Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)

Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

Question reference: S6W-27297

Asked by: Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Friday, 03 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 20 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will drop its proposed changes to deer management, and what the reasons are for its position on this matter.

We are currently facing a climate and biodiversity crisis. High densities of herbivores such as deer can have a very serious impact on our forests and land by trampling and overgrazing.

Our 2021 response to the report by the independent Deer Working Group (DWG), recognised that a much greater urgency to our efforts to ensure sustainable deer management is required.

As Roseanna Cunningham, then Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform set out in that response, “protection of the massive and essential investments we are making in natural solutions to reduce carbon emissions and to enhance and restore biodiversity in Scotland have to be the main focus of our deer management policy”.

We remain committed to modernising Scotland’s systems of deer management and implement recommendations made by the DWG as set out in both that response and the 2021-22 Programme for Government .

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Question reference: S6W-27297

Answer