two or three years, we have gone back to a policy of trying in our count programme to get round the deer management groups. We put quite a lot of resource into that to support the deer management groups—it is an expensive process. Deer counts and deer census information are important parts of the current deer management planning round. We hope that, going forward, we will be in a better position in that we may still have an SNH count programme and the deer management group counts. Those will come on board, so that stream can continue.

It could be argued that in order to amass a baseline and a reliable set of data you could focus your resources in the areas that do not have deer management groups so that we get a better picture, if we could get the DMGs to do what Jenny Gilruth suggested. That is not a criticism of your approach; it is just an observation.

Our current approach is a reflection of a fairly long-standing good relationship with the deer management groups, which the Deer Commission and then SNH have supported. Whether it is the best use of a public resource to count in those are is open to question, given that we have now opened up the issue of deer across the whole of Scotland; there are probably bigger unknowns in relation to deer numbers and impacts in the lowlands. It is a very good question that we will need to address.

Now is maybe not the moment to put this point on the record but SNH resource is obviously finite, so, given the current resource base, we may have to tackle all those issues sequentially, because dealing with them all at the same time would stretch us very severely.

Alexander Burnett wants to come in with a question, but I first want to develop the resource theme. A number of witnesses have commented on SNH’s ability, from financial and staffing points of view, to meet its responsibilities. Let us pretend that the meeting is not being filmed and that there is no Official Report—although I realise that that is stretching the imagination. I accept that you are funded by the Scottish Government, but are you sufficiently well resourced to oversee the kind of deer management that we need?

I apologise if this is a bit of a circular answer, but that will depend on what the Scottish Government wants us to do. The Government will set out what we need to do, and we will do it. We are currently being asked to support the deer management groups with their plans, which is what we have done. We are setting out the counts. If, as a result of the review, the feeling is that the pace of change needs to be speeded up—which is what some of the questions have been about—and that requires us to do more work, there will be greater demand on our resources.

I want to bring in Dave Stewart, but let me develop something that came out in evidence. What you are saying is what we have been told before—basically, that you have the resource to do what you are doing, but it would be challenging if there were more policy demands. I absolutely get that, but some evidence suggested that SNH went to the DMGs and said that work was coming down the track that you could not afford to do because of cuts, so the DMGs must put their hands in their pockets, to the tune of £65,000. That suggests to me that you are not sufficiently well resourced to do what you are doing now.

Donald Fraser might want to get into specifics on that in a moment.

You ask me to assume that there is no Official Report. I am sorry, but I cannot do that—I can say only what I am happy to say on the record. SNH is asked to do an enormous range of things. Today, we are talking about deer, but we could be talking about other species that are, one way or another, an issue, even within the uplands. We could be looking at the marine environment and monitoring, access and recreation and so on.

Our remit is extremely broad, but our budget has gone down by 30 per cent in the past six years. It is therefore impossible for us to do everything that we used to do—or that we and the Deer Commission for Scotland used to do—so we have had to cut our cloth accordingly. As a result, we no longer do as much monitoring; our monitoring programme is more spaced out than it used to be, and we cannot be on the ground to support every action that people are taking or to give advice as we used to because we do not have as many people to do that.

I am therefore bound to say that if more is being asked of SNH, it will be a case of making choices, as Claudia Rowse was saying. If we are given clear priorities, we will make our choices accordingly. I think that my chief executive and chairman were in front of the committee not long ago, and they probably made the point that we can do only so much and we have to look to Government to give us advice—or, in fact, instruction—on what is most important.

The convener has touched on some of the areas that I was going to go into, but going back into history, I think that you mentioned the amalgamation of the Deer Commission for Scotland and SNH, which happened six years ago. Of course, an extra objective was added, on sustainable deer management, so you have more to do. I do not think that you will necessarily have these figures in your head, but how do your current staffing figures compare with those of the Red Deer Commission and the Deer Commission for Scotland? Partly to answer my own question, I note that, as you will know, we received evidence from Alex Hogg, who said that out of 500 staff,

“only 12 ... deal”

exclusively

“with deer ... Staff who work with deer are underrepresented.”—[Official Report, Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, 13 December 2016; c 38.]

We have done another check, through DCS, and we make the figure to be around 17 staff, if we take out administration and information technology. That does not seem to me to be a lot. Roughly, how do staff numbers compare with the numbers in the Red Deer Commission and the Deer Commission for Scotland? I believe that Donald Fraser worked for both organisations, but he might not have the figures in his head.

If Donald Fraser has the figures, we will give them to you, otherwise we might have to supply them separately.

I do not have the figures with me, but part of the reason for merging the DCS and SNH was to make efficiencies. That needs to be taken into account, so as far as some of the senior staff and certainly some of the support staff are concerned, there will not be a straight read-across. However, with regard to technical staff, the staff complement in the Deer Commission for Scotland transferred to SNH, and we have lost a number of those staff through wastage—retirements and the rest of it—with some people not being replaced.

We have looked to deliver our approach to deer management through the seven SNH areas, which means that the staff resource for dealing with deer management has increased substantially as a result of the merger. Over the past five years, there has been an on-going programme to transfer skills and knowledge in that regard. As a result, the potential staff resource is significantly greater than it was with the Deer Commission for Scotland.

I wonder whether, with the convener’s agreement, you can send us the figures from the days of the Red Deer Commission and the Deer Commission for Scotland. It would be useful to compare and contrast them, bearing in mind that you now have extra objectives to deal with.

Another question that it would be useful for you to answer is whether you require not just extra staff but extra powers to meet your objectives.

That brings us to some of the next steps. Again, we did not look in our review at how the existing powers are operating. We are talking about quite a complex suite of powers, some of which, as you know, we have not used. We will probably have been emboldened by the process that we have gone through here to use some of our powers in future. As far as this issue is concerned, it would benefit from a further careful look at the existing suite of powers and the new powers that have been given to us through the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016, and from a bit more analysis of how all that might be streamlined and whether the powers are sufficient. We have not yet done that piece of work.

So it is a case of use them or lose them.

I cannot answer the question whether we need additional powers until we have had a proper look at the issue and spoken to different practitioners about what the impact might be and how that might be approached.

Finally, it is useful to look at best practice in other countries, and Norway is often quoted in that respect. Is the funding method for deer management in that country attractive to SNH? Do you think that it represents best practice that we can look at and incorporate in Scotland?

Yes, to a certain extent. For example, we heard from Duncan Halley about the centralising of record keeping in relation to the weights of culled stags and some other information. A number of us have worked with people in the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and the other Norwegian authorities. There is a lot that we can learn from them, and we have a good working relationship with Duncan Halley and other colleagues. We are always open to suggestions about how we can improve things, and we try to do that.

12:45  

That raises a question around an issue that you touched on earlier. The report is a review of where we are at, but I am interested in the work that you do on a daily basis to develop possible future policy to draw to the attention of the Scottish Government. As you have just noted, it is possible that other countries are doing things better. What work is going on, away from what we are discussing today, to inform the approach to deer management?

We have been out to Norway to share the work on habitat impact assessments that we are doing in Scotland and help people to develop techniques. Through such visits, we pick up a lot of important additional information about the approaches that are being used elsewhere. For example, we have learned a lot about remote sensing for assessing vegetation cover, as well as information about counting deer.

Earlier, in response to Emma Harper’s question, you mentioned some other work that you doing. What is the process around deer management? Do you instigate pieces of work and pull the ideas together and then take that to the Government? How are we going to progress the deer management regime?

The question goes back to the deer strategy and the action plan that comes from it, which is the driver for the work that we undertake in partnership with other organisations. That sets the basis for the work programmes that we are engaged in. There is on-going work that has been done over the past number of years, but the work programme also looks at the more innovative work that we need to do in the uplands and, more importantly, in the lowlands. The action plan is a clear driver in that regard.

I refer to my entry about deer management in the register of members’ interests.

Based on previous discussions that we have had, there appears to be a consensus that the impact of grazing is more important that the densities of deer. How would you respond to criticism that the report associates environmental impact too much with deer and too little with other herbivores?

I picked up on some misunderstandings and misinterpretation of the data sets, which we acknowledge are complex. Some of the issues relate to the impacts of woodlands—I touched on that earlier, so I will not repeat what I said.

We also acknowledge that it is difficult, on the ground, to distinguish between the impact of sheep and the impact of deer, without recourse to other evidence. However, when I was preparing for today’s evidence session, I spoke to Donald Fraser about the experiences at places such as Caenlochan. We know that there are 200 sheep there and many thousands of deer. There are ways of distinguishing herbivore impacts when we know what the counts or stocking levels are. SRUC noted that there are research gaps in that area and said that surveyors might need further information to help them to assess the difference between types of herbivore impact. However, in the case of the native woodland survey, the surveyors managed to make that distinction in most cases—as I said, they attributed 73 per cent of the impact to deer and 15 per cent to livestock, which is quite a significant difference.

We are very careful about that matter. If we are not sure or there is any doubt, we say so. However, if we find deer pellets and other evidence of deer grazing and browsing, we attribute the damage to deer.

Is there a suspicion that some of the criticism around that might relate to the section 8 issue, whereby you have to be able to prove beyond any and all reasonable doubt that the impacts are caused only by deer before you can pursue a section 8 solution? Is there any element of muddying the waters around the issue?

I was going to come to that point to link the evidence to the powers. In the past—SNH will have to take this criticism on the chin—we perhaps have not used those powers or pushed the use of those powers as quickly as we might have done. However, our hand has sometimes been stayed by threats that our evidence base is not good enough and that therefore there would be a challenge. Using the powers would be very expensive to follow through on. They are not a one-off fix; if we go into a section 8 we are probably in for the long haul; we are not in today and out tomorrow. For all those reasons, particularly the issue of the firmness of the evidence, we have been less willing to take a risk with the use of the legislation than perhaps we will be tomorrow.

To return to scrutiny of the report, you said that SRUC will pick up on some of the impact on herbivores. Is one of the reasons that that has not been picked up on that the expert who reviewed the report does not have previous experience of deer or other herbivores?

No, because other experts were involved in producing the report. There has been no shortage of experts advising on it. Indeed, we have been in dialogue with SRUC while it has been producing its report. Davy McCracken, who was at a previous meeting of yours, is on the expert panel of our scientific advisory committee. That is not an issue.

We have spoken about the situation in Norway and we have covered issues relating to deer management. Dr Duncan Halley said in his submission that the Norwegian system

“has been effective in managing the resource at sustainable levels”

and

“is uncontroversial and has broad public support”.

You said that you have picked up some ideas from visiting Norway. Is it fair to say that Norway has got it right and we have not? What other aspects can we take on board?

I would not want to say that we have not got it right. From what we can see on the ground in Norway, and from talking to the experts out there, Norway has a system that works extremely well. I heard what Duncan Halley said and it absolutely mirrored my own understanding. However, perhaps Norway has a less complex situation, in terms of land ownership and management, than we have in Scotland.

I make the same point. We cannot look for a single solution that will work in Sutherland and Galloway, let alone one that will also work in the central belt. The Norwegian model might work for part of Scotland but not other parts. We also have to acknowledge that not only is Norway’s land ownership model very different but, in the previous century, Norway experienced much more extreme see-sawing in its rural economy, in terms of agriculture, than we did. Both things played a part in the evolution of its system. In Scotland, we need to evolve our own system, which learns from the best experience across Europe.

To be fair, Dr Halley stressed that in his evidence last week.

There has obviously been a lot of criticism of the report from stakeholders, and we have covered a lot of that today. Looking to the future, what is the way forward in linking with stakeholders to achieve the Scottish Government’s objectives?

We have a number of next steps in mind. This is probably a good moment for Claudia Rowse to say one or two things about them.

The committee has highlighted the criticisms, as have we, but I would like to add that quite a few commentators—not just us—have said that the review was comprehensive and robust.

During this discussion we have touched on many of the next steps. The review stimulated discussion about where next steps might lead, and there is an obvious area around on-going progress, monitoring of the deer management groups’ plans and the implementation of those plans.

Something needs doing in relation to taking forward work in the Lowlands—we have discussed some of the issues in that regard. There is no obvious and agreed solution, and further work is needed to ensure that we do the most effective thing for the situation in Scotland.

The other area that has attracted quite a lot of debate and suggestion from various commentators is the need to do more on setting cull targets. However, it is not clear—and it is certainly not agreed—that such an approach is needed. What would it achieve? If it is needed, what would be the most effective way of doing it?

It would be useful to have more time, to ensure that we make the right decisions, rather than rush into things. Those are three areas that have cropped up in the discussions that you have heard, and you are welcome to give us your own thoughts.

Convener, you mentioned that other deer management work is going on outside the scope of the review. We very much want to reiterate today that the wild deer national approach is in place. It sets out the priorities and challenges for this five-year period, it is a 20-year vision and there is an annual action plan with indicators on which we are currently reporting. That is on-going work, which has not been stimulated as a result of the review.

I thank the panel for your attendance and evidence, which has been most useful.

At its next meeting, which will take place on 31 January, the committee will take evidence from stakeholders on the Scottish Government’s draft climate change plan. It will also consider petition PE1615, on state-regulated licensing of game bird hunting in Scotland, and a review of PE1601, on European beavers in Scotland.

12:56 Meeting continued in private until 13:05.