Current status: Answered by Jim Fairlie on 27 November 2024
To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made in expanding the Cairngorms Deer Pilot to develop a national scheme to incentivise increased management and investment in the venison supply chain.
The Scottish Government is committed to reducing high deer numbers in order to help us to achieve our biodiversity and carbon objectives. In addition to the Cairngorms National Park Authority deer management incentives pilot, NatureScot launched two pilot schemes led by this autumn to incentivise deer managers to increase deer culls in specific parts of Scotland.
These pilot schemes have been implemented this year in different parts of Scotland to test different approaches to incentives and to better understand the barriers to deer management.
While these pilots do not constitute a single national scheme, we will use the findings from them to inform decisions on future incentive schemes.