 Good morning. Welcome to the ninth meeting of 2016 of the Environment, Climate Change, Land Reform Committee. Agenda item 1. The first item of business on the committee's agenda this morning is to consider whether to take items 4 and 5 in private. Are members agreed? Thank you. Members are agreed. We now move to agenda item 2, which is for the committee to take evidence on biodiversity. Scotland's progress to 2020. We're joined this morning by a range of stakeholders and academics. Welcome all of you. Because of our numbers and the nature of the discussion, the committee felt that this would best be done in a round table setting. I think that most of you are used to that, so you'll be aware of how that works. What I would ask is that witnesses don't have to bear it in mind. They don't have to answer every question. They don't feel they have a contribution to make. I appeal to members also to ask sharp questions as well, so we can cover as much ground as we can. You don't have to press the microphone button. That will be done automatically. I ask everyone to turn their mobile phones off as a matter of good order. We'll go round the table and introduce ourselves. I'll start with Jenny Gilruth. Jenny Gilruth, MSP for Midfif, England Office. Calum Duncan, head of Conservation Scotland for the Marine Conservation Society. Finlay Carson, MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries. Chris Ellis, I'm a research scientist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Kate Forbes, MSP for Sky, Lochaber and Badnoch. Mark Ruskell, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife. Bruce Wilson, senior policy officer at the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Dave Stewart, MSP for the Hounds Islands region. Willie McGee, co-ordinator of the Forest Policy Group. Angus MacDonald, MSP for Falkirk East. Catherine Lloyd, Tysladd Baddivist. Emma Harper, MSP for South Scotland region. Adam Smith, director of Scotland of the Gaming Wildlife Conservation Trust. Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West. Duncan Oeying, head of species and land management with RSPB Scotland. Claudia Beamish, South Scotland MSP. Maurice Golden, West of Scotland MSP. I'm Graham Day, MSP for Angus South. Welcome everyone and let's get started. Can I begin by posing the question? Is there a contradiction between the findings of the first progress report on the route map to 2020 and those of the state of nature report? Can the two reports be directly compared? One strikes me as being perhaps overly optimistic. One is quite pessimistic. What's the truth out there? What's actually happening? Who wants to start? Duncan Oeying. I could start. I can really comment more on the state of nature report because we were one of the partners in it. Obviously, we clearly welcome the efforts that everybody is making to help biodiversity, but our summary would certainly be that it really isn't enough. We know that one in 11 species in Scotland is at risk from extinction. 65 species are critically endangered. Just to give an example, 18 per cent of butterflies, 15 per cent of dragonflies. I think clearly government may present a fairly optimistic view of the situation, but I think in itself the Scottish biodiversity strategy is not going to be enough to deliver the 8G targets. Bruce Wilson. I think it might also be useful to look at another indicator, the natural capital asset index, which broadly shows that, since the 1950s, we've had a severe decline in natural capital, slightly picking up in some areas, but basically in uplands in agriculture, natural capital is still declining. As far as the seas concern, there's a contradiction because the priority project, 12 heading in the 2020 route map for the environmental status of our seas, looks at the proportion of sites that the seas in marine protected areas and that alone. It doesn't consider how they're managed. I should say we welcome the huge strides that have been taken to develop the impact network. But what Scotland's main atlas shows us is that there are still many concerns and declines in the sea and the 2020 route map document is not measuring the actual status of the sea, it's measuring the amount of sea that's in designated sites. That's why it's important to have adequate resources in place to support marine monitoring strategies so that we can actually see what effect those welcome new measures are having on what ultimately matters, which is the marine biodiversity. Adam Smith. I never thought I'd be in the position of defending an SNH report, so this is a novelty in itself. There is reason for some happiness and resonance with the report on the progress to date. I'll pick one example in particular, it's one close to our heart, as you know, the good farming practice for nature and linking nature with business and the economy. It's undoubtedly true that there's much more that needs to be done through the agri-environment schemes generally and we'll maybe touch on that later on in the session. But it is true that those schemes are supporting a wide range of biodiversity and we welcome that support into the farming and land management sector. For example, game crops or unharvested crops are a significant contributor of food and cover to wild birds in the countryside. They are planted for many reasons, shooting is one of them, but the other reason is that they are supported through the agri-environment scheme. The section that says that 10 targets are on track for 2020 is probably true as far as it goes. I think that the challenge is going to be making sure that that's robust and that it can be followed through properly. We've got a number of reports that have been referred to already. There's a lot of reporting mechanisms out there. Is what we have in front of us delivered in a straightforward transparent and an on-compassing way, as we would need it to be, to get a real handle on the picture whereby of diversity? Bruce Wilson? For the Scottish Wildlife Trust, in order to get a proper handle on those things, we really need the full suite of ecosystem health indicators to be developed so that we can… I've basically taken it back to the idea that if we can't manage what we don't measure properly, without that in place, I think that we can find it quite hard to broadly understand where we are with the HE targets and with the SPS itself. Is that a view that's shared? Callum. I agree with that. In the marine context, for example, the 2020 strategy for marine recognises that fisheries management needs to take account of biodiversity and the only reporting in the route map is against, as I said, the proportion of the seas in marine protected areas. It's crucial to have that application of biodiversity thinking as far as the seas concerned in the wider seas and not just in marine protected areas. We don't think that the route map clearly reports against that because there's some welcome recognition in the actual strategy that recovering biodiversity in the sea is about more than the NPAs, so there's some work needed there. I think that it's important to recognise as well that the route, the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, the targets and the actions, they don't attempt to prescribe all the activities that will contribute to delivery of the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy but to set the tone of the kinds of activities that Scotland wants to see and steer the direction of those activities in certain directions to reflect the updated conventional biological diversity. So it's kind of like a sampler and it doesn't necessarily represent all the activity that's contributing to the SPS. There's certainly a lot that could be improved and one thing is undoubtedly to tap into the interests of the actual land managers who are responsible for so much of Scotland's land that is not actually designated for conservation itself. I draw the attention of the committee to the Wildlife Estates Scotland project, which actually encourages committee land managers to actually audit their own assets in an attempt to actually improve those downstream. There are numbers of other projects. The DWCT runs partridge counting schemes and it's very clear that where people are encouraged to join in with that scheme they also see much greater than average biodiversity gains. So there are certainly things in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy reporting side which could probably tap into the enthusiasm of the land management community a little bit better themselves both as a driver and as a reporting mechanism. I think one of the other things that again we might take but it's a later but it's a related topic is the clarity of purpose of the many strategies that are actually guiding us on this. I think I put in my note the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, a national peatland plan, the land use strategy, the forest strategy, national park plans, a possible upland moorland vision and we are being very clearly reported to that this is a drag on conservation. There are too many strategies not well joined up enough and in fact within the SPS itself we face the challenge, a nice example, that forest expansion which is a headline aimed for the SPS is actually in conflict with 40 per cent of the priority species in the SPS which are actually open landscape species and actually forest expansion would only support three of them. So there is a good deal of work needed to join up the very necessary government vision from the land management side. It's not a clear strategy at the moment for many people who could be helping to deliver biodiversity in Scotland. I really need to comment from the panels whether they agree with that point Duncan O'Reeway. I was just going to pick up on the point about join up because an essential part of the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy is join up between the various strands of government and I'm afraid the actual overarching group, the high level strategy group hasn't actually met since the election. So one of the comments that I'm getting from members of our team that sit on the various groups under the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy is there is a lack of top-down direction so it would be very helpful if that high level strategy could meet soon and start communicating with the various Scottish Biodiversity Strategy groups and that's where of course the join up, we know that critical parts of government need to engage here like agriculture, forestry and seaper etc that is their point of engagement with this whole process. I'm seeing heads nodding an agreement around the table to get that's a point that most people would yeah that's good to get that on the record then right moving on Dave Stewart you want to develop a theme. Clearly leaving Europe the whole Brexit issue has dominated the political debate over the last few months. None of us obviously really know what's going to happen since no other complete countries ever left the EU. What I want to ask the witnesses about is what the assessment the witnesses have made of the effect on environment and nature generally will be from leaving the EU for example the effect on designations which have been very important the involvement with CAP and structural funds and of course big issues about what happens when there's breaches of environmental designations such as infraction procedures and enforcement. So it's a general question convener around the crucial issue about Brexit and are there any opportunities I personally can't see any but maybe some of our guests or witnesses might have another view. Adam Smith. Yeah thank you. It's a very interesting question Mr Stewart. I was at a meeting just last week of the British Ecological Society in Inverness policy team up there brought together 40 or 50 people to discuss rewilding and one of the phrases that regularly appeared in that discussion was the dead hand of designation. It is again seen as a necessary evil. We under the European regulations have been required to designate sites but it is generally recognised that it again is a drag on people's incentive to actually manage for continued conservation. So there may well be merit or benefit in actually a Brexit and opportunity which would actually allow us to make those designations more flexible to support them better. This has been one of the great challenges is that we designate an area for example called a special protection area which typically is for birds but it receives no extra support in order to encourage that to happen. So all of the responsibility sits with the land management side but very few of the the actual rights that go with encouraging management actually are there as well. One of those things that would encourage that is support, continue support for agri-environment schemes. This is going to be a huge challenge for the sector. We are going to need to get our heads around the fact that farming particularly is not going to be paid in the future we think for producing food and fibre. Farming typically at the moment produces three things, food, fuel and fibre. It's not going to be paid to do that in the future but it will be paid to provide the public services that make Scotland great. Our landscapes that are amazing and the species that we all enjoy. So agri-environment, some kind of support for those mechanisms is going to be needed into the future. The only other benefit that I can see in Brexit is that again the flexibility for some of those agri-environment schemes might come. There have been some very strange regulations that came out of Europe as regards agri-environment schemes. I'll take you back to game crops which I've already mentioned. You are not allowed to use herbicides and game crops because European regulations suggest that that would mean you are treating it as a harvestable crop and you might actually get paid twice. If in fact we actually had the flexibility to manage our game crops better, there is undoubtedly the case that more farmers would take these beneficial prescriptions up. So there are some things in there but I'm not many I have to admit. Okay, Bruce Wilson. Back up what Adam says. I think the major opportunity if we're thinking about in those terms if they're from leaving Europe would be to create up an agri-environment agricultural system that doesn't focus on just the traditional commodity provision really about providing that wider public benefit. I think that the conservation land management community is pretty unanimous in its opinion that there needs to be funding going into the agricultural sector. It's just about what we specifically incentivise with that so we're not paying for things that we want to disincentivise and we're paying for the range of benefits that farmers provide from their land. There's also certainly a number of negative things around potentially leaving Europe. Designated sites, for us, we'd be very cautious about eroding anything around designated sites but there maybe is some potential to get systems that are more suitable in some cases for Scotland. Okay, I'm going to come to Duncan O'r Union but to repeat Dave Stewart's point what about the issue of who polices delivery of this? Do you want to come in on that, Bruce Wilson? Just very quickly, not having a higher authority in terms of Europe being there is a worry for us as well if there's potential infringement, some of these things. It would be worrying for not to be a high authority with an overseeing role. Okay, Duncan O'r Union. So I'll agree with Adam on one point and disagree with him on another. I mean certainly on protected areas we see them as a critical bastion of delivery of nature conservation in Scotland. About 15 per cent of the land area is currently designated as either special protection area, special area of conservation or site of special scientific interest. These are the jewels in the crown of our natural heritage and need to be defended, we would argue. I mean the critical issue is really how they are funded in the future and we would look for some reassurance from Scottish Government that they will underpin the current funding that is delivered largely through agri environment and European funding into the future. More widely the whole issue of funding both of agri environment and other projects. So going back to your point about what other issues have occurred if you like as a result of the Brexit decision, I mean the other major concern to us is that quite a number of particularly of the big projects that are identified on the route map of the Scottish biodiversity strategy, we'd be looking for funding from the likes of the European life funding pot of money to deliver those. Given the current uncertainty about the future of that funding, I mean I'm involved with a project myself, the Western Atlantic Woodland project, which was a large partnership project, £11 million, we were hoping to access, £5 million of European funding. That is currently in abeyance largely due to the uncertainty around the future of life funding. All I would say is if we are going to deliver the big projects that are set out in the biodiversity strategy, we need some certainty that the Scottish Government will underpin life funding, existing agreements and agreements that are planned. I'll raise one additional point before the other witnesses come in. Clearly I understand that there might be some repatriation of our structural funds and agri-fundings are crucially important, and that both the UK and Scottish Government made some commitments on that. But a technical point I would raise with witnesses who may be aware of this. Once the article 50 is delivered and there's the two-year negotiation, once that trade deals are sorted out, we revert back to world trade organisation rules, which we are a member of as well. Members will be aware that the world trade organisation rules are quite clear that there can't be unfair subsidy in their words of farming. Effectively, schemes that we currently have would not be eligible under world trade organisation rules. Once we're out with the EU, it's crucially important that we're still actively involved with WTO as well, our member currently. That has obviously been extremely worrying to farmers and crofters across the whole of the UK, and I don't have any witnesses who have any specific points on that, because that is definitely unknown territory. If anybody wants to come in on that, there's no one disagreeing with you, Mr Stewart. We have first, can we? Okay, let's move on and look at some of the specifics here. Pete Lund, let's start with that, Emma. Restoring function in Blanketbog is a long-term process and results to date are preliminary. I'm wondering whether action on Pete Lund is focused largely on one geographic area, like Cainthes, Sutherland and the flow country. If so, what action is required to restore Pete Lund elsewhere and what are the barriers to doing this, like funding or lack of engagement? I think that it's worth making the point before anybody answers that the evidence that this committee has taken around climate change is that we're missing a trick with Pete Lund's in that area. Are we in any way missing a trick with Pete Lund's from a biodiversity perspective as well? Who wants to go first? Can we just add community involvement in Pete Lund restoration, if rather than come back afterwards, if that could be included? No, that's fine, that opens it up. Who wants to go first? Bruce Wilson. Yeah, there's been some good progress in the route map on Pete Lund's, like everyone would agree with that, but come 2020 with the targets that are in there, it's certainly not going to be job done. I think it was the low-carbon report that suggests up to 21,000 hectares a year of Pete Lund restoration is technically feasible, and we're going to need greater ambition to reach that target. The benefits of investing in Pete Lund restoration now are that it's relatively cheap compared to doing it when the Pete Lund asset is eroded. I think that putting in money now would actually save us a lot of money, but also deliver the extra benefits, like community benefits, if you have proper engagement, the carbon sequestration that we've talked about, but also the biodiversity and flood prevention benefits and water storage. Yeah, I think tied to that is one of some of the barriers that we hear repeatedly to uptake is short-term funding on cycles. I'm sure Adam will back me up that if you're a landowner, you're certainly not going to do something on a short-term cycle, especially with something like Pete Lund's that take a long time to restore properly, so we can realise the full benefits for them. Okay, Willie McGee. Yeah, Pete Lund doesn't sit naturally with forest, but certainly in the forest policy group, we've taken views on a number of different issues. One of our concerns, and certainly in the uplands, is that, first of all, Pete Lund is generally across Scotland, so in relation to geography, I don't think it's confined to the north of Scotland. We have Pete Lunds in the southern uplands, which can be degraded through either burning for land management, overstocking of either sheep in the southern uplands or deer in the highlands. This kind of interface with sporting strays slightly from the forestry and the Pete Lund, but we see that the deer issue and sporting in a climate change and by that way linked to Pete Lund, they need to be considered in the round, so considering them in isolation is not a great thing. We have had, just to address Claudia's input in the southern uplands, we've got a very modest, small Pete Lund restoration effort being carried out by Borders Forest Trust in the Moffitt Valley, and I think that it is something that, certainly with the Government's land reform agenda, Pete Lund management, Pete Lund conservation, Pete Lund restoration, those are all things that can be in the competencies of communities, so where communities get access to land, either exporting land or ex-agricultural land, they would be as fit as anyone to manage those areas. Anyone else? Adam Smith. Yes, I'd certainly endorse Bruce's point. A long-term sustained funding stream is absolutely essential for land management opportunities. There are good examples in the estate land around the farm that the GWCT runs up in Aberdeenshire estates which are enthusiastically keen to close up the bare peat that's been exposed in the head ground at the top. They've done a little bit of it, but the funding has then fizzled out and has not been available to complete the rest of it. They find that very frustrating, especially when they're willing participants. One of the other things that we find as a drag on actually getting Pete Lund restoration in amongst the land management community is that they think that there might be biodiversity downsides, so rewetted areas may not actually be so good for some of the breeding birds that we all appreciate, particularly the wading birds that are already under pressure, so very, very wet ground is not absolutely ideal for some of the species such as golden plover and curlew, so we have to be a little bit cautious about that. That's brought up with us, and the other is that there may be a farming downside. There's a splendid plant called the bog asphodel which, when browsed by sheep, can cause photosensitivity of the skin to such an extent that it actually causes the ears to become damaged in lambs and fall off. Bog asphodel thrives in increasingly wet conditions, and this is actually a genuine drag for quite a lot of upland farmers on rewetting their ground. Now, I don't think it's necessarily more than a perception in both cases, but there might be some low-key both facilitation, maybe a little bit of research, she said, which would actually help set some of these fears to rest and actually encourage people in restoration more generally. On the sporting side, I think you're absolutely right, I think all of these things, grazing and tracking, is not just about deer, it's also about sheep and cattle, that all of that impact needs to be considered in the round. And on the community front, I think if there are areas which are not being used productively for biodiversity or productively for farming or forestry, then the community might well take an interest and do some quite good things with a relatively small amount of money as well. Duncan O'Llew in? Just very briefly, chair. The Scottish Government's low-carbon Scotland report has indicated that about 21,000 hectares of peatland restoration is feasible per annum. Currently, the run rate is between 3,000 and 6,000 hectares per year, so I think that we acknowledge good progress, but we need to keep it going for the range of reasons that were outlined earlier, you know, climate change. Finlay Carson. Just on the back of that, does anybody think that there's a identifiable conflict of interest between the peatland restoration and the Government's planting targets? Would that conflict be significant? Shouldn't, because peatland is excluded from planting. However, there's been an illusion already to the quite aggressive planting targets that we endorse greater woodland cover. The route that the Scottish Government is going down in forestry, which, if we had last year's committee would be in here with us, is being pushed increasingly towards external large-scale investment. The areas where you go when you've got large-scale investment are the uplands. There is a move within investment forestry, and that's dictated by pension companies, investment companies. They are trying to push the forestry commission to move on to 50 centimetres of peat. There are moves behind the scenes in the industry, and that's in order for them to meet industrial targets. We would take the view that that is entirely unhelpful and should not be countenanced. We're not here to discuss the planting targets, but there are ways of achieving what the Scottish Government desires in terms of the planting targets without going down a route of a foresting peatland or taking out valuable upland areas. It's just that the drivers that we have at the moment are big under external investment, so that drives forestry in one direction. We're kind of moving back to the 70s and 80s, if anybody can remember that. Your contribution is just the way to bear how important it is to get a fully functioning land use strategy in Scotland. Bruce Wilson, briefly. You just exactly made my point, Graham. Land use strategy is essential to try and work out what we need and where. Just to back that up, quickly on the peatlands, it's important to recognise the progress that we've made on leveraging private sector financing, things like the peatland code that can help pay for projects and make that link between the provider of the peatland resource and someone who might be looking to invest, so I think that it's just important to know that. I'm going to move on to looking at the issue about outdoor learning. The progress report states that Scotland is on track to provide 100 schools in 20 per cent of the most disadvantaged areas with access to quality green space for outdoor learning, and that feeds into the Government's attainment agenda. I'd like to ask the panel whether or not their organisation has a role to play in terms of outdoor learning and what barriers it might have faced in doing so, for example, local authority funding. Secondly, I'd like to ask the panel whether or not they have a view on the provision of quality green space in schools. As a former teacher who taught in a school that was surrounded by a sea of concrete, there's a key role to be played by the provision of green space in schools, so I wonder if the panel has a view on that. Also, in terms of how the provision of quality green space in a school setting can help to impact upon mental health in the education environment. Catherine Lloyd, do you want to come back on that? Yes, I was just thinking that we've been writing for quite a long time a teacher's guide to biodiversity, because the one thing that we're not really engaging in on a local situation is where can they go? You get this situation of there's so many places to go but they're being stopped to do it, so we're trying to turn it around. It's a bit old-fashioned, but we're getting there. We haven't published this document at the moment, but it will be available nationally once it is. What's stopping them from doing it? I think that health and safety is the vast, that is the key priority, or we can't be seeing to be doing it. However, I think by working with local communities that then bring their own local schools in, that we're getting around that. For instance, there's an east haven in near Canustey. There's an absolutely amazing local group there, local community, but they're not waiting for anything. They're going straight to the local schools and getting them involved heavily, and I'm being able to go in and saying, how about championing certain species? The small blue butterfly is in their area, so I've got in mind to try and encourage them to come out and help with our kidney veg planting, for instance, and we'll get round that. It's one to one. At the moment, it's very difficult to try and say, let's have a policy, because the health and safety comes in or the cost of getting people, the pupils back from school outside is just not possible at the moment. If any other witnesses want to give a plug to my constituency, feel free. Willie McGee. You talk about individual organisations. The Forest Policy Group has members like the Community Woodlands Association, the Association of Scottish Hardwood Somillers and others, some of whom are active in education. From a forestry perspective, it's the Forestry Commission who have facilitated a lot of the outdoor education, getting school children into green spaces, forests, local forests, whether it's Craig Miller in Edinburgh or in Duncoillich, which is in not near Cranusti, but in Highland Perthshire. The forests have provided an enormous—you just have to look at the forest schools literature in Scotland to see what an impact that's made. The impediments, as you would guess, are teachers' time and resources. Less health and safety from our perspective, because when we run forest schools, we haven't encouraged children to open knives, saws, leap and fire. Parents, when consulted, are very happy that children are exposed to those things, because they don't get that kind of experience anywhere else. There's huge potential in forestry, and there's one forest that I would like to recommend. It's called a breach, and it's above Loch Ness. What they've managed to do is combine forest schools' education, adult learning support to women who are in the justice system, to branching out, which is a mental health initiative to get people into green spaces and particularly forests. It's kind of a backhand at Adam in relation to the communities. This community took on what is essentially a commercial forest. If you look at the public benefits that have flowed particularly in education from removing it from a conventional forest owner to a community, they're staggering. Just picking up on Catherine Lloyd's point, I certainly hear, as an MSP, stories about some wonderful location seeing a downturn in the number of school children who are going there, and the reason that I keep hearing is the cost of hiring transport. Is that something that's being spotted across the country? Yes, certainly. You've put your finger on one of the main problems with getting schools out. It's also one of the ones that's reasonably easily fixed in many ways. There are actually lots of local businesses that we've discovered who are prepared to sponsor those kinds of transport activities and write that off down to their social engagement and things that they ought to do. It's not an insoluble problem. In fact, we managed to get recently a couple of hundred kids. It's a plug, I'm afraid, for Fife, not for Angus, I'm sorry, and indeed in Midlothian as well. We managed to get groups of school kids to come out and plant hedges on some of our demonstration farms. We also were delighted to work with the Royal Highland Education Trust. The combination of farmers who are willing and the Royal Highland Education Trust in ourselves, we haven't found a massive difficulty in getting the countryside-based kids out. One of the challenges that we have faced is that a lot of the teachers themselves don't really have any countryside resonance. They don't really see how they can do it. So there's perhaps something in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy that we ought to be looking at teacher training as a key part of actually breaking down a barrier for them. You know, the countryside is not scary, it's perfectly accessible, exactly the sort of thing that William McGee was saying as well. The other thing that GWCT has noticed, and we're trying to address in partnership with countryside learning Scotland, is an absence of residential educational opportunities. Although you can go and stay at places, wonderful places, like the Field Studies Council, building in Cendrogan up in Strathardl, there's nowhere that you can actually go and stay on a working farm in a structured environment. These are becoming more common place across the UK. They're not available in Scotland, this is something that we think really ought to be made available. It's quite specialist, it's quite high-end, but you can actually get quite a regular turnover of people who are going in and spending kids and teachers who spend two or three days actually learning how a farm actually works on the ground. On a personal matter, my family are entirely teachers and my aunt has just recently retired as a head teacher in Edinburgh, and one of the things that she noticed was green space in her school was absolutely vital. Again, she enabled that to happen by local business support. It doesn't require a huge amount of money, it does require a little bit of capacity of going out and being brass-necked and asking for a bit of a little bit of cash, but yeah, these things are achievable and very beneficial. OK, Chris Ellis. A public engagement with nature and support within the curriculum is something that at the Botanic Garden is a space that we're very familiar with. We have a programme of continuing professional development for teachers, and we've seen 2,000 teachers trained on that programme over the past five years, and we have school children participating in projects where they come to the garden. They have a foot, a square foot of soil in which they can grow their own food, and we can have these repeat visits where they learn about urban gardening and they learn about the ecosystem benefits of soil and integrated food production. A lot of that in the past has been done on-site and in a sense that the garden is a safe space where we can bring children out of their communities into this new environment and engage them with nature, but there's some quite innovative projects like the Cumbernauld Living Landscape, Edinburgh Living Landscapes project, where the aim of those projects is to bring together different partners who can then benefit from shared access to infrastructure. In Edinburgh, for example, that includes the Botanic Garden, but it also includes the council and the parks department. Aside from what's already in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, I think it's important to recognise some of these other partnership schemes that are taking place around Scotland. Okay, we've got a lot of people trying to come in on this, so let's get through this. Duncan. Briefly, our understanding is the same as yours. We run some of the biggest outdoor learning operations in Scotland at our Lochwinnach nature reserve in Renfrewshire and at Lochleven in Kinross, close to your constituency. What we hear is that it's the cost of transport to bring kids to these sites that's one of the biggest issues. Okay, Bruce Wilson. Just very quickly, I'm a current scout leader, so I spend a lot of my time at weekends taking kids out into countryside. We noticed cost being an incredibly difficult barrier, especially in more urban areas, to get to remote areas, obviously. There's a lot of things that we do to address this as the Scottish Wildlife Trust. It's mainly about identifying champions locally, so things like local wildlife watch groups that can devote time and energy, because that's a problem as well as lack of time from adult volunteers. There tends to be the kids around wanting to experience this stuff. It's the lack of adult volunteers. I think it's a very good example of the importance of getting the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy right. It's not just about the biodiversity, it's about the wider benefit to communities as well. Okay, thank you for that, and finally, Calum Duncan. Just to emphasise the importance of the support that some of the local biodiversity partnerships can give at MCS, we have our sea champions initiative, we have Cool Seas Explorers raising awareness of the sea through education work, we have many groups doing beach-lidder surveys, and including a lot of school groups. We've worked with Tayside LBAP, we've worked with Fife LBAP, and that's helped us to get a record number of beaches to take part in our big September beach clean, and that contributes to the marine litter strategy, which has links to the biodiversity strategy as well. Just underlining, yes, some groups can take initiative to do it themselves, but the local biodiversity action framework is really helpful in order to help facilitate getting a sort of project, so we run into the community and get more and more young people and other community members involved. I'm presuming that we would all agree that there's a role for MSPs in this around the species champions programme in terms of raising awareness and engaging with the schools in their area. Calum Duncan. Yes, absolutely. We had several species champions and MSPs along our beach cleans in September, so thank you. It was more a challenge rather than a praise MSPs, because it strikes me that the programme properly implemented has that capacity in it. Jenny Gould, do you want to come back in any of that? In terms of the green space, the second point that I raised was about mental health and how that impacts on children's mental health, which is something that we've looked at in Parliament recently. There are issues around that at the moment in terms of children's health and wellbeing. From my perspective, as a former teacher, there's certainly a role for green space to play in improving that in the classroom. I don't know if you have any evidence on that or any opinions that you might like to share. Or if you don't readily have it this year, you could write back to the committee, if that's okay. We need to move on, but can I throw something in? Adam Smith referred on a number of occasions to drags on progress. Can I explore with the panel to what extent climate change is making meeting the biodiversity challenges that we face harder to overcome? We talked before about designated sites, and we can see examples of how the kinds of flexibility that has been discussed will become necessary in monitoring our designated sites. For example, in the Cairngorms National Park, when we undergo site condition monitoring to look at the status of those sites, what we're starting to find is a decline in the populations of species for which those sites are designated. That can lead to those sites failing their site condition monitoring, which brings into question their status as a designated site. The decline in the populations of these snowbed species or arcticalpine species as a consequence of climate change. As the species decline as a consequence of a global challenge like climate change, is it justified for that site to lose its special designation, or do we need to be less prescriptive about the species that we expect to occur in a place as species start to migrate and respond to climate change? Or is there some other set of characters around which we value our designated sites other than the species that were there when they were first designated? Some flexibility about the status of those sites is going to be really important. I doubt that climate change is a major issue for conservation, and I'm pleased to be having this discussion here. The example that I'm going to give is actually in relation to Scotland's internationally important seabirds. If for any bit of biodiversity Scotland is important, it would be our large seabird colonies. I think our view is that certainly in the face of climate change we shouldn't give up. I mean clearly with the seabird colonies we have a major issue that the food supplies of the seabirds are moving as a result of climate change, which is causing starvation and things in some of the colonies, but there are things that can still be done to mitigate against climate change. One of the major issues with seabirds is that you can help protect the colonies by removing non-native species, for example, particularly rodents from seabird islands improved by security on those seabird islands to actually give those seabird populations the best chance and make them more robust against the challenges of climate change. Calum Duncan? I think that if there's a virtuous cycle, if we manage to get marine protected areas management right because then we're restoring habitats potentially, that can lock up carbon, whether it's kelp for the seagrass beds, oyster reefs, or can protect against the effects of climate change in terms of coastal erosion. Again, it's about investment if we're investing in the protection and monitoring of those sites so that we can see the potential benefits that they're delivering. That can help to make those places and Scotland sees more widely, more resilient to climate change. Very quickly, we talked about peatland restoration. That's why we're keen partners in a project in Adorn of Firth with head at Watt University in Glenmores. You're looking at scoping out native oyster reef restoration. There used to be an oyster reef in the Firth of Forth, the size of Edinburgh, for example, and that would have been doing a lot of seawater filtering, carbon locking up and providing food and so on. It's about looking, investing in monitoring and protection in order to demonstrate the potential benefits and learning as we go. Adam Smith? I endorse Duncan's position on this. Climate change is a potential challenge to SPS delivery. It's going to be obviously a challenge to the alpine, as Chris has pointed out. It's a challenge to delivering on the curlew and probably the corn bunting and the corn creek as well. When these species are challenged by declining weather, particularly in Scotland, that's increasing rainfall events, we will need to make sure that the rest of their population dynamics are relatively unchallenged. Duncan's point about mitigation is critical. This is very clearly demonstrated for the Capa Caley. It's not a priority species, sadly, in the Scottish biodiversity strategy, we think it ought to be, but the Capa is very clearly affected by increasingly wet conditions in its core range. Where that is happening, it needs to have all the other parts of its population dynamics absolutely squeaky clean, so that it can survive the vicissitudes and stochastic events. Let's move on and look at Forestry, native woodland, Alexander Burnett. I'm sure that we're all well aware that the targets haven't been met for the last six years of 10,000 hectares a year. It's been discussed here previously that in the climate change discussion, the target should be near 20,000. I was wondering, particularly to William, what he thinks has gone wrong in trying to get to those targets already, what needs to change, particularly the focus on restoring native woodland. I know that we've touched on the investments of forestry vehicles looking to expand the area available on the soil step, but the targets were set on the existing land available. Why hasn't that been met and what needs to change? A lot of climate change is not straightforward. In essence, what we have is quite a blunt instrument to engage land owners and communities across Scotland and to encourage them to plant trees. What's happened, as some of you will have detected in the last few years, is that we've had a sort of a swing away from large-scale native, what they used to refer to as the pinewood schemes in the highlands, where there were considerable areas that were coming under native woodland. When we had the advent of the slipper farmer and the retreat from the hills in the north west, we had a lot of regeneration, if you like, of native woodland. The concentration on large areas of monoculture, essentially sick as bruise, which is what we're told industry desires, but if we were having a technical industrial forestry conversation, it's not specifically what they require. That's where the focus has gone. Now, if you're going to persuade hill farmers who own three, four or five hundred hectares of land, there is a good reason for having a proportion of their land taken out of sheep farming or whatever. First of all, it needs to be attractive to them, but secondly, it needs to be non-threatening. What we've got at the moment is a focus on purchase, so large blocks of land. We in the forest policy group believe that those targets could be met not easily, but they could be met and more if you concentrated on a forestry commission persuading landowners to put modest amounts of trees. If you put 50 to 100 hectares, as windbreaks, as shelters, as native woodland, they can see returns from native woodland now, biomass and the advent of wood heating has changed the whole dynamic of the forest sector, the industry certainly, so native woodlands are no longer not paying, they can pay for good prices. It's just that we've got this current fixation, if you like, on these very large areas. Without much of an incentive for the bulk of the landowners in the uplands, the farmers, the estate landowners, to put, if you like, more modest and more diverse woodlands on to their estate. It's partly education, partly outreach and partly a shift in emphasis. If you go to the statistics, it's the highlands that you'll see that are most obvious by their absence in large scale planting. For some reason that the forest industry cannot answer, estate owners like planting large scale scones pine plantations and restoring Caledonia and Pinewood, but they're not that keen on putting 500 hectares of sick spruce. If there was more incentive weighted towards those type of schemes, you would see bigger areas coming into the targets. Specifically, the forestry grant scheme is adequately funded. I know that there are additional payments for the small blocks of mixed-broad at the MBL. Speaking of experience, there's a higher cost with planting smaller blocks in ffencing, establishment and management than larger blocks. Yes, I think that the scheme that we had prior to this one was very encouraging. What we've had is a shift in emphasis. When you plant sicker spruce, it doesn't matter whether it's small or large, you don't need ffencing. Deer are not in any way interested in sicker spruce, which is why it's a kind of default for the industry. Higher costs go with doing the more interesting, the more biodiverse type of woodlands, and that's where the funding is not being targeted. You have of course mentioned the D-word deer. Does anybody want to feed in on the issue of deer at this stage, because it's a major player on biodiversity? Presently, we have the SNH review of deer management that's under way, and we look forward to that coming to this committee for scrutiny. We certainly encourage this committee to take a keen interest in deer management matters, because in terms of addressing some of the condition of our designated sites, use expansion of native woodland, a number of the areas where we're talking about here, deer management is a key issue. I think it's 18 per cent of the protected areas in Scotland are in unfavourable condition due to the impacts of deer browsing, and this is mostly in upland areas. I would also add, the FCS have carried out a review of our native woodland resource. There is significant opportunity there to both improve the condition of that native woodland and to expand the resource. At the moment, 70 per cent of our special areas of conservation for Western Atlantic woodland, for example, again, and other of the jewels in the crown of Scotland's natural heritage—important for mosses, liverworts and other biodiversity—are in unfavourable condition, and the primary cause of that is rhododendron infestation. We would certainly encourage this committee to ask for the national rhododendron strategy to be published, which FCS has. Importantly, that will set out the programme for restoration of this native woodland resource. William McGee Deer, yes. Where do we start? The Iraqi Committee heard quite a lot about deer, and I'm sure you will over the lifetime of this committee. For forestry, deer is an enormous issue. We spend tens of millions of pounds on not only deer control but deer ffencing. After this meeting here, I'm going to drive to the Scottish Borders. Myself and a syndicate have bought a tiny piece of land outside Walkerburn. We're going to order three kilometres of deer ffence for an area that we're planting with native broadleaves and cannot be left, such as Cyspruse. This is a cost that the taxpayer is contributing to, but they're only contributing a percentage to. All over Scotland, any scheme that obliges people to plant native broadleaves or any other conifer other than Cyspruse feels the impact of deer. I endorse what Duncan has said. If you don't mind, could you quantify the cost that would be useful to get a feel for how much it costs, not just the taxpayer but yourselves? At the moment, the commission has a means of assessing grants and what they will award you, and it's called standard costs. They have a mean cost for deer ffencing in Scotland, and they will give you up to 80 per cent of that. At the moment, it's £6 per metre for a functioning rodier ffence—a rodier different to reddier, because the mesh is smaller on the bottom. We are paying £10 a metre in the Scottish Borders on ground, which is not that difficult. The group that I act as forest manager for in Perthshire is paying £15 a metre for deer ffence. Depending on where you are in Scotland, you can be laying—and the Carrifran Wildwood project had eight kilometres of deer ffence. If you are a big landowner in the islands, you may have tens of kilometres of deer ffence, then you start to get an idea of the cost. Thank you for that. That's very useful. Adam Smith. We talked about Brexit earlier on. We're just in the fortunate position of having got a life-plus grant from the European Union to study the effects or the usability of lasers as a ffencing tool in agricultural and conservation contexts. I can absolutely assure you that it doesn't. These are very low-powered lasers. They've been commonplace use in the Netherlands for goose control for many years. I suppose the point that I'm trying to make is that, yes, deer are a very important issue, and we need to continue to be looking for both the right balance of density and numbers of deer and incentivising people to control deer as part of a well-managed gain management programme, so they're actually getting some value out of control in the deer. They're not just a pest, but also looking for some new solutions. One of these might well be some technological fixes. Instead of having to put hard forest ffencing in, maybe we might be able to discourage them with these very low wattage laser systems, which apparently animals thoroughly detest. We'll be trialling that over the next few years. How do they work in practice? The risk of getting too much into a detailed conversation. These are lasers that produce a spot of light about so big, and the wattage that they produce is lower than a typical laser pointer that you would use in a display, so they're very, very low power. You have all seen a laser when it's projected onto a surface, and it's got a curious sort of moving content to it. Apparently animals find this exceptionally disturbing. They treat it as a predator, and they exhibit typical anti-predator responses, so you don't shine this on the animal. It is projected onto a surface, and animals will stay well away from it. The Life Plus grant is a business development rather than anything else. It's particularly looking at whether we can use lasers to reduce rodenticides in the countryside by keeping rats and things away from feed stores and other food supply systems, and thus benefiting things like barn owls and whatnot. It's not going to be a fix for everything, but the point I'm making is that there may be technological things, and we should certainly be looking for them. Interesting. David Stewart. That's a very interesting point. I think I've also seen some scientific work done around high-frequency noise. It also has some effect on that. I think the point good-back to my Brexit argument at the start, convener, is that what this is about is ensuring there's more research and development that the academic community about funded to look into this. Of course, the great worry about Brexit is that you're going to lose a lot of the academic funding through the rise in funding and others. Many academic institutions, not least Henry University and UHI, which have close relationships with, have also come out saying that they were really, and Sam's and Obenton are very concerned, the effect on academic research in the future because of the lack of EU funding because we're not going to be in the EU. Adam Smith. It's certainly far from ideal. The information that we're getting at the moment from the research side is that we would still be warmly welcomed onto European projects. In fact, our European partners have said very clearly that it would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces, to not have Scottish and UK partners involved in the future, but it's pretty clear that we wouldn't be able to lead those projects. One of our North Sea regional projects, which has got the tremendous acronym of Partridge for my organisation anyway, we actually lead that and we would not be able to do that in the future. The LIFE project is led by Liverpool John Moores and, again, we would have to go and find an EU project leader to do that. That is a downside, but we would still take part. Thank you. Duncan RU. Just going back to DEAR very briefly, just to remind you, the land reform review group report recommended we move to a system of socially responsible deer management and that's got to be the objective. Obviously, the progress in terms of deer management planning, the work that your colleague Mike Russell has done to improve some of the legislation around deer in the Land Reform Act is all very welcome, but what we really need to see now is implementation of these deer management plans to see if we can hit that objective. Which the SNH report should shed some light on. Let's move on to look at freshwater habitats. My question is what work has been done to identify and understand climate change impacts on freshwater habitats and associated biodiversity. My interest is particularly on whether we've got enough scientific information baseline for mix fisheries, migratory fish and potential cyclical patterns. Who wants to answer that? Oh, dear. Bruce Wilson, sorry, and then we'll... I'll let Bruce Wilson in first to beat you to it. Sorry, I have just a very quick point about what we were discussing earlier with ecosystem health indicators. Estallishing that baseline is key, and in order to do that, we need to put a bit more work into ecosystem health indicators and bring that back on track. We're looking forward eagerly to seeing what the wild fisheries review could bring into focus, because the opportunities that the ASFB and rafts integration, which we hope is going to happen, could easily provide some really useful opportunities for improving data collection in freshwater and salmonade, particularly for our interest systems. We'd run a fisheries research centre down in Dorset, which is a chokestream salmon river—a slightly different thing. However, the techniques that we've learned down there could give us a certain consistency, which would be extremely useful for Scotland. We applaud the opportunity that the fisheries review and restructuring could give for Scotland. Can we look at the natural capital index, Kate Forbes? It's the first case that Scotland is on track in ensuring that businesses are more aware of their reliance on natural capital. However, there's still limited evidence to suggest that business investment in natural capital assets has actually increased. How do we solve that, looking also at how we can develop better metrics? That's probably accurate, given the amount of resource that's devoted to it—a fairly good job at making Scotland's businesses aware of its impacts and dependencies on natural capital. That's through things like the world forum on natural capital, bringing attention to Scotland from a global scale, but also the Scottish forum on natural capital. Recently, the Scottish forum on natural capital organised a business breakfast on the theme of resilience, but it's bringing in natural capital in there and it's trying to highlight what impact and dependencies businesses have on that. It is at the stage of education at the moment, and it probably will be for quite a while more. There isn't the depth of understanding in Scottish business yet, apart from some obvious sectors. Agriculture understands that it has a dependence on a healthy natural environment. We just need to get the funding right so that they can help to build that natural capital rather than depleting it. Funding will be an issue going into the future with the Scottish forum on natural capital, which is the group that's being charged with taking that forward. At the moment, the group relies on small contributions to take the work forward. In order to highlight investment opportunities for business, there will have to be a greater investment in that to allow it to take it forward. I have previously mentioned the peatland code as well. That's quite an important first example of a business being able to invest in natural capital assets. We also have something that's being developed by a group called the Natural Capital Coalition, called the Natural Capital Protocol—sorry, bear with me with all those things. It's essentially a step-by-step guide on how to implement natural capital in your business. That's taken a long time to develop. A lot of people have implemented that from the world of business, NGO and academia. Excitingly, the Scottish forum on natural capital, Scottish land and estates and Crown Estate are hopefully going to take forward a pilot study of that on a working land business, so that we can try to share some learning from that and help to disseminate that across business in Scotland. I think that that's covered that quite extensively. Thank you. Can we move on to look at the issue of—we've already covered, I think, quite extensively the issue of youngsters going out and experiencing nature. What about older people, Emma? I'm just curious about the benefits of experiencing biodiversity for the wider environment. Why is it that some people across society as a whole are not accessing the outdoors? Another we thought I had was, is it really necessary to have outdoor spaces labelled as national parks, or can we just say if people get out there? You want us to answer that. Willie McGee? Not all of it, just a part of it. National parks, one, I would leave to others. Why are more older people not getting out there? I would hesitate to suggest that it is to do with resources and finance and really where you are. Certainly, when I was at Borders Forest Trust, I had volunteering for older people, retirees, people who were on their own, who found it valuable to go out in groups and participate, whether it was tree planting or just going for a walk or doing some other woodland management task. Again, you came up against the same or something similar to the getting young people out, and that is that a lot of these people were in Galashill's hoik, they weren't in great housing, they didn't have that much in the way of resources, bullet transport, so you needed to get many buses, you needed to make them aware of where the activity was taking place and to try and pick them up. I think that your question covers a societal thing, which is about encouraging people into the outdoors. It has tended to be something that those with resources and money in the middle classes and others could do very easily, but getting people in urban situations, that is why the Forestry Commission, with its woodlands in and around towns, is trying to get the green space. We had the discussion about green spaces and the value of them. Introducing people who do not feel uncomfortable with mental health issues, to bring them together and to take them out as a group, you need resources, you need to have people who are properly trained in that. It is possible, and I think that it should be encouraged. Again, in Perthshire, we are taking people from Aberfell, they put Lockrydon and Keld and taking them out to a site one day a week. They do relatively light tasks, they feel that they are making a contribution and they are getting something out of it, but it is not straightforward, it is not easy. Okay. Catherine Lloyd, I recently visited the Merton Trust in your patch, and one of the things that came out that day was that very often the youngsters are there, they are involved in the activities there, but then they come back, they bring mum and dad, aunts and uncles and whatever, and that strikes me as something that is probably repeated across the board. We are not seeing youngsters going out as much, but that opportunity to encourage adults to then follow is being lost. Is that a fair observation? Very much so. I think that in a lot of our projects we start with the children or the young people, but then we try and encourage them to have family days. If so, if we have something happening on a Friday, how about bringing your parents back and doing something on the Saturday? That is happening more and more right across the board, swift projects, amphibian projects. One thing I would mention is our B1 older project that we have been trialling in Angus, and we really very much hope we can get funding to widen it, and that is working with care homes, and rather than expecting them to come out and explore areas, which they can if they wish, but a lot of them are too ill for that now or too elderly, but we are taking in opportunities for wildlife kits. They can choose whether to have a pond or patio planting for pollinators, orchards, it does not matter what. They get a whole choice of what they would like in their area, and then we are making sure that they are getting it with an enormous amount of information as well, so that they can actually take that forward. That is so exciting. They are coming to us. We could have done 30. We only had 11. Interesting. Emma made the point about national parks and perhaps the awareness that they create, but we have got two organisations here in the SWT and RSPB who own a great many wonderful sites across Scotland. I guess a question for both of you. Do you do enough to raise awareness of what you have to offer outwith your own membership, Bruce Wilson? Certainly, we try our hardest. Probably the best two examples that Chris has already mentioned, the Cumbernauld living landscape and the Edinburgh living landscape. To quickly refer to the other points as well, I think that we need to stop thinking about nature and biodiversity as something that we get in a bus or a car and drive to. We need to integrate it in our towns and cities, and that is not just so that stakeholders can enjoy it and benefit and feel all these additional benefits. It is so that our towns are more resilient, that they are not as hot. There is a whole host of things that we can get from that. Within Cumbernauld, we have a programme called Wildways Well, which is addressing mental health issues for all ages. There are numerous examples of those projects, and that is using green space immediately adjacent to where people live and work. I think that that is very important, especially for older generations who possibly cannot move as far from where they stay, and it also addresses a lot of social justice issues. We increasingly see the poorest members of society with the least access to green space and the richest with the greatest access to address that balance. I think that before I let Duncan Orr Yw and come in, I think that we are staying into a territory that Angus MacDonald wants to explore. Do you want to come in here now, Mr MacDonald? Okay, thanks, convener. Clearly, we have discussed green space for outdoor learning and education, and for older people, however, our health service can benefit too. The progress report considers that Scotland is on track to improve green space quality and use on at least one hospital or healthcare facility in each NHS board on mainland Scotland, which includes developing and promoting a green exercise toolkit for use by the health and environment sectors and delivering an NHS green space demonstration project. We have a prime example at Forrest Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, where there is a tremendous facility through an exciting partnership with Forestry Commission Scotland and Central Scotland Forest Trust. We know that studies show that having a good view from a hospital window can help a patient with their recovery, and it also seemingly helps to reduce the use of painkillers, which I was not aware of after I did a wee bit of research two seconds ago. Clearly, there are also other benefits that even five minutes of green exercise can have a positive impact on mental health. I would be keen to know—we have heard some examples already of where panel members have ensured that projects have gone forward, but have any panel members been involved in any of those projects, and have there been any barriers to delivering through the NHS? The point that I made earlier about whether you reach out beyond your membership and in doing that, do you actually cross-promote SWT mentioned an RSPB? Does that go on quite actively? Will it be good to get that on the record? A few responses here. Firstly, we have increased our family offer on reserves. As I was suggested earlier, if you get the kids engaged quite often, you can get the adults engaged as well. Volunteering is the other tool that we use across our reserves. We have a network of both residential and day volunteering offers. In connection with Mr McDonald's point there and the Larbot hospital, which is actually my local hospital as well, I would suggest—and I will check after this meeting whether there is contact being made—we are involved with a major project called the Inner Forth Landscape Partnership, which again ties in local communities and the natural heritage of the Inner Forth area around Falkirk, Stirling, Clackmannan—that area, but it may be that contact can be made with the likes of Larbot hospital to join that up better. I accept that, so please take that as an offer. Otherwise, like SWT, we are working in partnership at a landscape scale in a number of places now across Scotland, which means working in partnership with other ENGOs, private landowners and others, because we realise that delivering our objectives for both biodiversity and people cannot be done just simply on nature reserves. It has to be done more widely in the landscape. I do not know if that answers your question. I was going to refer back to the point that you were making. I am afraid that we are not so much on the NHS side. There might be merit in taking the countryside to people. If there was one plea that I was going to make, it is a great shame that SNH has seen budget cuts back, which means that they no longer can attend. In anything like the level that they used to do, things like the Dundee Fruit and Flower Festival, the Royal Heartland Shows, Scottish Game Fair, which we run, the Perth Show, the Dundee Fruit and Flower Festival—these are superb points of engagement for the adult population. It is a great shame that SNH cannot take part in those more fully. If people are willing to attend these non-specialist people from the countryside, we ought to have people there who are able to support them. Can I just point out a point of clarity? Where are the game fairers here? They were, but a discussion that I had with them last week has revealed that they are very seriously considering their public-facing offering at these kinds of shows. For example, they pulled out of the Moe Game Fair quite recently, and I believe that the level of investment, even in the Royal Heartland Shows, is under consideration. I think that that will be a matter that we have the opportunity to explore in a few weeks' time with SNH. We will bear that in mind. Thank you for that. Chris Ellis. It refers to a point that was made about elderly access to green space. Again, just emphasising that one of the key issues is the blurring of the boundary between the countryside and the urban landscape to make people aware of what is around them. As the urban landscape changes, the benefits to that. There was an interesting study performed in Sheffield a few years ago where they polled people's sense of wellbeing in different environments, and people felt best where they perceived there to be the highest biodiversity, but those sites did not actually have the highest biodiversity. There is a disconnect between people's perception of a biodiverse landscape and a landscape that might be biodiverse or performing important ecosystem functions. I think that it relates to the point about people's sense of wellbeing and what drives that, and understanding the relationship between landscapes that people enjoy, which might be parkland-type landscapes, and landscapes that are actually very diverse, which might be native woodland, which feels slightly more threatening. Claudia Beamish. Thank you, convener. It was just to see if there are any observations from the round table today about the contribution that their organisations or any issues they know about in relation to biodiversity and connections with people with disabilities. In the national performance framework, that highlighted that people with disabilities have obviously less access, but I would be interested to know if there are any groups that are doing something proactive about that. Bruce Wilson. Yeah, on a number of our reserves, we have, as with other groups around the table, specific access plans for people with disability, but I think that it comes back to not making the distinction between nature in the countryside and in towns and cities. If it is available for people to enjoy and experience woven through an urban and rural setting, then there are more opportunities there in general. Calum Duncan. Yeah, I just wanted to say that the Green Conservation Society, we will respond to groups that want to do beach cleans, for example, and we have had groups with different abilities. Obviously, we will take that on a case-by-case basis, depending on access to the beach and what it is like, and to help deliver a clean that suits them. We are responding to that. If I may follow up on Claudia Beamish's point, how do you go about spreading the word that you do that, because there may be a perception on people with disabilities part that that is beyond their ability to access? How do you get the message out there, Bruce? Inns of groups and a lot of local partnership working, for example in Cumbernauld, we have an education officer who does not just have a remit for schools, goes around a whole variety of groups to try and get the word out. Right, thank you for that. Let's move on and look at improving ecological connection, Morris Golden. Improving ecological connection is a key goal for this Parliament and this committee. We have some examples of this in Scotland with the Central Scotland Green Network, the Irvine-to-Garvine Nectar corridor. I was wondering from the round table if you could reflect on any lessons learned from those two initiatives, how they could be expanded and also how a national ecological network could come about and your assumed definition of said network. The national ecological network for us in the SPS route map, we want to see quite a lot more progress on that. We think that the national ecological network is actually the way to meet a lot of these targets. Adam said that there is quite a little bit of confusion about the number of plans and objectives and things that are out there. We see the NEN as a way that we can thread biodiversity through almost everything that we do. We would like to see it linked through the land use strategy, the marine plan, the route map and also the national planning framework. It will help to address things such as access to wildlife in our towns and cities. We would like to see it become a material consideration in planning applications and strategies. We would like to see it take into account licensing regimes and allocation of forestry and agri-environment spend. I think that there has been some notable successes with the Central Scotland Green Network and Glasgow Cloud Valley. We need to expand that so that it does not just concentrate on our main Central Scotland corridor. It misses out vast ways of the rest of Scotland, and we can be doing a lot more across those areas. Is there a consensus on what a national ecological network means in practice that has been highlighted by a number of people to me? I haven't got an immediate answer to that question from Claudia Beamish, but you might be able to answer that, Bruce. I assume that everyone who is familiar with the Scottish Environment Link has been tasked with coming up with a lot more synced definition than the one that we proposed in 2013. Essentially, a national ecological network for us is about providing strategic direction on where our green space goes. It is not necessarily always about physical networks, but it is about providing coherence through policy so that everything is working towards better ecological outcomes and the benefits that come from that. We need that because the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy alone will not do enough for us to meet the IHE targets. We welcome the fact that the national ecological network is included in the national planning framework. It needs to now read across to all of the other significant Scottish Government strategies, the land use strategy, marine strategy and so forth. That is where the join-up happens between the three important pillars of the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, which are around sites, species and wider countryside conservation. If you get all of that right, that delivers the six big steps that are identified in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy route map. From our perspective, if you are going to help to save nature in our countryside, we would be looking at about 20 per cent of the land area of Scotland to be managed benevolently for nature. That will be a combination of protected areas, but also through agri-environment schemes working with private landowners, communities and so forth. You mentioned sites there. Let's move on to an area that Mark Russell wants to explore. I was just going to reflect on that last comment. It would be interesting to see how those ecological networks are embedding into local development plans and actual real planning decisions on the ground as well and whether cognisance has been taken of those. Yes, thanks, convener. I'm just going to move on to protected areas. We've had a bit of discussion on that this morning. Adam described them as a drag and Duncan described them as a duel. The progress report says that about 80 per cent of our designated features were in favourable condition by 2016, and that project's effects will be complete. Another issue is around the definition of favourableness. Is that figure of 80 per cent giving us the full picture of what's actually happening with our important features, species and habitats in Scotland, or is there a wider picture there? Duncan, I'll give you a wider picture. SNH has a major landowners group partnership, which is tasked with tackling favourable condition issues. It includes the major NGOs, but it also includes the likes of the Forestry Commission, MOD and other significant landowners in Scotland. That figure that you have there, 80 per cent, I have to say, if you start drilling down to the figures, you will see that certainly the ENGO favourable condition figures and the Forestry Commission are actually significantly higher than that. You have to take out of these figures also some of the sites where there's no remedial action. We talked about seabirds, earlier climate induced changes in food supply. It's very difficult to see how you can get, you know, sort out some of those problems that are beyond control, if you like. Where there are remedies, we still could be doing quite a lot better, particularly on private land through agreements through SNH and so forth. Okay, anybody else? Willie McGee? Yeah, I think in the forestry world we would take issue with a figure of 80 per cent being applied to native woodlands, for instance. We believe that the indicators that were used in terms of favourable condition did not pick up on some of the basics that we would have looked for—the presence of structure, diverse structure within woodlands, regeneration. Again, I don't want to use the D word, but you can guess where it's all going. 80 per cent is explained in part by what Duncan said from different sites, but the bulk of ancient and native woodlands in Scotland suffer. Can I ask what opportunity you have to make points like that to influence these figures? No, we get an opportunity to chew SNH's ear. I sit on a round table with Duncan, although there is a robust pushback, I think that it would be fair to say. This is it, in respect to much of it, so we are very grateful and thank you for the opportunity to do this. Is that an issue that's raised at the Scottish Biodiversity Committee, where you've actually got all the stakeholders and the minister around the table? As you said, it hasn't met for a year. Could that be the forum to resolve some of these issues? This is quite a high-level target here. It's a quite a high-level target in Scotland. That's great. We're meeting this, but if there's a wider, more detailed issue under that, we need to understand the reality of what's on the ground. Before you answer that, it's to be clear that Mark Ruskell hasn't met for a year. What we said earlier was that it hasn't met since the election, because somebody clarified when it last met. We can look into that as a committee. Thank you so much for interrupting Mark Ruskell. Anybody want to answer the very specific points that Mark Ruskell made? It's a very good question. I suppose that the 80 per cent is very encouraging. I think that one of the issues that we have is with the resilience of that 80 per cent. If there's something behind that figure that we're aware of from one particular project that we're engaged with, including the RSPB and SNH and others, is the Langham Mow demonstration project. That's the resilience of making sure that that gain is kept good. There's a lot of need to focus on the motivation and the incentive to keep that going. It's all very well and good to get to the apparently positive position that we're in now, but how resilient is that in the background as something that we need to be aware of? What are the things that are going to keep those sites in good condition? Is not all clear at this stage? Have any further points about funding? We've already talked about potentially withdrawal of EU funding, life plus, etc. Are there any other financial challenges around how we ensure that these sites are favourable where we can take action? Previously, progress in this area was driven by a hard and fast target that SNH set. More recently, it has become a bit more flexible and nebulous, and it would be useful to have that target reinstated to concentrate people's minds around what needs to be achieved. There are areas, particularly around agriculture, forestry, and I mentioned rhododendron removal earlier. That is a major one where we could make progress to improve the target. 18 per cent of sites are in unfavourable condition because of overgrazing issues. Those are either deer management or agricultural overgrazing issues. Those are issues that are feasibly addressed. Funding is an issue. I mentioned earlier that we've been involved with this Western Atlantic woodland life bid, which aims to address unfavourable condition in a number of Western Atlantic woodland SACs from more than down to Loch Lomond. Unfortunately, due to the uncertainty, Brexit has created the future of life funding, but also the concern that RSPB has left with a £5 million black hole that we have to support, and the concern that we might let down over 300 landowners involved with that project. We have had to pause and rethink with our partners. However, as I said earlier, a number of the major projects that are on the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy route map, which help to deliver favourable condition like that project, are at risk because of the funding concerns at the moment. I would like to make the point that, were those percentages of favourable condition referred to species, it perhaps represents an opportunity because populations in designated sites don't exist in isolation, but the size of those populations and their genetic diversity depend on linkages to other populations in the wider landscape. For long-lived species, they may persist for a long time in a protected site in a process of decline, and that could take decades or centuries. We shouldn't see those percentages as the end point of success, but as an opportunity through greater ecological connectivity to protect them in the future. That kind of moves us on to the area of being told that considerable investments are being made and good progress has been made with some high-profile species. However, there is also evidence that suggests that other species in habitats aren't faring as well. Why would that be the case, and what more do we need to do? Do we need to change focus emphasis? The key tool for dealing with the wider and more dispersed species in our landscape is, as I said, there are three pillars to delivery here. Site species and wider countryside, and the wider countryside measures are often driven or delivered through agri-environment schemes or forestry schemes. Again, having some certainty about the future of agri-environment schemes and forestry schemes, given the Brexit situation, would be very helpful and would allow people to private landowners, ENGOs and others to invest and help to improve the prospects of those species. Adam Smith Thank you very much. This is the special plea here for the land management side to be given its head. Those special species are an absolutely fantastic hook for land managers. I think that some of us, all of us may be struggling with the idea of ecosystem services, but if you are working to support a species, that is a very clear management target. If the Scottish biodiversity strategy could be developed in a useful way, it would be in three ways, and that would be to build in its capacity to adapt to changes in the current landscape, both the predation pressure of climate control and adaptation. That adaptive management approach does not necessarily need money, in many senses it might need a policy support mechanism. You could facilitate land managers to help themselves. There is a lot of interest in farmers and more owners coming together. The ECAF fund has recently brought together a group of molland owners in the Cairngorms. We are forming pharma clusters in Fife and Midlothian, and those are guys who are self-motivated to do conservation, but they need some help, some facilitation to do that. Finally, the issue of co-ordination and clarity of purpose in our biodiversity requirements. That would be enormously helpful for people who are being challenged to produce certain species. Overall, as I say, this section here could very easily be ramped up with the active support and engagement with the land management community. That is the bit that is probably missing from the SPS in enough capacity at the moment. Those could be extended into talking about the sea as well. The need for a three-pillar approach, the marine nature conservation strategy, which the 2020 strategy recognises is important for delivering for biodiversity, includes the first statement of it, the three-pillar approach needed. That is what we need for biodiversity at sea as well. It is not just about MPAs, it is about marine planning and fisheries management delivering for biodiversity and species protection, but the marine nature conservation strategy also recognises the importance of taking an adaptive approach to network development and management. That is where I reflect on the 2020 route map from SNH, which recognises that, yes, we have 16 per cent of season MPAs, but future challenges are developing the evidence base. We need that not only to identify potential other places for protection, but to identify how those sites are doing to, again, as I have said before, to try to demonstrate the benefits. We have seen that in Lamblash Bay recently at the University of York, the University of Bangor study showing a more-than-doubling-of-catch unit effort of lobsters there. The other challenge is actually delivering measures to effectively manage MPAs. If we can get more evidence of the benefits of it, we hope that more and more stakeholders can be supportive of those things, because we very much, as Duncan says, view them as jewels. They are not a drag, and I just want to support, again, what SNH has said about meeting those challenges for effective management, which we need for IHE targets. We need to collaborate and work together, just to put on the record that we are committed to continue to do that, because a lot of progress has been made, including what is overseen by the committee's predecessor. We are committed to continuing to help to see that progress continue with forthcoming sites and management measures. A forestry is a double-edged sword in this. It can play a very beneficial role and also provide habitat for species that are not doing so well. On the other hand, it can be viewed as a threat, depending on what type of forestry it is being pursued. The joint-up thinking, but from our perspective, would be if this committee and grouping, if you like, were in dialogue with those in the forestry, the rural economy committee, about the nature of forestry expansion, about what it is that is happening in the hillside, and to make a plea for a more diverse forestry, a more sympathetic forestry and one that both landowners, communities, environmental NGOs can all sign up to. I think that that would be a positive. It is going to happen. We are going to get forestry expansion and let's have it where it benefits biodiversity and communities. I am very pleased to have heard this morning about how marine issues and coastal issues have threaded through the whole discussion on biodiversity, because that has not always been the case in the past. It has been seen as something a bit separate, and it obviously is not. A lot has been highlighted already, but if there are any other comments from the panel about building on the comments that Calum Duncan has made already about gaps in coverage and also for the marine network, ecological network and what actions can be taken to ensure the success of the MPAs, which I know Calum has touched on, but I would like to know if there are any views on what are the key barriers to those. We have talked about there being so many strategies, but I am going to ask about the relevance of the national and regional marine plans in relation to biodiversity as well. If there are any observations from anyone about those questions or more broadly about marine biodiversity, they would be very welcome at this stage. I mentioned the three pillar approach, and the wider seas pillar is all about delivering for biodiversity through marine nature conservation through wider seas measures, such as introficiary management, but also crucially at regional marine planning. I am glad that you asked that question because it allows me to recognise that sustainable management of the sea and delivery for biodiversity is about managing all activities, including agricultural oil and gas development renewables, recreation activity and so on. Regional marine planning is the excellent opportunity that we have to do that. Obviously, we are in early stages of it. We would hope that it would be effectively resourced. Appropriate stakeholders would be involved. It is integrated with the aims of the marine nature conservation strategy and the biodiversity strategy to be proactively looking at biodiversity protection and enhancement as well. There are lots of opportunities there, and that is an important space for stakeholder collaboration, as is live at the minute, in the Clyde, for example, when we are committed to constructive engagement with that. In terms of gaps, I am quite conscious in talking about that because there have been great bounds made over the last few years—13 new nature conservation MPs, Europe's largest harbour porpoys, SAC, consultations on 10 seabird SPAs and five offshore SPAs. We very much welcome Rosanna Cunningham announcing the historic MPA for the ONA1 last week and the demonstration research MPA for Fail Art Fair Isle at our annual conference in Edinburgh. That brings me round to your point about barriers and being progressive and constructive. Fair Isle is an excellent example of that because that proposal was supported by a whole range of stakeholders. We wish that proposal well, and we know that the Shetland Fishmen's organisation was involved in Femethy and National Trust for Scotland, Wain Scotland and so on. There are different examples of it. I touched on Lamelash Bay and South Arran has had a lot of discussion about it. We think that the outcome for that site was appropriate, but the important thing is that no matter where on that scale of approach or stakeholder perspective, MPA co-management is really important. We would like to see that collaborative approach. We would like to be involved. We lead on a citizen science project called SeaSearch. We have citizen scientists, divers and the water finding new places. We have had them in Scap of Flow finding new records of flame-shell beds, fan-muscles and horse-muscle beds, but we are also in places finding evidence of damage or decline. We are committed to providing a contribution to the evidence base, as well as policy and management discussions and to do so constructively and transparently. What is the most important change that the Inchill Fisheries Bill could make? We were pleased that this is the first programme of government that had a commitment to Inchill fishing legislation in it. Obviously, that is a big complex topic, but what we would hope that the Inchill Fishing Bill would help to do would be to deliver an ecosystem-based approach to managing fishing in the Inchill. That needs to consider spatial management of using different gears. It has to look at addressing gear conflict and it has to look at how wider management of Inchill fishing outside of MPAs as well can deliver biodiversity benefits, again as the Biodiversity Strategy sets out. Conversely, the Biodiversity Strategy recognises—forgive me, because I will have said this to the committee before—that the MPAs can help aid the recovery of commercial fish and shellfish. That is something that is in the Biodiversity Strategy. We hope that all those things can be looked at in an integrated way to get that sustainable outcome that we all want, because communities want. I will move on to agriculture in a second. Before I do, there has been a comment passed today about the opportunity that you have to influence policy that impacts upon biodiversity. The Muirburne code is currently being reviewed. We are all aware that there are competing views on the benefits or otherwise of Muirburne. I am just wanting to touch on what opportunity you may have had to feed into that process, particularly from a biodiversity standpoint. Absolutely first class opportunity. We warmly welcome the fact that this is now being restructured by Scotland's modern forum, which is a very inclusive body now—a very large range of representation. The organisations that are represented on the Muirburne code restructuring are well balanced and will bring a good depth of experience. I have confidence that it will represent the correct balance of peatland, soil, vegetation and aerial biodiversity as well. Like Adam Smith, I am involved with Scotland's modern forum and we have had input into the development of the new Muirburne code. I have to say that we have not yet seen a draft document pulling all of the various group work together. We think that it is important that peatland conservation has a central role in the new guidance. I will not repeat what Adam Smith said, but the other thing that we think is critical is that the code also covers grass burning in parts of the west coast, in particular where grass fires form part of agricultural management, because we have had some examples in recent years of some very serious and out-of-control grass fires that have caused significant damage to natural habitats in the west coast of Scotland. Okay, that's fine. So, let's move on and look at agriculture and the cap. Alexander Burnett. I mentioned earlier in the percentage of Scotland that needed managing for conservation and the role of the private sector. I am a member of a scheme of wildlife estate Scotland. I wonder how schemes like that can be encouraged and what role. I have mentioned a bit about how green environment and cap reform, how the two of those will play a role given current Brexit issues. Do you want to add to that as well? What are the demonstration farms that are being run by the Game Wildlife Conservation Trust and the James Hutton Institute telling us? Thank you. I tried to fit those various elements together. The demonstration farms are there to shine a spotlight on some of the issues that Mr Burnett has raised there. The purpose of the farm that we run up in Aberdeenshire is to demonstrate a real-world farm. That is one that has to turn an honest buck on the bottom line and show how that can be compatible with wildlife. In fact, one of the species, one of the priority species that is in this document, the curlew, is one of our focal species for our farm. However, we are trying to achieve a network of demonstration farms by working with the James Hutton Institute, which has the splendid facility at Glensoch, and the SRUC, which has an excellent facility at Kirkton near Korean Larach. If we can build those three farms together into a network and we have a joint monitoring proposition already in place and then build further farms on to that, Scotland's land management community, the farming community, will have a series of places that they can come and peer into, have a look at the mistakes that we are making, have a look at some of the successes that we are actually achieving as well, and go away reasonably reassured that those are real-world propositions. Quite difficult in Kirkton and Glensoch's sense, because they have very clearly defined manipulative experimental roles, but that brings their own value easier to look inside what we are doing and to see very clearly the incredible importance of subsidy in its current format and subsidy in whatever new format we will have to deal with after 2019. We are hill edge farmers, as I say, we are tenant hill edge farmers and it's really driving home to me as a trained ecologist how difficult that life actually is, especially how difficult that life is to put a farming system in place and to have an awareness of how of bringing up families of curlews and families of lapwings and families of other things as well and what agri-environment is going to be needed to do that. I praised the agri-environment scheme earlier on, the heading as a success. Indeed, it's very important that it's there. It could be improved enormously. I think this and the other committee, REC, are well aware of the challenges and the delivery of the agri-environment and climate change scheme. There is an enormous room for improvement in that delivery and in its focus as well. This committee, I hope, will take a really strong role in liaising with the rule of economy and connectivity committee in making sure that the evidence that you receive here is translated across into the support structures that we see in the future. Absolutely vital. I respond directly to your question. The RSPB is also a member of wildlife estates. Our Abernethi reserve in Strathspey was one of the first sites to gain accreditation, level 2 accreditation. We were also involved with the steering group that has set up wildlife estates and designed the criteria. In answer to your question, we are heavily involved with that and that does have a demonstration role to play. I know your involvement, and that is excellent. How do we go promoting it more to get more people involved? I agree. That is a challenge. Obviously, that is funded by SLE internally. They have a project manager whose job it is to do that. I understand progress with getting people from stage one to stage two has been quite slow, but I think that they are looking at ways to improve that. Just to say, in addition, like Adam, we are involved with discussions with SRUC and JHI over demonstration farms. We think that they have an important role to play. We are particularly involved with SRUC at their Crichton site, where we have a partnership project there. I would also highlight the fact that our nature reserves also play a critical role. We have had a long term partnership, for example, on the western isles at Balranold. We manage a site that belongs to the local crofters, but we manage the site in partnership with the local crofters and have been doing that for many, many years. It is a successful project to demonstrate best practice in relation to agri-environment and management for corn crakes. My only final point here would be, I think, with regard to the arpid suite of monitor farms. There is a case that they could actually do more on those sites to demonstrate best practice for biodiversity. They do great things for water quality, environmental management and so forth, but they could do more for biodiversity. That leads me on to asking how effective are the current greening measures within the cap in terms of maintaining and enhancing biodiversity? Adam Smith is laughing there, I should allow him in first, I suspect. Only because it is such a horribly difficult question to answer. When greening is done well and the spirit of greening is entered into fully, it can make a useful contribution. There is no question about that. Unfortunately, many farmers are, not all, but many farmers are very creative people and they will see ways around that. For example, we see the return of effectively the set-aside area. Farmers are choosing to fulfil their greening requirements simply by setting aside a great big lump of A-field and not doing anything with it. That is neither helpful for soils, nor water, nor birds, bugs, bees, nor anything else. Greening needs to be suitably improved. There is arguably an opportunity in Brexit, but the structure of greening, as it was handed down from the European Union, was not too bad. It is a matter of debate that the way that it has been implemented in Scotland could certainly be improved. To be fair to farmers, you would find agreement from them on that. I think that is absolutely true. Nobody else wants to come in on that. Bruce Wilson? Certainly, whether we stay in or out of Europe, there is going to be an awful lot less money floating around for those schemes, so it is vital that we get whatever comes next in terms of cap right. It might not be thinking of it in terms of the pillar system where we have a single-farm payment idea and an agri-environment on the side of that. It might be a lot more about paying for what is provided in general, and with reference to Mr Stewart's point about the WTO rules, we will have to be quite mindful of what we can provide for them. That is where I start to favour, certainly, the idea of a range of land managers being paid for the environmental services that they provide. Food provision could be one of those services, but it has to be a balance between the other things that we seek from our land now. Willie McGee? I think that I would endorse what Adam has said. Certainly, in the forestry and the woodland sector, we have not been that impressed by what has come out over a considerable amount of time, actually, ever since the ESAs. It is an engagement with farmers and land owners in getting them to recognise what they are doing, and usually that will come down to money. The current scheme, if you look at one of the, somebody asked about the take-up of the forestry scheme, one of the things that happened was that we shifted the farm woodland premium scheme, which effectively, if you put 100 hectares, 10 hectares, whatever hectares on your piece of farm in the uplands, you would receive something like £60 per hectare, per annum, every year for 15 years. At a stroke last year, we disappeared it and they get the single farm payment equivalent, which might be a tenner or 20 quid. The confor and others in the forest industry wand around asking themselves why farmers are not keen to take up these schemes. It is a very simplistic and quite a blunt view, but that is how it works. Never the less interesting, Adam Smith, just to wrap up on this. I was going to come back and say, yes, of course, money is a very important incentive, but so is actually a wide range of other things. One thing that we consistently come across is information about what the change might do for you as well, and not just financially. I am quite sure that in a silvopastoral system—this is where animals are grazed in amongst trees—there could be a much better tie-up between various bits of farming and forestry, for example. The same could be true for forestry and sporting. This comes down to not throwing money at people to do something but giving people more information and more knowledge about what they could do for their businesses. That is the facilitation that I was talking about. We have seen the letting of the contract for the farm advisory and extension service. To what extent is that building in those approaches to biodiversity? We hope that it will be at the forefront of it. If SRUC gets a big bite of that, they have a reasonably good track record in doing so. Catherine might want to reflect on the fact that FWAG and our advisory services can make a very strong difference to the way that farmers do something with a bit of advice. Most agri-environment schemes can be made to work and work very effectively. It depends on the level of commitment and the information and advice that the people on the ground actually get. That is critically important. Something that the committee might want to press and make sure happens well. Let us wrap this up by looking at the IHA interim report, which indicates that the evidence base is currently incomplete. I quote, "...coation of data and information across such a wide range of areas from financial resource allocation to knowledge transfer and conserved genetic resources has presented considerable challenges." Can I ask you to identify what those challenges have been to develop in the evidence base and how those are currently being overcome? How do you think they might be overcome? It is nice and easy to want to finish. Who wants to go first? Willie Muggy. I think that if we have a commonly recognised baseline for woodlands of any description in a good condition, in a favourable condition for biodiversity, that would be a great starting point. SNH has consulted widely before it developed what it has been using for its commission, used something certainly different. Like all sectors, it could find half a dozen different systems. It would be good to have a common agreement about what a biodiverse woodland should look like before you send people out to measure it and then report back on it. Very fair point, Bruce Wilson. Again, the vital nature of the ecosystem health indicators here is SNH's own comment. Ecosystem health indicators will help monitor progress towards the 2020 convention on biological diversity targets, so they need to be in place to order us to track progress on those things. One of the members wants to come at this point. Alexander Burnett. Can I just come back on the forest? Are you talking about further clarification on schemes separate to forest certification or under the forest management plan? Are you talking about another scheme on top to try and quantify biodiversity in forestry or well-managed forest? Right. You have two or three things going on in there. Certification is— You talked about having different criteria for measuring forest. Yes. In terms of biodiversity by itself, if we are just looking at biodiversity, what happens is that SNH will get its surveyors. They have a system, a set of scoring sheets and whatever else, and they will send people out and you go and do it. Whether those woodlands have anything to do with aqueous or FSC is, from their perspective, neither here nor there. The point that I made earlier about the 80 per cent is that we commonly find that the bar is not set sufficiently high to be able to come back and say that this woodland was in good condition. That is either because they have not consulted widely enough or there has not been enough round table like this input into something—not at this level, obviously, but round table input into the condition itself. Does a forest certification scheme not set the bar high enough and should we not be encouraging people to get that number? It sets the bar. That is another discussion, but it is not necessarily looking only at biodiversity. It is looking at a range of different things. That is underlying the importance of a well-resourced marine monitoring strategy. The NGOs can also help there to mention sea search. We have also been doing tagging work with the University of Exeter and Basking Sharks, for example. That enables me to re-respond to Claudia, because I forgot to mention that we are looking forward to four further nature conservation NPAs, including for Basking Sharks—Russeldolph, Winkie Wales and Northern Seafan communities next year. The investment in getting the evidence, particularly with the challenges of marine monitoring and conservation, under water is really important. Cresselos The challenge might be a fairly simplistic view, but the challenge is that Scotland's biodiversity route map has a very atomised structure to it. You have your targets and your actions, and it is relatively easy to say whether the action has been delivered. The progress towards the HE targets broadens that out again and takes a much more global perspective on Scotland's biodiversity progress. By its very nature, it is going to be more challenging to gather data at that scale. And finally, I think, Adam Smith. Very, very short point to say. We are not specialists in this area at all, but colleagues from the GHI, the James Hutton Institute, have reflected that it has been very difficult to complete a very simple thing here that would have helped enormously, which is the habitat map of Scotland. We seem to have been waiting for this extremely important inventory document for a very long time, and I was distressed to hear that it might even be even longer now. The committee might just want to be aware of that to B5, HE target B5, habitat loss halved or reduced. It says by 2019 that the habitat map of Scotland will provide a sort of comprehensive baseline work. Can you all make sure that it really happens? Without knowing what we have, it is pretty hard to conserve it. Okay, and on that note, can I thank all of the witnesses for their contribution this morning? I think I can speak on behalf of the entire committee and say that it's been incredibly thought-provoking and helpful. We'll take your evidence away and deliberate on it. So again, thank you very much. I'm going to suspend the meeting briefly to allow the witnesses to leave and we'll reconvene in a few minutes. Thank you. Okay, so let's recommence the meeting. The third agenda item is for the committee to consider petition PE 1.490 by Patrick Krauser on the control of wild goose numbers. That's consideration that follows the response from the cabinet secretary. We have a number of suggested approaches in front of us. Does anybody wish to comment upon those? Angus MacDonald. Thanks, convener. This petition has been with the previous RACI committee for some time, and there's clearly still an issue, particularly on the islands, but it's now spreading over to mainland as well. So I think there's certainly an argument to await the publication of SNH's review of goose management and also to approach the petitioner, Patrick Krauser, to get some feedback from him on exactly how he feels that the progress has been going, and perhaps get some detail from the crafter's point of view as to whether progress has been made or not. Absolutely. Corey Beamish. Thank you, convener. I would very much support what Angus MacDonald is saying, and I think that it is very important at this stage to get that information so that that's ready when we see the SNH review. Having been a member, like yourself, convener of the previous RACI committee, this is a problem that is really, if not intractable, I'd be careful what I say, but is a real challenge and needs to be addressed both from the point of view of biodiversity but also from the point of view of the economy of our islands and islands. I think that the message that's come out loud and clear from the committee is that this is a matter that we take very, very seriously, and clearly we'll pay a lot of attention to the content of the SNH review of goose management. So are we happy to proceed on the basis suggested, which is in the first instance to await the publication of SNH's review of goose management policy and we'll consider that in due course, but in the meantime to write to the petitioner asking for his input on where he thinks we're at with this issue, with some specific points worked into that, and then we'll take it from there. Sorry, Finlay Carson. Is this only restricted to the west coast islands? Is there potentially issues that could arise in other areas where migratory geese? I think that, as Angus MacDonald touched upon, we have problems in the mainland. I mean there have been issues in Aberdeenshire, if I remember correctly, so this is a problem that is more than simply the western isles. Can we ensure that they do open this right out, not just to the basis of the petition, Angus MacDonald? I was just going to say, convener, that on the previous committee, the former member, Alex Ferguson, did highlight that there was starting to be a problem in the Solway as well. Yes. There's also an issue in Orkney, which is the previous committee witness for itself. Is there a sightedness here that this is a Scotland-wide issue, Emma Harper? I spoke to Chris Rolly from RSPB at Mersehead on Monday. He said that the issue in the Solway is that they don't want to go down the road of lethal scaring, that right now they seem to be quite okay with the management and the numbers, especially for barnacle geese, although they have issues with the grey lag. To revert to the original point, we're happy to take that approach. Having clearly indicated from the last few moments that this is an issue that we have a considerable interest in, we'll continue to have an interest in. We're happy to proceed on that basis. Okay, thank you for that. At its next meeting on November 8, the committee will take evidence on its budget scrutiny from Marine Scotland and SNH. As agreed earlier, we'll now move into private session. I ask the public gallery to be cleared as the public part of the meeting is now closed. Thank you.