THE news that the charity Trees for Life needs to construct a massive deer fence in order to establish new native woodland should alarm us all (“Where eagles dare: Plan to return hardy wee trees to our mountains”, The Herald, December 11, 2019). The aim of the fence is to exclude deer from 700 acres in Glen Moriston so that young trees can grow, protected from deer grazing. Obviously there are far too many deer on neighbouring estates, creating extreme grazing pressure. Presumably the local Deer Management Group, to which all the landowners belong, must be incapable of carrying out its primary responsibility to manage deer populations in balance with habitat requirements.
Our climate emergency requires fundamental change in land use. In Scotland a top priority should be a massive reduction in red deer grazing pressure in the uplands so that biological diversity is restored and carbon capture enhanced. Everything, from moss and grass to shrubs and trees, needs to be able to grow and escape the munching mouths of starving deer. That will be good for biodiversity, for all human communities currently threatened by downstream flooding and for our overheating planet.
Spending a huge amount of money on a deer fence in Glen Moriston is ridiculous. Our environmental crisis should oblige the Scottish Government to ask why landowners continue to disregard their environmental obligations. A compulsory programme of culling is needed immediately. All the money required for this fence should be diverted instead to pay for extra stalkers on the ground to reduce the deer population during the rest of this winter.
How many more decades are going to pass before the Scottish Parliament decides to bring deer management and control up to the standard found in every other country in the world where hunters are allowed to shoot deer? Too many powerful people pressurise our politicians to maintain deer populations at absurd levels. And the worst offenders are the Royal Family. They should be setting an example for all other landowners to follow. Instead, a walk on Balmoral will reveal an ancient Caledonian pine forest that is dying on its feet, as thousands of starving deer in the Deeside and Angus glens seek shelter and food in the last remnants of our native woodland. These landowners all know that what they are doing is wrong. Have any of them bothered to walk through places like Glen Derry and Glen Feshie in the Cairngorms, where the National Trust for Scotland and Danish landowner Ander Povlsen have been reducing deer numbers and regenerating the forest, without fenced exclosures? There they will see the future, not the degenerate past. Perhaps we can look forward to a new, environmentally conscious signpost in the Queen’s Christmas message this year. Balmoral and most of the rest of Scotland’s large landowners need a new route to follow, as a matter of urgency.
Dave Morris, Kinross.
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