Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Official Report 635KB pdf

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Petition

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Control of Wild Goose Numbers (PE1490)

Our second item is an evidence session on petition PE1490, on control of wild goose numbers. The petition, which was lodged by Patrick Krause on behalf of the Scottish Crofting Federation, was referred to the committee following previous consideration by the Public Petitions Committee and the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee in session 4, and the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee in session 5.

The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to address the problems created by increasing populations of wild geese in crofting areas as a matter of priority, reassess its decision to stop funding existing goose management programmes and assign additional resources to crop protection and adaptive management programmes to ensure that the threat to the future of crofting is averted.

I am pleased to welcome to the meeting the petitioner,?Patrick Krause—I hope that I have pronounced his surname correctly. As this is the committee’s first consideration of the petition, I invite Patrick Krause to make an opening statement.

Thank you very much for allowing me to come in and support the petition.

The petition was been in existence for a number of years: it was lodged in 2013. We need to keep it live because things have not got any better. I know that constituents of some members who are here are saying the same thing to them.

In 2013, it was estimated that there were around 8,000 greylag geese—those are the Icelandic greylags—across the crofting counties. In Uist alone now, there are 8,000 Icelandic greylag geese, and they are now resident. At one time, they were just passing through, but they have become resident birds now, so they are a problem throughout the year.

Back in 2012, Scottish Natural Heritage, which is now NatureScot, established adaptive management projects. Adaptive management means doing a bit of culling, taking counts, doing a bit more culling and taking counts. That sounds like a very sensible approach but, after five years of a very successful pilot, it was decided not to continue with that. I could never understand the logic of that. Surely that is what a pilot is: something is tested and, if it works, it is done. However, something was tested and it worked, but it was not done.

Every year after the adaptive management schemes were stopped, the budget for control of geese reduced. It went down from just under £50,000 for the whole of the crofting islands—Tiree, Coll, the Uists, Lewis, Harris and Orkney. Just below £50,000 was used for the adaptive management projects, and that amount was reduced every year until it was finally decided in 2021 that no funding at all would go to the control of geese and NatureScot’s role would simply be advisory.

I just do not understand the logic of that. There did not seem to be a plan in place for continuing the control. We went and had a meeting with the minister and expressed our extreme concern about that, because we are at a point where crofters are giving up crofting because of the goose problem. That is not an exaggeration. We have said in the press that geese are protected but crofters are not, that crofters are now an endangered species, and so on.

In the islands, particularly Uist and Tiree, we have a really unique machair environment and a lot of traditional crops—landraces—that are not found anywhere else. The seed is available only on the islands. The minister announced that she would provide up to £50,000 towards goose management in the crofting areas. In her press release, she acknowledged that the machair is a very important environment, yet most of that £50,000 has gone to Orkney, which does not have the same machair. I am certainly not mocking Orkney, which also has a really big problem with greylags. It has about 21,000 birds, whereas Lewis and the Uists have about 8,000 and Tiree has the same sort of number. The Western Isles are getting £6,000 per island to control the birds.

Do tell me to shut up when I have to shut up. I have only a couple more things to say.

In Orkney, they are trialling a thing called corralling, whereby canoeists round up moulting birds, which cannot fly, and then qualified people have to catch them and administer a lethal drug to kill them. The cost of that works out at about £25 per bird. In the Uists and Lewis, we have had a shooting programme that cost about £8 per bird. Again, I am quite surprised by the logic of this.

NatureScot has let the situation get completely out of hand to a point where people are having to use corralling. No lethal method is nice, and of course the public perception is not nice. I add that crofters and the marksmen who do the work really do not like it. However, it is something that we have to do, because keeping the bird numbers down to a tolerable level is the only way that we are going to manage this. The minister said in her interview that she expects crofters and geese to be able to live alongside each other. We agree with that, but it will work only when there are manageable numbers.

It was estimated about five years ago that Uist, which is a good example, could tolerate 2,500 birds. The adaptive management scheme got the numbers down to 4,000 and we were still complaining then, but there are now 8,000 birds. The provision of £6,000 is not even going to make a dent in that. We are going to need £32,000 just to bring the number down to 4,000 by shooting them. I am sorry to throw all these figures at you, but I want to give you an idea of the proportions. I am sure that the Scottish Parliament information centre will have all the figures anyway. We need about £32,000 to bring the numbers down to the threshold of tolerability and we have only £6,000.

I urge you to keep the petition open particularly because, this year, NatureScot carries out its five-yearly review of the management programme. Therefore, it is timely to keep the petition open. We do not ask for the birds to be eradicated; we just ask for them to be reduced to a manageable level.

Thank you very much for hearing my argument.

Thank you very much, Patrick. That has certainly given us lots of food for thought. When we look back, we will find plenty of briefings and committee papers that will inform us of a lot of the background, but I am sure that members have many questions.

You suggest that there are about 5,500 birds too many in Uist at the moment, which is very concerning. If we are talking about £25 per head for humane slaughter, that seems unreasonable.

You also said that there are now resident birds. Why is that? What has changed so that, rather than being visitors, they now stay there full time?

Most people put it down to climate change. Whether it is long-term climate change or whether we are just going through a phase in which it has been warmer is all part of the argument. However, the fact is that the climate has changed such that the birds find that the environment is suitable for them year round now, so they stay.

To answer the first bit of your question, I also meant to say that the corralling involves using specialist organisations. As well as it costing just over three times the amount per bird in other shooting programmes to cull them, the money is going to specialist organisations, so it goes out of the area. NatureScot has said that it wants the situation to be sustainable. If we use public money and it goes to marksmen to keep the numbers down by shooting, at least the money stays in the local economy.

Thank you. Quite a few members want to ask questions. Jim Fairlie is desperate to comment on one of your points.

Patrick, thanks very much for coming in. It is a fascinating issue. From a farming perspective, I absolutely get the reasons why you need to control numbers.

What you said about corralling blew my mind. I did not realise that it was happening. I did not realise that we are paying people to go out and poison the birds. What happens to the carcasses after they are poisoned? I presume that they get dumped.

Yes, they get dumped.

That takes me on to the point that we were talking about beforehand. I will ask a couple of questions, and Alasdair Allan will probably come in and mop up what I miss.

I see the situation as an opportunity to use goose meat as a product. Why is there no recreational shooting? People will pay to go out and shoot, so I do not understand why we need to pay people to go and shoot geese. It gives us a good-quality source of protein. Why do we need Government intervention at all? Why has it not become a microbusiness for the places where goose numbers are large? As far as I can see, the marketing opportunities would be immense.

That seems logical. Part of the problem is that NatureScot has assumed that the cull can be self-funding. I think that the reason that it is not is because there are too many birds.

There is a limited market for what you can do with goose meat. The business that was dealing with the situation had a licence for it and then there was a mess-up with the relicensing. It was NatureScot’s fault. It had forgotten to ask the European Union for a licence so it interrupted the business.

So, a licence is needed to sell goose meat. Let us clear that up first. Why did the business need a licence to sell goose meat?

I am not sure, but it is necessary to have a licence to sell goose meat.

It is licensed now, which is good. I know of one business that is starting to use goose meat by doing things such as making salami from it, but it is a limited market. The numbers of geese are so huge that a small business cannot deal with the situation.

09:45  

Is it a limited market in the sense that goose meat has only ever been used or exposed in a very limited marketplace—in other words, does the meat have to be sold only in the Western Isles? The availability of goose meat could be rolled out, in the same way as was done with Orkney Gold beef. It represents a marketing opportunity for big supermarkets at a time when we potentially face food shortages and we want to have a resilient food and drink sector. I do not understand why, with proper marketing, the product could not be sold right across the United Kingdom.

You are right—I think that it could be. The issue is the differential between the existing numbers of geese and the number of businesses that are trying to access the market. At the moment, the market is too small and the numbers of geese are too big. With any such venture, it takes time to open up a market. It takes a long time for initiatives such as the Scotch lamb and Orkney Gold beef initiatives to establish a market; it also takes a lot of money to get such a market going, because of the advertising, promotion and so on that is required.

Surely that would be a better way of spending money than poisoning geese and sticking them in a hole.

Absolutely—I agree.

I will leave it there, convener.

That is a whole other line of questioning that we could go down. I am reminded of my late dear friend Alex Fergusson, who was the convener of the Rural Development Committee some years ago. I remember the dread on his face whenever the subject of geese or deer was brought up. I think that, in much of what you have said, the word “geese” could be replaced by the word “deer”. There are opportunities there.

Is the fact that it is necessary to have a licence to sell goose meat a consequence of there being a funded control system in place? Is the licensing requirement general across the whole of Scotland or is it specific to the isles?

It is a general thing. My understanding is that we have to have a European licence to sell the meat from a species that has a restriction on it. That is the point. Even though there is a general licence to shoot greylag geese, all geese are controlled in some way.

Thank you. That is useful.

I declare not so much an interest as an appreciation of what you have said, given that I live in a place where, when I look out of my window, I sometimes feel as though I am in a Hitchcock film, so great is the number of greylag geese that are landing around my house.

Could you explain why the problem with geese is a particular problem in crofting areas? Not everyone appreciates the degree to which crofters are part time and the pressures that there are on their time. Could you say something about the scale of the task that would face a crofter or a village in trying to deal with the issue without external assistance?

It is quite a complex issue, as you know. Part of the problem is that shooting is not done as much. To go back to what Jim Fairlie said, there is sport shooting. Most crofters in the Western Isles are tenants, which means that the landlords retain the shooting rights. Therefore, shooting geese is a business for the landlords, but they simply do not have the numbers of shooters.

On the whole, crofters do not shoot. The situation has changed over generations. In the past, it was fairly usual for crofters to shoot whatever they could for the pot, but that has gradually diminished. A lot of crofters no longer have guns.

It is also very difficult to shoot geese, which is why people do it as a sport. The marksmen have all said that, over the years, it is getting more and more difficult, because geese are quite clever, to the point of recognising the marksman’s car and moving on; as he or she comes down the hill, the geese take off, because they know who it is.

Some crofters are doing some shooting—in Lewis, for example, the local goose management group pays for the ammunition but people come out as volunteers. There is a gathering of people at this time of year to go out and do some shooting.

The answer that I can give to almost any question is that the problem is that we are completely overrun. The numbers are just way too high. That is the root of the problem. If we had controlled them five years ago or seven years ago, when we had the numbers at a more practical level, we would not be in this situation. It has just got completely out of hand now.

On your point about cars, I have had people put it to me that geese can recognise number plates. [Laughter.] However, the serious point around that is the one that you have just made, which is that there is a dramatic change in the number of greylag geese landing on crofts. Can you say a bit about what it is that greylag geese do when they land on a croft?

They are grazers, for one thing. Crofters are livestock keepers, on the whole. The cattle grazing the machair increases the biodiversity, and if the geese have already got the fresh grass, the cattle cannot graze. The trouble is that geese do not just graze the grass—they completely destroy it. Geese have quite big feet and they plod about, flattening the grass. They can also produce an amazing amount of dung. Cattle will not go and graze where geese have messed the grass. People are literally finding that they cannot use a field that they were using the day before because, during the early hours, a flock has come down and completely taken the field out of use.

The consequences are huge. The crofter thinks that he has a certain amount of grazing for a certain number of animals and then suddenly it is halved, literally overnight, and he has to either buy feed in or start selling animals, quickly.

This is an example of an issue where agriculture and environmentalists are actually on the same side. You have described the situation about the machair landscape and the need for that landscape to be grazed in order to be a habitat. Is there a common cause here?

There is absolutely a common cause. RSPB Scotland, for example, is probably the biggest environmental organisation involved and has the most concern about the welfare of the birds, but it agrees with us. In fact, it ran a project to bring down the goose numbers.

There is a whole point to consider around the fact that how crofters manage the land enhances the environment. Not that long ago, how crofters managed the land was looked on as a bit old fashioned. The attitude was, “That will change—they’ll catch up.” However, with all the emphasis on the twin emergencies of climate change and biodiversity loss and the fact that we hosted the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—there is now very much a spotlight on the environment, which is quite right, of course. I believe that the way in which crofters have been managing the land is now being recognised as a sustainable way forward. Otherwise, we will lose the old varieties of grain, for example, because the seed is only produced on the islands and once it is gone, it is gone.

Are you aware of any biodiversity research that has been done on the islands? With the petition, the emphasis has been on protecting livelihoods—the grazing and the sustainability of agriculture—but the other direction in which to take it, as you have clearly set out, is to look at things such as the machair and the biodiversity loss when we move from having a sustainable number of geese to having twice three times more geese than agriculture can deal with, never mind the biodiversity. Has any work been done to look at the biodiversity loss attributed to geese?

There has been some. I would argue that it has not been enough and that surely that is something that we employ NatureScot to do. It has the researchers and could be producing the evidence and showing that geese have an impact on the environment.

Thank you for coming to give evidence, Patrick. I appreciate what you have said up to this point. The conversation that Jim Fairlie has initiated around feeding people is very interesting.

I am a regional MSP, so I cover most of the areas where geese are an issue. I live in Moray, where geese are shot on a nature reserve and the local people do not want that to happen. As Jim said, people pay to do that shooting and they come from Europe to do that at times, so that is something that we need to look at overall.

You have already answered quite a few of my questions. However, you were saying that the £50,000 is now back—is that right? That has been reintroduced, but it has been split, and Orkney gets the most because of the way in the geese are being culled there.

Yes, I think that it is mainly due to the fact that corralling is being trialled there. I also wonder how much it is because Orkney has three times the number of birds. It has got three times the problem, so I can understand that.

I do not know whether there is any truth in the fact that more money is definitely spent on areas that are producing commercial grain. In the Uists, crofters tend just to be producing animals and small amounts of traditional grains as a very small enterprise, whereas Orkney is producing a commercial beef product and a lot of grain for feed. I do not know how much that affects the decisions on where the money will be spent.

I am sorry to go on answering more than you asked, but it cannot help but strike you that the other protected species tend to affect islands such as Islay. Islay, of course, produces whisky, which is a commercial success story for Scotland. It is a different goose that is the problem and it is more strictly controlled, so farmers are paid compensation.

The point that I am trying to make is that the budget for the crofting areas is £50,000, while the budget for the other agricultural and commercial areas that have goose problems is £1.1 million. I know that NatureScot would probably argue that it is because those geese are more protected species, but I just ask whether the fact that there are commercial interests plays a part in how decisions are made on how to spend the budget.

Thank you for that. You are welcome to expand your answers beyond my questions. I am interested in hearing what would be a proportionate and reasonable quota for the number of greylag geese—let us stick with them—that could be culled each year.

10:00  

As I said at the beginning, taking the crofters in Uist as an example, a lot of work was done on that in the adaptive management programme. It was a really useful programme and it estimated that, if there were 2,500 birds in Uist, the birds and crofters could live happily alongside each other. That sort of proportion would probably work for all the crofting areas, if we can bring the numbers down.

At around the time that the petition was launched and pre-petition, I remember that people in Orkney were only just starting to feel that geese were a problem. They were starting to say, “Mmm, yeah, it is a bit of a problem.” Now, it is completely out of hand and even Orkney farmers are giving up. At the national goose forum the other day, the Orcadian representative said that he personally knows of farmers who are giving up farming in Orkney because of the geese.

Earlier, you described the process that NatureScot went through over a period of time and then, after five years, it stopped. Now, we have an increase in the number of birds and, using the example of Uist, we want to get that to 2,500 birds. What would we do? How many years would it take to get to that number?

I think that we need to get the numbers down as soon as possible. I am not an expert on culling geese, so I do not know what is realistic. I do not know whether we can reduce them by 2,000 every year until we get to that sort of figure or whether, if we made a bigger effort, we could reduce more of them—say 3,000 a year. It will take a few years to get the numbers down again.

Another question that I have is about the ammunition that is used for shooting. I am aware that there are different kinds. Obviously, if we were to follow the trajectory that Jim Fairlie introduced of using geese as food, it should not be lead, and I know that RSPB Scotland is keen that lead ammunition should not be used. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Not really—I am not that technical. I do not shoot, personally. I can understand the need to avoid using lead, of course, if the meat is going to be used in the human food chain. My understanding is that stainless steel shot costs more, so it means that the costs will go up a bit, but it is a proportional thing. If it means that we can start using the meat, it makes sense to pay that bit more for steel shot.

Jim Fairlie commented that the direction of travel is away from lead shot. That is certainly our understanding.

With the pressures on food security and what you said about some of the traditional barley and cereal crops that are being grown in the islands, do you not think that the situation should be considered as an emergency by the Government?

Absolutely—I can only agree with you. It is an emergency. We will see people who can produce food going out of business quite quickly because of the geese.

You mentioned that crofters are giving up. What do crofters do if they are not managing the land, and what happens to the land?

The land lies unused, unfortunately. There are quite a lot of examples now of crofts just lying neglected. That is not entirely because of the geese, as there is a problem with neglected crofts anyway.

Lastly, NatureScot says that it wants a balance between controlling the geese and mitigating the impacts on agricultural production. Do you have any examples of what NatureScot would consider appropriate if, for example, a crop had been trampled by geese and a crofter had to pay for more seed to resow and might end up losing the crop? What do you think would be considered to be a balance? Would crofters be content with compensation because they have to put up with the geese?

I think that it is not really about compensation, to be honest. I do not want to digress into a discussion of the white-tailed sea eagle, but the argument is the same in that regard. Crofters have said that we need to protect our livestock and crops from eagles and geese and, whenever we are asked whether the issue is about compensation, we have always said that it is not. We do not grow crops to feed geese; we grow crops because we grow cattle. That is what we are trying to do. We produce some of the best beef that is available. We have the best environment in which to do that, because we have a unique ecosystem. Destroying that ecosystem and handing out money is not the answer. The issue is about maintaining the balance.

The national goose policy has three primary pillars. The policy is based on conservation of the species, crop protection and value for money, because public money is being spent. The situation is completely out of balance, because there has been too much emphasis on the conservation. Neither I nor the SCF or crofters in general are anti-conservation—quite the opposite, in fact. However, the emphasis has been too much on the conservation of species. Crop protection always seems to be considered last, after conservation and value for public money—although I have to say that I do not think that value for public money is a great consideration, as can be seen in some of the examples that I have given.

I represent Argyll and Bute, and I recognise the goose issue, as it is an issue on some of the islands in my constituency. You are correct to say that Islay produces whisky; it is also, over the winter, home to about 15,000 barnacle geese and Greenland white-fronted geese. Of course, it is also home to farmers and, importantly, crofters. We must consider the whole range of users.

I want to go off on a slight tangent. Driving around Argyll and Bute, I can see that there is a vast increase in the number of Canada geese. Given the increase that there has been in the number of greylag geese since the petition was first lodged, I am interested in how other things have changed around goose numbers—I am thinking specifically of Canada geese, which are not indigenous to Scotland.

I do not know about Canada geese, but I know about barnacle geese and Greenland white-fronted geese. The interesting thing is that the numbers change quite quickly. Five years ago, barnacle geese were not considered to be much of a pest at all, but they are now a very big pest. We keep going on about greylag geese, because of the huge numbers that are involved, but barnacle geese are becoming a serious problem, too.

Earlier, you talked about the five-year review that is coming up. How do you plan to get involved in that? What conversations have you had with NatureScot to date?

The review has not yet started. We attend the national goose forum, and we heard there that the new review will be launched shortly, with all the stakeholders being asked for evidence and opinion. I am afraid that I will be lobbying you people and asking for your support at that point.

Unfortunately, we are running tight for time. I will take a question from Beatrice Wishart and then one from Karen Adam.

I have one quick question for Patrick Krause—it is good to see you here in person. A BBC report three years ago said that meat from wild geese shot in Orkney was to go on sale across Scotland for the first time. Do you have any knowledge of how that went?

I do not. I think that it has been fairly successful but, again, my understanding is that it is all very small scale and cannot address the problem. NatureScot admits that selling meat will not address the problem. As Jim Fairlie said, in the longer term there is some potential. Right now, though, we are completely swamped, and small amounts of meat being sold will not really make any difference.

Would you describe it as a crisis?

Yes—absolutely.

Good morning, Patrick. I know that the issue is specific to a certain species of bird, and that the landscape and biodiversity are specific to the area, but have you looked across the world for solutions and best practice in similar situations? I acknowledge that the petition calls on us to help, but do you have a solution in mind?

NatureScot has partners in other countries that it talks to about goose management, but it is more from the point of view of conservation. I do not really know that much about goose management as management of a pest in other countries.

On the geographic limitations, those areas are expanding rapidly in Scotland. As Beatrice Wishart will know, Shetland is starting to have a goose problem. In the past five years—probably even less—Shetlanders have gone from being able to look at the problems elsewhere in Scotland with sympathy to getting up in the morning and seeing geese all over their land, too.

We talk about the Western Isles a lot, and that is where the problem started, but it is spreading and is right across the northern isles and on the mainland. In Lochaber and so on, there are similar problems. Those areas do not have the numbers yet, but they are coming.

We have a very final question from Jim Fairlie.

I could talk to you all day, Patrick. Just quickly, there are tensions between landowners and tenant sheep farmers on the issue of grazing deer, and an agreement that landowners have to control deer at a certain level. As part of their responsibilities, what do landowners have to do to protect tenant crofters’ grazing and cropping?

Landowners do not have any legal responsibility to protect crofters’ crops. Some landlords are quite good. Stòras Uibhist, for example, which is a community landlord, is very involved in the management of geese. Across Scotland, the relationship between crofters and community landlords is very good.

I am not here to knock private landlords, but they have other business to attend to. Maintaining numbers of geese, like maintaining numbers of deer, is part of their business plan.

But it is not sufficient at the moment.

No. Not at all.

Thank you, Patrick, for your informative and measured contribution in support of your petition. We found your evidence fascinating. Once again, it probably raised more questions in members’ minds than answers.

Members, our paper sets out suggestions for next steps. I propose that we continue the petition and look further at the issue. Given that it is almost 10 years since the petition was lodged, I suggest that we write to the Scottish Government and NatureScot for an update on the adaptive goose management approach. In light of the evidence that we received today about the potential impact on biodiversity and the change in the habitat of the geese, we need to be aware of the scope and timetable for NatureScot’s review. I propose that we consider the matter again on receipt of a response from the Scottish Government. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you.

10:16 Meeting suspended.  

10:26 On resuming—