 Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting of 2017 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I'd like to remind everyone present to switch off mobile phones, etc, as they may affect the broadcasting system. The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether to take item 4 in private. Are members agreed? We are agreed. Agenda item 2, subordinate legislation, concerns the financial assistance for environmental purposes Scotland order 2016, SSI 216-406. The details on this negative instrument are in the papers. Can I invite members to make any comments? I've got one comment, convener. Firstly, I'm not minded to move to annul this instrument, but I would like to request that we write to the Scottish Government to ask them how the envisage scheme will be administered, where the focus of any potential activity might be, and also some potential examples that they may be able to share with the committee at this time. Sounds very reasonable. Any other comments? On the basis that we take the course of action suggested by the deputy convener, is the committee agreed that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to that? We are agreed. Agenda item 3 is to take evidence from a panel of academics on SNH's report on deer management in Scotland. We're joined in person this morning by Professor Steve Alban, Professor David McCracken and Professor Rory Putman. We will be taking evidence by video link from Norway from Dr Duncan Halley. Can you hear us, Dr Halley? Yes, I can. That's good. If at any point there is a problem, if you could indicate and we will suspend so that you are to re-establish a link and ensure you're fully involved. Okay, thank you. That's fine. We move to questions. Gentlemen, as you're aware, the subject of deer management and the SNH report has generated a good deal of heat. Today's evidence session is designed to assist the committee in cutting through the claim and counter claim that's being made and get a handle on what the research is telling us about this issue. Can I ask each of you in turn to set the scene by outlining your areas of expertise? Perhaps in doing that comment upon any areas where you might be open to criticism that you're saying may be in any way prejudice because in building up the experience that you have over the years you may have come to a view. Can I perhaps start with Duncan Halley? Do you want to go first? I'm a landscape ecologist, I think would be the shortest description of what I do. I work in various aspects of landscape ecology including grazing in sheep, deer and other animals. Specifically on deer I have worked on aspects of deer management, red deer, reindeer, rodeer and moose in Norway. I have worked on sheikah deer in Japan and I have worked on other ungulates, bison in Romania, buffalo in Africa. My experience is entirely Norwegian in these areas and I moved to Norway 24 years ago. I am a Norwegian citizen and I identify primarily with this country. The degree to which that might prejudice me with respect to Scottish conditions I wouldn't know. I'm used to finding myself off message with virtually everybody. I'm the kind of hybrid organism I suppose for about 20 years I worked as a university academic in the University of Southampton in charge of the deer management research group which was largely concerned with applied management issues, undertaking research which would support new developments in management. I semi-retired from that about 22 years ago and came up to Scotland where I had actually been working as a freelance environmental consultant and deer management consultant. So I have worked for a lot of private estates, I have worked for a number of deer management groups helping to develop deer management plans. Not just in the recent round, some of the groups I have worked with are now on their third five year iteration of plans so some of them were trying to develop collaborative plans some time ago. So to that extent I guess my experience could be slightly prejudiced because I have spent a lot of time working with the deer groups and private land owners. That doesn't mean that I'm an apologist for them, there are some good ones, there are some could do betters. I hope that I can consider myself independent but I have had that experience of working as a practitioner as well as my continuing academic and research interests in deer management. I head up what we call a hill and mountain research centre within Scotland's rural college. My background I have worked on agricultural system biodiversity and farming interactions across Europe for 25 plus years. Members of my team at the hill and mountain research centre have looked at grazing practices particularly in the uplands sometimes in woodlands. We are looking at livestock and sheep grazing but we have also been involved with deer work in the past. More recently, through 2016, we have been doing a project jointly with the University of Highlands and Islands Centre for Mountain Studies for Scottish Natural Heritage, Forest Commission Scotland and Scottish Government, looking at what are the gaps in knowledge and understanding about sustainable deer management within Scotland and that is why I am here today. Through the course of my career, I have and I still work a lot with environmental NGOs, with other stakeholders, as I said in the Moorland Forum, so a bit like Rory. If I'm biased in any way at all, I think I would be biased towards traditional farming systems across Europe and the value that they provide. But certainly in terms of being biased as far as deer management is concerned, then no, we do try and take an objective sort of look at things. Professor Albin. Thank you. I'm a population ecologist. I began my research career 40 years ago on the Isle of Rhum working with Tim Cluttenbrock in the study of natural selection in the wild there. I've worked at a number of levels from, we seem to have lost Duncan Halley. I've worked at a number of levels from individuals within populations to population ecology. Tim Cluttenbrock and I nearly 30 years ago now published a book, Red Deer in the Highlands, which was the first analysis of the data collected at the deer management area level. In that sense, I've got a background in this type of work. I've also worked as a consultant for the Isle deer management group after we published that book, Red Deer in the Highlands. I was the science adviser to the Association of Deer Management Groups. In that sense, I've seen both sides of this debate. Of course, if there's a conflict at the moment, James Hutton Institute, from which I retired two years ago, but I'm an emeritus fellow, is a contractor doing some of the work covered in the report. I have also worked in a wider context because I chaired the Scottish Biodiversity Forum's science panel for a number of years and also co-chaired the UK national ecosystem assessment. Thank you very much for that. Duncan Halley, can I confirm that you're now back with us? Yes, I am now back. I should also have said earlier that if you wished to respond to any of the questions that you could perhaps indicate on the screen, I'll know that they'll come to you. Let's move on. Page 91 of the SNH report states that the data on deer populations are incomplete with uncertainty over national population estimates for both red and roe deer. An estimates in the report put the total deer count nationally at between £360,000 and £400,000 respectively, so there's quite a substantial difference between those two figures. I know that SNH is working with the James Hutton Institute to give us a more up-to-date number specifically, but do the panel consider the numbers provided by the SNH report to be both accurate and relevant? The accuracy within broad limits will be reasonably good. It depends on the degree to which you want accuracy. In Norway, we do not count deer in this manner. What we measure is directly deer impacts or impacts of density on the deer themselves, for example, their weights. And we manage to that. It's a system called adaptive management. My understanding in Scotland is that your goal is to reduce certain impacts while perhaps retaining the ability to hunt deer, in which case there is a case to be made for measuring directly the impacts and managing deer numbers until you achieve the effect. For example, as Carower State in the Highlands has been doing recently, there will be a good example of how to achieve that. Professor Alwyn? Yes. I think we should be concentrating on impacts, so I wouldn't disagree with Duncan. However, I think it's also clear that you can't assess an impact unless you have some idea of at least the trend. You may not need to know the absolute number, but I do think you need to know whether the numbers are going up in a location or whether they're going down or whether they're constant. Therefore, you have to have some form of counting assessment, and it is true that we don't know the absolute accuracy of these estimates, but we hope that the biases within the way they're counted are consistent. Jenny Gilruth, do you want to come back on that? The biases are consistent so that we are able to get an idea of the trends, even if we don't know whether that's representing 80 per cent of the population or 95 per cent of the population. I suppose that I just want to get it on the record as to whether or not you accept that the statistics are spot on or that we could be more focused in terms of the data gathering. I appreciate that both of you have said that we need to look more broadly at the impact of deer, but I think that we also need to find out the numbers, as you said. Do you accept that the numbers that are provided by the report are as accurate as they could be? I think that the national trend estimates are very good in the sense that the trend is well described. However, I couldn't tell you whether that trend represents 80 per cent of the animals. If the mean figure is 400,000 within those boundaries, whether that 400,000 is 440,000 or even 500,000, we can't tell you under the current methodologies. It would be possible to refine it, but I don't think that's the important thing. It doesn't matter whether there are half a million deer or 300,000 deer. What does matter is the trend and the impacts. The impacts also are very much local things. We can have some high density areas where we may have little impact, but we can have relatively low density areas which are very sensitive habitats where we might have considerable impacts. We must get away from totals. That's my overall message. Totals aren't particularly important. Trends are very important. You need them to represent the heterogeneity. We know that there's a tenfold difference in deer densities. We're talking about red deer because these are the only ones that we can really estimate, red deer and the open hill range. We know that there's a tenfold difference across the country. You're going to have very different circumstances if you've got ten times as many animals as you haven't. As academics, wouldn't you want to base any of your judgments in the most robust and detailed statistical information that was available, or could be gathered? Isn't there an argument for having a proper deer count across Scotland, all species, highland and lowland, to allow us to base policy upon? I think you've picked an impossible task in some ways because estimating deer numbers of whatever species in woodland is extremely difficult. You do highlight, I think, one of the major issues which was brought out in the SNH report but we still haven't addressed as a country, which is the problem of deer in the lowlands. Almost all the focus of deer management and trying to encourage collaborative deer management has so far been north and west of the central belt in the uplands. We are missing a huge trick, to be honest, in that we haven't got to grips with what's going on in the lowlands. But to pick up your earlier point, I actually agree with Steve. I think we're all singing very much from the same hym sheet here. The headline figure, and I'm a record of having said this, the headline figure of how many deer there are in Scotland of whatever species is not of huge relevance. Trends are, in my view, simply to see whether management being undertaken is delivering the objective sort. But I still believe, really very strongly, that it is the impact that we should be concerning ourselves with. Steve makes the point that densities vary almost in order of magnitude in different parts of Scotland. In some places, even a low density in sensitive habitats can cause a damaging impact. In other areas, very high densities are actually having a very heavy impact but it might not be considered damaging if it doesn't conflict with the land use objectives defined for that area. I'm a great believer that we shouldn't be working even on regional figures. We should be looking at a very local level in terms of trends in deer populations but, more importantly, what are the impacts and are they unacceptable in the context of the surrounding land management objectives? If you gathered figures at a local level, they would all add up to give us a national picture. Whether we made much use of that, perhaps not, but it does strike me through all of this evidence that lack of information is at the root of the problem. Duncan Hallian, please. Yes. I very much agree with the other speakers here on this subject. Very good information is, of course, a good idea but it depends what kind of information is relevant to the task at hand. In Norway, just to give you an example, in Norway we have less of an idea of what our total population of deer is and what our densities at deer are than you do in Scotland. We manage our deer populations to general satisfaction by collecting other data, for example on the weight and condition of the animals. We have found through practice that if the weight and condition of the animals is satisfactory by our standards, then all the other things that you in Scotland have at goals follow more or less automatically. Therefore, most of our weight in recent years has been on assessing the weight and condition of animals rather than trying to get measures of, for example, densities. Professor Albon. I agree with that point. In fact, I forgot to mention in my introduction that I have published three research papers on deer from Norway looking at trends in their body weight both regionally and temporally. We know that weight is a sensitive indicator of performance and that it is also density dependent. As numbers rise, the weights will decline. Because weights decline, females have their pregnancy rates and so on. I would agree with Duncan that collecting weight information is very useful. Many estates do do it. The interesting thing in Norway is that hunters, because it is organised through hunting groups in wildlife groups around the counties, submit all their data to central statistics repository. They have very accurate information. Many estates in Scotland keep larger records. They have done it since the Victorian times because they were interested in weight and how many points stags had on their antlers and things like that. Potentially, we could examine other data. We could also refine the way in which the counts are done that give us the estimates of the numbers seen on the ground. We could actually get some error confidence intervals around the count. If a thousand deer are counted in a particular place, we should be able to say whether it is plus or minus 100. There are ways in which we could refine what has been done traditionally from a method developed in the late fifties by the late Frank Fraser Darling when he was doing his West Highlands survey in the late fifties. The methodology and the whole approach could be refined and we could get better data. It would need some level of organisation. It would obviously therefore need funding. Alexander Burnett. My register of interests relating to deer management. Good morning, pal. It's very good to hear all of you talk more about the impact is more important than densities. When you see a report like the SNH report which does focus on density and some of the questions over the data into it, how concerned are you by such a report and are you aware of other areas of scientific research based on such unreliable data? Duncan Howey. I don't think I would characterise the data as presented in this paper as unreliable. The SNH were asked by you to produce information on certain subjects. That they have done it seems to me in a competent and objective manner. It is clear from the data available that the objectives that were specified by your predecessors to be met by 2016 or for a step change in delivery I believe was the actual phrase have to a large extent not be met. That's what they were asked to assess. That is what they have done. You mustn't lose the word for the trees here. The broad picture here is clear. Deer populations are impacting the number of things that you wish them not to impact. The way in which to deal with that is to reduce their densities which would also have the effect of increasing their weights and increasing their productivity. Paradoxically, you can actually lose the harvest level by doing so. The data on this seems reasonably clear. I would not agree with the premise of the question there. I think SNH, given what they were asked to do, have done a competent job. I am already on record for suggesting that I think there are a number of flaws in the SNH report. Not so much in what data are presented in part data which may have been available which were not presented to offer perhaps a slightly more balanced judgment of events. I think what concerned me more was that some of the interpretations did not seem to reflect the evidence and there were a number of instances and again my written submission has noted some of these where the report has said all the evidence suggests x. However we conclude the reverse of x. That sort of inconsistency I find slightly worrying when it is a report being submitted to this committee to enable you to make decisions about the way forward in the future. You need the best evidence that you can get. Perhaps the report was slightly premature. It might have been better if we could have waited until the James Hutton work had been completed. If the work that you are going to report on had been completed we would have had a fuller information base to work from. I do not entirely agree with Duncan that they made the best job that they could have done. It is worth getting on the record in fairness to SNH that the timing of the report was determined by the predecessor committee, the Government accepting that point and the Parliament ratifying it. It is not really SNH's fault that they reported prior to that information being available and it is worth just getting on that record. Professor Albin. If I could respond to Alistair Burnett's question. I do not think that the data is so unreliable. I think that it is unreliable that we do not know absolutely how many deer there are in Scotland. What I do think is that the deer commission for Scotland, which was the predecessor to SNH and before that the red deer commission for Scotland have tried their utmost to be consistent in their approaches. As I wrote in my evidence submitted last week, this suggestion that the reason the population seems to have leveled off since 2000 is because we are now counting largely by helicopter rather than from foot and there is a disparity between these two methods is simply wrong. I went back through the 30 odd pieces of evidence that were on the website on 6 January and tried to review what was being stated but there is misinformation coming through there. There is no difference between the camps that were done on the ground and the aerial camps where people have trialled the same techniques at the same time in the same place in three different sites including Arl of Rhum which as an island is obviously a closed population. I would strongly defend the analysis of the data that we were given in terms of there is more data because many of the deer management groups attempt annual camps but also I know for a fact that often it is not done in a very short period of time, different parts are counted by different groups at different times and you see comments written in the record saying you know poor count missed some animals because of this or something. So while there is more evidence out there we would have to be very careful in how we use the annual records and indeed because I want to be sure that people didn't get the wrong impression where individual chairman have written to us or approached us I have discussed with them getting access to their data not only the count data but also their cull data to analyse that and see whether we are getting similar relationships in their area as we get from the less frequent counting. It is the case that many of the official camps, the intervals between them are too long and one of the things that should be considered is a new in our view a new rolling programme of counting. What used to happen is when the Red Deer Commission of Scotland, the predecessors counted and they did ground counts, they had a team of six stalkers on their books as it were and then they went to a deer management group and they recruited the other stalkers. So they would have teams of 12 or more men going across the hillside almost 100 metres apart counting the animals before them in walkie talkie control and would be able to say well we pushed a group here have you seen it so they would try to avoid double counting and things like this. I suspect that if we are just doing helicopter counting then it would be less important to have local people on board but again I think it would be valuable to try and get a much more truly collaborative approach between the statutory agency and the local industry on the ground. Where the information in particular areas is very out of date, how far back would you feel you needed to go as a trigger point for having an update count? I would hope that we can move to a system where we never had intervals of more than five years. I just wanted to make two points. One was to agree as what has already been said earlier on that it was unfortunate at the timing of this report or the SNH report that it wasn't able to take into account the other body of evidence that was there and also make that point that that report on its own is not a standalone report, there's a whole wide body of other evidence that's been collected over the years to actually help inform that. Another thing in response to the question was just to say, actually I was, if you read the SNH report in total, as a member of the team who was doing this gaps and knowledge and understanding work, I was reassured by some, a lot of what was published in the SNH report because it was bearing out what we were finding by speaking to people on the ground and doing the literature reviews. So I'm particularly thinking about the fact that in our report we're highlighting that habitat impact assessment has not been taken up as much by the deer management groups for a variety of reasons and the SNH report backed that out and showed the benchmarking was actually highlighting that. There has been an improvement but there's still some way to go so that was one of the key points that's coming out of our report. Had their report showed that the deer management groups felt that they were actually utilising habitat impact assessment to best effect then that would completely fly in the face of what we were actually finding on the ground. On that point I was going to ask it later but you mentioned you were involved in the gaps analysis of the SNH report. The Scottish Forestry Journal recently says that claims at 40,000 hectares of planted ancient woodland sites were missed out of the assessment. Do you want to comment on that? Missed out of which assessment? There were included in the review. That would be of the native woodland of Scotland review back in 2012-14. And therefore excluded from the assessment of the SNH report for the environmental impact? I don't know. I can't comment on that. I wasn't involved in the native woodland survey report and that's not something that's been made to come out of any of the discussions that we've actually had over the last year with local land managers and scientists. I think that's the point I was trying to pick up in answer to your question that Steve's been talking primarily about are there gaps in the count figures which brings us back to absolute numbers which I really want to try and get away from. I do think there were some gaps of information in other aspects of the report other than simply numbers. You make the point that perhaps the native woodland survey of Scotland missed a number of sites. It was also quite heavily criticised by a number of commentators including Steve Buckland at St Andrews that the methodologies were bound to overestimate the number of sites which were not in favourable condition. And were bound to conclude that deer were the major herbivore involved. The surveyors were told, when it's written in their protocols, the surveyors were told if they could not identify the browser causing browsing damage recorded as deer. If deer browsing was found on one tree in a compartment being surveyed, a polygon being surveyed, they were told to consider that the entire 100% of that area was threatened by deer. So it was kind of stacked towards overestimating the amount of impact from herbivores overall and particularly in terms of estimating the impact of deer. That's not my view, that's Steve Buckland's independent assessment. I don't know if it was published but it was submitted to the British Deer Society. Mark Ruskell. I had a point just to follow up on David McCracken's point. There's a lot of debate here about population and counts and different ways to count and trends and the data. My reading of the report is that a lot of SNH's conclusions are based largely on the actions that deer management groups have or haven't put in place to try and tackle some of these issues. For example, if you look at the public interest categories on page 69, it appears that only a quarter of deer management groups are involved in actions to manage herbivore impacts. So when SNH talked about a step change, are they focused entirely on this national or regional or local population density issue? Or is it actually more about what you could call class as a failure of deer management groups to take the actions to actually bring about some of the changes that we want in terms of habitats? I can't speak on behalf of SNH but in response to your question, my reading of the report was much of what SNH was talking about, not foreseeing a step change being able to be possible, was based on that assessment of their benchmarking assessment of the deer management groups and how they've been performing to date. Duncan Howie, do you want to come in? I'm rather concerned here that the whole thrust of the question in here is rather losing the wood for the trees. The fact is that the grazing and browsing pressure in Scotland is generally too high to allow the outcomes that you want, for example, to occur. There is a giant natural experiment on the subject in south west Norway where the geology and climate aren't very similar indeed to those of the Scottish highlands. There the index value of grazing in 1949 was 100. At that time the area was largely unwounded. It looked very similar to Scotland if you look at the old pictures from that time in landscape. For various social and economic reasons the index value of grazing pressure declined to 63% in 1969 and has since increased to 71%. At the same time the entire region has largely reforested by natural means of process which is continuing to this day. So you're rather arguing here about almost about the details of the foliage rather than the wood. If you wish these things to happen you require to reduce the overall level of grazing pressure. That appears to be absolutely understood by everyone and, if read here, are a substantial component of that grazing pressure. Steve Alban. I think Duncan makes very valid points. If we want to rewild Scotland and have much more natural forestry then clearly we would have to reduce the level of grazing and browsing to get this. However, these are cultural landscapes that we're dealing with and there are many people who value the current moors barren as they may seem to some but they are nonetheless something that we've had for 200 or 300 years. I'm not sure that we necessarily want to recreate a so-called Norwegian landscape everywhere. I think the thing is that we may want to increase the structural diversity and variety of habitats across Scotland but maybe we need to think about the best places that we would do it for a variety of reasons, not least social and economic as well as purely environmental. I think that we're guilty of falling into the trap here of thinking too much about upland deer. I want to focus at the end of this section on lowland deer because we have a significant problem with lowland deer in Scotland. Do you think that a lack of available data is perhaps a problem as we look at the best approach to tackling the issue because we hear evidence from people on the ground that there would be different and more appropriate ways to address the issue than are currently being deployed? There's a whole host of questions wrapped up in that question. I highlight that there's a significant problem with deer in lowland Scotland and probably urban Scotland as well, your meaning as well. Going back to some of the original questions and some of the answers that have already come forward, it's a significant problem for what? Because there's a wide variety of ways that deer in lowland and periurban in urban areas impact on the environment through deer to vehicle collisions through to actually doing damage. The report that we have highlighted is highlighted that we in Scotland and the UK don't know enough about how to actually estimate road deer populations because you'll be largely talking about roads certainly in the periurbans situations in these wooded environments. Nor do we know enough about how much damage they are actually physically causing to our sort of woodland areas. We do know that they're actually regularly involved in vehicle collisions but we don't have a substantial database on that to actually inform us where some of the hotspots are other than where it is known that it's causing an issue. We've identified in the report that we need to go forward and we need to have a better way of assessing road deer population dynamics, not just numbers, but dynamics. There's a variety of reasons why deer management is not being applied and there are a variety of different models that could be applied but one of the fundamental issues to be addressed there is getting everybody on board, the stakeholders on board in those areas, understanding what type of deer management is necessary and why. It's the why part that has to be answered if we can get them on board but there are evidence from the US off the top of my head. I think we've mentioned the report of different models being applied where urban and periurban dwellers get why deer management is actually important in their area when it's made clear to them what the benefits to them actually are. It's not economic benefits necessarily, it's the benefits in terms of the reduction in limes disease in the area or the reduction in damage to landscape plantings etc but you need to get them on board first before you can actually really go forward. Kate Forbes? I think that we've probably covered a lot of that but it was to look at the scientific evidence that you obviously, in terms of disagreement on densities, what is the scientific evidence that is used by some of the deer management groups to query the count and what has been the scientific evidence supporting the James Hutton Institute model? Taking a step back in just pure academic terms, what are the differences in the scientific evidence that supports the two conclusions that deer management groups and the James Hutton Institute have come to? Okay, I think the issue is a relatively simple one but what we have done is we've taken all the available data within the so-called official category that it was done by SNH or its predecessors and we have concentrated on trying to describe the trends in space. What we've then come up with is an estimate and the points, as I tried to illustrate in my piece and was also used by the Association of Deer Management Groups, is that even on islands like Rum the numbers apparently go up and down around the trend and sometimes it goes up by more than is possible, biologically possible, given there was a colour of X and so on. So there's clearly error in these individual counts as we've described. The problem is that the individual deer management groups tend to say we counted 3,222 which means that it's 11.2 deer per square kilometre and our estimate is that it's 12.5 deer per square kilometre. I used that example in myrish nefans. That's remarkably close. It's about 13 per cent different. So as a scientist who's used to handling quantitative data, I would say that's really rather good. That's within what we might expect of our estimate. But this is taken as, well, it's too high and you're stating it's too high and going to beat us up over it. Well, we're not saying it's too high. We're just saying that we feel that given all the fluctuations that do go on and the uncertainties around any one count, that that's not unreasonable. But people get very passionate about this absolute number and that if it's different to that absolute number then we must be wrong. Is Andy Oswant to come in on that? Yes, I suppose I will. I mean, I'm nowhere near as good a modeler as Professor Alban. And I have, in my original written evidence, made some questions about where the figures came from. Steve's subsequent submission last week actually clarifies things very well, I think, and makes it absolutely clear where the more theoretical modelling work, where the figures have derived from and from where they have reached their conclusion. That's not terribly clear in the SNH report because, of course, they were only working on interim results at that time, they didn't have the final report. And I think Steve's written submission makes very good reading actually, I was very impressed. I know a lot of the dear groups are concerned about it because they feel it's rather theoretical and having worked with many of them, having been on many of the ground counts with them, they do believe that they do a good job, and Steve is right, they believe that if an independent theoretical analysis is saying they've got more dear than they think they have, they will be punished in some unspecified manner for this. I think that that's why they've been up in arms and reiterating their own figures to make sure that people recognise that they think they do do reasonably good counts, and that they're the ones on which they base management. Sorry, but the comment that you've just made there, does that not betray the root of the problem? Professor Albarn's approach is independent, subjective, with the greatest respect, and they may well be saying these things because they would, wouldn't they? I think up to a point that's absolutely right, although a large proportion of the landowners, whether they're private landowners or community ownership and their stalkers, genuinely in my personal experience try and do a reasonably professional job. So they do try and get things right, they don't always, and I quoted and Steve's raised the query of the data that I have summarised in a remark that where we have had ground counts they have sometimes been 60% or lower than the subsequent helicopter counts. That's simply because the ground counts have not been necessarily very well carried out and so they are then basing their management on false data. So yes, they can criticise the more theoretical modelling because they are working from their own data, that may be good or it may be flawed. And I think it's a very difficult thing to reconcile. I think it potentially compliments what Rory has just said, just an observation. In the last year when we've been intensively looking at this gaps in knowledge and understanding about sustainable deer management in Scotland, the wide range of people that we've actually been talking to, yes, as you'll see in the paper I submitted, you know, we could have some more accurate deer counts did come up and we've included it because it came up. But actually the vast majority of the discussion that we've had over the last year wasn't to do with the actual improving the counts per se, it was improving better understanding of how the animals are actually moving around the local area in response to the management that's actually been applied. That's where scientists and the managers on the ground see there is actually a gap in knowledge and a gap in understanding. It's not about the absolute numbers and it's about what is there and how is it moving around and what are they interacting with and what does that then mean for the damage they may or may not be actually causing. I'll come back to your point about lack of habitat impact assessments being taken on by the deer management groups and by individual estates. I think that's very valid, but in their defence there has not been a tradition of doing it in the past. It was recommended by people on the rural affairs committee and by the ADMG who backed that up as very useful information for sensitive future management, just as Duncan's been saying, you can manage better if you know what those impacts are. But a lot of these new plans have only been completed in the last six months, so they haven't really had a chance to start doing the regular impact assessments that we expect them to do in the future. Many of them, certainly the ones that I have worked on, are very committed to undertaking monitoring. They would prefer to do it themselves. In some cases they realise they don't have the skills and they're committed to employing outside consultants to do it for them across the deer group area. I'm not disagreeing with you. I think it has been very poor in the past, but they've only just been asked to get that act together and I think SNH may be being a little bit premature in saying it ain't going to work because many of the groups are actually on the first cycle of trying to implement this habitat monitoring. Although, except in the point that you make, as parliamentarians, we've been here before, the last time we looked at deer we were told all well, but there's only been 18 months for this code of practice to be implemented. It always seems to be, with the greatest respect, maniara. How long do we have to wait until we see some serious and definitive action being taken that produces results? Professor Albon. Well, my view is that the cup is half full. I think it's remarkable that deer populations and these are the upland hill deer population, red deer, aren't continuing to increase because we're taking sheep off the ground which used to compete for them. We've got a more benign winter climate and longer warmer summers, which should be better for vegetation production, and yet numbers aren't rising. Although I was fairly circumspect here, I'm absolutely sure that culling, which the deer management groups have collectively increased, there's been a three-fold increase in the level of culling over the period that we've got data for. And it's now at a level which is greater than the so-called one-six cull, which goes back to the early research on rum, which was about managing the population, where it was over the years devised that a one-six cull would keep the population in balance, more or less in terms of a constant number. Of course, whether it was having any impact, which was deleterious is another matter. It's now clear from the data that they're working at about 17 or 18 per cent cull, so it's a bit over the one-six or more or less the one-six. And I think that's probably the reason why we haven't seen any further increase in numbers despite the improvement in the environment, because we have less grazing competition for sheep and because it's more benign. But, of course, it depends where the culling is taking place. It does indeed, but that's very variable across the country. But there's no doubt, and you can see it in the report in the panel, which has 15 different graphs on it, that in many areas they have successfully depressed the populations. And our latest, because that was a preliminary analysis, our latest analysis shows that of 40 deer management groups where we feel confident we've got enough data to assess what's going on, 24 of them have decreased since the year 2000, only 16 have increased. And the ones where the 16 where there's been an increase, 12 of them were very low density populations back in 2000, and they weren't of interest particularly. So my view is that the cup is half full, the actual industry has done a huge effort. That's not to say that there won't be very significant local impacts which are still going to be challenging and need to continually be addressed. OK, that's an interesting context. Thank you. Duncan Halley. Yes, this does go very much to what you wish to do with your landscape. Professor Alban suggested that the Scots may want a different cultural landscape to the Norwegians. I would say that that's entirely valid. It's up to you to decide what kind of landscape that you want. You do have intention to increase your woodland cover and carbon sinks and so on. That can be done by natural regeneration if you get your grazing pressures down. Norway, I would say by the way I object to the term rewilding, Norway is a working landscape in the south west. Its population on rural areas is between three and five times what the population of the Scottish Highlands is in terms of human density. It's a working landscape. The working landscape nature has changed. We now extract timber for example and fuel wood and other things as well as deer from the same land that was rough grazing 15 years ago. Whether you wish to achieve this is up to you. Technically it's not difficult to do. An example would be Corawer Estate in the Highlands. It's 230 square kilometres. It has reduced its deer density through 15 to five in the course of eight years using existing stocking staff. The number of deer that are taken by paying customers or by the landowners has remained stable throughout that period and the weight of stacks has increased 36% over the time. So the technical issues in achieving this are not in fact difficult. It could be done over about a decade and without too much trouble. Arranging it from the social standpoint is by a very great deal the hard part of this. That's where I think most of your effort needs to lie. The technical, animal management part of this is not problematic. Morrish Gould. Felly on from that, what factors impact the number of deer culled each year by land managers and what either intended or unintended consequences are we seeing from this culling? King and Scott. The entire panel, whoever's would like to comment. Perhaps I can kick this one off. I work with a lot of deer groups and work with them to determine what are appropriate target populations for their ground individual estates and the group as a whole and work with them to determine what are appropriate cull levels to either to maintain populations at the desired level or to effect a reduction if it is felt that for other reasons that is necessary. I think most private estates historically have had an expectation of a certain stag harvest if it is an estate which is managed for sporting interests rather than simply deer management to protect forestry. They will have an expectation for a certain number of stags. They will then develop a hind population to produce the appropriate recruitment of calves to grow through the age classes to be culled. And they usually try and target the culls to maintain that hind population at a stable level or if it has got too high to reduce it. I think over recent years they've become and that there has been a significant, I've been working with these estates for some 24 years now and I've noticed a real change in attitude in the sense that they are now much more aware of environmental impacts. And at least some of the public interest benefits which have been defined for them more recently. And I think they have increasingly tried to reduce deer population densities to levels where they can still deliver their private objectives but the impacts on the environment are minimised. That's not to say they're getting it right. I still think they probably aren't. But I think going back to something that the convener was saying, one of the biggest issues that faces all of us in going forward is reconciling private interests and public interest objectives and getting that balance correct. You've got to have both if there is private land ownership and the land owners are subsidising the management to a significant degree financially. They have an expectation that their private objectives are taken into some account even if they acknowledge they also have to deliver in the public interest. So it's getting that balance that's going to be really difficult. So is that not an argument for SNH taking the principal role in setting culling targets? The Norwegian system which Duncan described in his written submission and which I've been aware of before because like Steve I've also worked quite extensively in Norway. It's actually something we're approaching very closely at. Duncan will correct me if I get this wrong or if I oversimplify it. But in essence in any area a group of land owners can get together if their properties collectively cover some biological population of deer and they form a deer management unit. If they don't do that then the regional administration can define a management unit. Once that's done then the land owners are invited to develop a deer management plan which will deliver their objectives. But that is then scrutinised by regional wildlife board who then overlay upon that public objectives and make sure both that the management proposals are sustainable but they also deliver public interest. If they don't do that then if the land owners don't come up with a credible plan or one which is approved by the regional wildlife board then the regional administration can develop that plan for them. So that oversimplifies it I'm sure Duncan but to an extent that's the model we are very closely approaching with this new set of guidelines which have been rolled out to the deer groups to deliver. I'm wondering obviously Duncan's mentioned in Norway you're looking at potentially five dears per square kilometre. Can you provide any broad numbers with respect to deer density levels? Are we looking at a number nearer five or a number nearer 30 perhaps? I'm going to suspend temporarily we've lost the connection so he hasn't heard the question so I'll suspend temporarily. You won't have heard that point that Maurice Golden was making. I'm going to ask him to reiterate it for you and please accept our apologies for this link. I'm just wondering if we can get an indication of likely deer density levels whether it's somewhere closer to as Duncan has suggested in Norway around five per square kilometre or a number nearer 30 or somewhere in between. I wonder if it's possible to add that sort of degree of accuracy in terms of culling? Yes, we've already answered that one in making the point. Duncan, how we answer this first? Where we have done detailed studies on population densities we believe there are around about five to six per square kilometre in general. Our off-take is around about one-third of the population each year because mortality outside the hunting season is practically zero and the conductivity is very much higher. There are many more calves born per year and they survive better than is the case in Scotland. To talk a little about the Norwegian model what was said is true but the Norwegian model is not voluntary. There are sanctions if you do not meet the plan set by the district council for your deer populations. You will lose money by doing so. In Norway our social situation, who owns the hunting and so forth and the scale of land ownership is very different. So motivations are very different there but in the extreme you can be fined an unlimited amount or cent to jail for one year. I've never ever heard of this being done for something like that. Those are usually applied for poaching or for other very serious offences. Poaching in Norway is certainly not a Robin Hood crime. It's like stealing a car from your neighbour. But our system is not voluntary and we would find it odd if it was in the same way. I think the analogy I used is we don't expect the trucks to be regulated by voluntary associations of hauliers. We don't think hauliers are bad people but other society interests come in and the overall plan set by the district council has to be adhered to. In the development of the plan there is close cooperation between the district authority and the landowners developing the plan. It works very harmoniously in practice. So I'm often asked what sanctions we have. The sanctions we have are actually quite drastic in theory but they're never ever applied. What will happen typically if something goes wrong and you haven't got a plan is that you'll get one issued for you by the district council which you expected to achieve. But also if you repeatedly do this given the scale of management what will happen is the local district will put up the quotas for other people and you will lose money. Also in the social context it's like being a bad farmer if you're not dealing with your deer properly. It's like having a field for weeds. You're living in an embedded society where you're part of the local community, you have been, your family has been for a long time and that alters the whole social context. So we have a lot of social sanctions that keep the system running but it is also backed up in theory at least by formal sanctions from the government and it's the government, the district government that ultimately sets the number of deer that ought to be taken and adherence is required. Can I ask for clarity Duncan Howey? Are these agreements with individual land owners or are they with a collection of land owners? What we've talked about here are DMGs. Well the scale of land ownership in Norway is very different. We don't have anything like a state of 100, 200 square kilometres. If you are a large enough land owner then you may have a hunting beat of your own. The whole country is divided up into hunting beats. If you are a smaller land owner you must combine with other people to do this. If you're a large one you can and indeed in recent years it's been encouraged that you do so but you're within your rights to if you have what is called the minimum area to have a quota set for yourself alone. In practice there tend to be several land owners get together because it provides greater flexibility and if you have a plan then it provides more flexibility in your harvests as opposed to having a quota issued to you by the district. But you presumably don't have some of the issues we have in Scotland where you can have adjoining land ownerships where there are very competing views within that as to the appropriate levels of density. No, we don't essentially have that problem. Again there's less of a disjunct in this country between the advantages from having deer and some of the disadvantages. The same individual is the person who owns the woodland typically. So if any damage is caused to the woodland then that is damaging him. He and his children drive around to and from the schools and other places on the roads so if there are lots of car accidents they are impacted by it. So there's less of a disjunct and that creates less of a conflict. There's less disagreement in Norway as to what the deer density should be. So there was general consensus ten years ago when we started to have reductions in weights in the populations of red deer of about 5, 6, 7% and it was generally agreed that the population needed to be managed down because that was being caused by competition for food. And also there were other side effects, road accidents were going up, damage to forestry was going up. So essentially the social context is different. The people who gain and the people who lose from deer activities are the same people. Back to your original question about what in Scotland might be suitable densities and the answer is it's almost impossible to determine the densities which will create maximum diversity or favourable condition differ markedly for different habitats. And even within the same habitat in different locations depending on the productivity of the soil, the slope, the aspect, so many abiotic factors contribute to the growth success of a given habitat in its diversity. So that's the critical density of deer grazing in terms of impact on that delivered by a given density of deer is going to be very, very different. In some cases for the same habitat you may find for example in Dry Heathland you would like somewhere lower than six deer per square kilometre in terms of the impacts they will deliver in other places. That would be perhaps on the west coast where it's much wetter and the heather is already struggling. On the east coast you can probably tolerate densities of 11 to 12 without any negative impacts. Would you agree, Steve? Yes, because in some of those east coast heather habitats there have been deer at 2025 deer per square kilometre and then you find that you will get significant browsing damage. We'll get loss of heather and then we'll get erosion and loss of peat and carbon. We've got enough data to make some adjustments but whether 11 or 12 deer per square kilometre will be the answer or whether again locally you'll need to take it down in some places. I mean I think that's the difficult but that's what adaptive management should be. We should use the available evidence. We should say given the circumstances let's take the densities down to this level. I think that's basically what some of the section 7 agreements have been about and then review and if it isn't working then adjust it further. It's a very dynamic situation that we're facing as I indicated earlier with the reduction in sheep grazing with the more benign winter environments in particular but also the longer, more productive summers. So I think the thing about deer management it will always have to be adjusting to these dynamics. Of course the SNH report indicates that section 7s aren't working. I don't think that any of the section 7 agreements have failed to meet the coal target that was agreed collectively. The issue then may be that we haven't seen sufficient reduction in the impact and therefore in an adaptive management sense we're getting information which tells us we need to take the levels lower. I don't think that it necessarily means that they weren't working. It's just that it has to be an adaptive process. I'm going to let Finlay Carson in here. Thank you. Specifically can the panel point to any studies where sustainable deer densities have been identified for specific land management objectives? On the back of that, how easy is it to do when land managers, as we've heard, already have multiple objectives themselves as well as to consider the public interest? That's a really good point. I mentioned that I was an adviser to the Islay deer management group about 20-odd years ago, I think before Rory took it on. The issue there was that they wanted everything. They wanted trees that ideally they would have got grouse back, but that's not really feasible in that particular environment and so on. It's really difficult to achieve that in one, because it wasn't just the whole island deer management group, it was the individual estates that wanted these multiple objectives. It's something that we haven't referred to, but the Scottish moorland landscape is such that we have this heterogeneity mosaic of little patches of habitat. Some of these will need very light grazing, and they're right next to something that will need heavy grazing and vice versa. It's really, really difficult to get these adjustments, and that's why at the end of the day I suspect we have to work together as a broad stakeholder group in terms of some sort of zoning, and accepting that in this particular area we're going to prioritise this land use as being the most important. Over here we'll prioritise another land use, and in each place you'll have to accept that you won't get everything. You'll get more of this here and you'll get more of that there. We have to be pragmatic. People have to understand that it will be nigh impossible to get everything everywhere. Can I just come back in? I'm actually looking for the theories right. Do we actually have any specific case studies where that's tried to be achieved? Rory might be better qualified to comment on that. I think we probably do in some of the better deer groups in their past history. There were many who failed, and I think the wake-up call that they received was probably timely. But I think a number of them were trying to deliver this in the past, and exactly as Steve is suggesting, by doing adequate monitoring of impacts on vegetation, primarily not on the general range, but on designated sites, designated habitats. That was usually the focus in the past. By, as Duncan is suggesting, by monitoring weights of culls and by monitoring trends in numbers, they undertook what is widely called adaptive management. That is, they tried something, and if it wasn't delivering what they wanted, they adjusted it a bit until it did. I mean, I can't without going back to my files, give you specific examples of specific estates and groups who have been successful in this. But I think some of them were reasonably successful, at least in trying to allow management to be monitoring lead, if I can put it in that sense. Duncan Howey. Yeah, again, the example of carrer estate is possibly the best one in Scotland, of which I am aware. They have reduced their deer densities, they have quantified what they have done, and they have also quantified a great deal as a response. It would be nice if that were very thoroughly investigated by any structured scientific manner by somebody. They are keeping pretty good records in fact, and they have shown the reduction in densities has been accompanied by various responses in the quality of the heather sword in populations of red grouse and so on. So, there you have an example where a stimulus, the reduction in the population of deer, and the response to that stimulus has been measured. And in terms of what they have defined that they are wishing to achieve, it appears to be achieving results. That's a good point. I mean, is there a danger that there are a bit too inshore in Scotland in this subject, and we don't look at good practice like that, or apparent good practice and adapt it for elsewhere, where it can be adapted? Well, the Carrower estate is in Scotland, of course, but yes, I'm trying to find a way of being polite about... Ah, that's unfortunate. We'll suspend again in the loud Duncan Howey to come back. I think we're back. Duncan Howey, can you hear us now? Yeah, present company... Sorry, we have no sound. Can you hear me? I can hear you now, and you were about to be impolite, so please continue. Yeah, present company accepted really seriously. There has been a surprising tendency to parochialism in Scotland in this debate, given that Scotsmen tend to prize themselves in being outward-looking people. I and when examples like Norway are given, the response tends to be, ah, but Norway's got a lot of oil or this or that. Which invalidates everything. The point behind, say, comparisons with South West Norway is not that Scotland might want to replicate it at every point. I would be unhappy if you did. It's that there may be lessons there, given that the climate and geology are close to identical, which would be transferable to your purposes, for example, the way that we manage by adaptive management, or some of the ways we have for reducing social conflicts in not so much in other areas, but since deer management is relatively consensual, but in other areas we have ways of reducing social conflicts which might be applicable to the situation. Much of the debate in Scotland sometimes seems to revolve around sometimes false premises, which could be invalidated by looking in other countries, so that while you might reasonably desire the Scottish landscape to be open if that's your value, you cannot reasonably state that it is natural. But I have had this stated to me a number of times that Scotland, especially West Scotland, is treeless because it's too wet or too windy. Well, South West Norway is even wetter and even windier, and it's got very great amounts of regeneration, even though it was deforested for millennia. So that invalidates that argument. It tells you the limits of the possible. Whether you wish to achieve that, it's entirely a matter for yourself. Well, Norway is a cultural landscape, so is Scotland what is desirable for you is up to you. But other countries can inform you better as to what might be possible. Thank you for that. I'm going to allow Claudia Beamish in whether it's not quite a supplementary, it's going to be a tangential question, but while we have a good link with you, she wants to ask it anyway. Thank you, convener. On page 2 of your submission you highlight, and I quote, It must be doubted whether the aspiration of regarding land as a precious asset that benefits the many not the few can be fulfilled in Scotland remains at the bottom of the European class with the least regulated system of deer management. Duncan Halley, you also highlight the issue in the next paragraph. You stress that in your view all, with an emphasis on the all, landowners have a responsibility to control deer. I wonder if you could comment on either of those two aspects of your written submission, which I believe might inform our committee deliberations. I do not recall that I wrote what you said. I apologise if I've made an error in that. I've written, ideally, short two-page submission previously, but I did not write anything on the lines of it can be doubted. Can we just withdraw that? I've not commented on the structure of land ownership in Scotland. Thank you, we'll leave that. Unless you had any comments or anyone else on the panel had comments on the public interest and any tensions that that might produce in relation to a conflict with private landowners and what contribution they should maybe be making to the costs of these issues. That is on page 2 of Dr Halley's submission, as quoted. Can you explain to me where that is? It's on your written evidence that's submitted. It's 1 to 10th paragraph in. On page 2. We're talking about the submission I made to this particular meeting. Yes. 10th paragraph. Sorry? I think there was a longer supplementary meeting. Runs to 14 pages. Yes, I'm looking at that. 10th paragraph in is discussing the Norwegian Government's market for wild gamemate. I'm certain I did not make when you said it can be doubted that the current system of land management, I made no statement. Let me read back to you what I have in front of me. It must be doubted whether the aspiration of regarding land is a precious asset that benefits the many, not the few can be fulfilled if Scotland remains at the bottom of the European class with the least regulated system of deer management. We need to develop a deer management culture everywhere all landowners have a responsibility to control deer. I think that I recognise that it's from, I think, Scottish Forest Group's evidence. If there's a mistake here in what's in front of us, my apologies. Let's move on. I did not say that. My apologies if that's the case. Let's move on at Emma Harper. Thank you, convener. I was interested in the fact that the SNH report is about deer management and focusing on deer management, but deer are not the only herbivores that lead to overgracing and our failure to meet our woodland or native woodland replanting targets. Some wonder if the panel think that there is enough scientific evidence or getting back to the scientific evidence to argue that deer pressure is the main factor explaining the lack of progress in meeting native woodland planting and restoration targets. Start with then Steve might want to come back. Certainly within our gaps analysis we've identified that to be able to accurately assess which herbivore is causing impact is actually very difficult to actually do in many cases. So we are recommending within our report that there needs to be more work done to actually help differentiate deer impacts per se out from other herbivores in order to inform just exactly what you've said which is the main herbivore that's actually causing, appears to be causing the damage and what does that mean for deer management plans within that particular site or that particular area? Isn't that also at the root of the problem with section 8? Because section 8 is required that it must be absolutely queer which herbivore I deer had caused the damage before a section 8 can be implemented? Possibly, I'm not. There's been no section 8 implemented within Scotland. No, but that's believed to be the reason why it's not procedure or one of the reasons Rory Popman on that. I actually agree. I'm pleased to know that in the report from SRUC they are actually going to identify this as a gap. I think often when surveyors of open hill communities are looking at herbivore impacts they do not find it easy to distinguish between impacts from sheep or deer and tend to try and rely on the relative abundance of stung which can be confidently ascribed to one species or another. As I say, Professor Buckland was quite critical of the way the Native Woodland Survey of Scotland protocols overemphasised deer by comparison to other herbivores. But I know that Steve published an analysis on open hill communities of the relative impacts of sheep, deer and other herbivores in 2007. Yes, certainly it's possible to distinguish cattle, sheep, deer, hares, rabbits etc. So one can distinguish them. I think that your question really is addressing more perhaps the failure to meet the target of having 100,000 new hectares of forestry by 2022. I don't think deer are going to be the issue for failing to meet that. You have commentary from one or two individuals who disagree with the formal bodies of the Scottish Forestry Group who say that the issue isn't deer, the issue is more about the strictures of getting permission to plant, getting the grants necessary to go ahead etc etc. So I think there are two issues here. Within existing forestry can we minimise the damage, but can we also set about getting more woodland cover? The ways of natural regeneration it will take a long, long time. If we want to meet these targets of 100,000 hectares over 10 years then we're getting additional hectares. We're going to have to fence and keep deer out for sure. Jenny Walruth, do you have a supplementary on that? I think it's been answered. I'll come back in a second. You're just mentioning the National Woodland Survey, but would you agree with its overall conclusions? It says that reducing herbivore impacts is the biggest single issue to be addressed to improve native woodland health and survival. It goes on to say that deer are by far the most widespread type of herbivore recorded and are likely to be the major source of impacts. It seems that we can get into discussion about individual states, individual habitats and environments, but in terms of those overall conclusions about the status of deer as it relates to native woodland regeneration, would you agree with those? I would agree with the first that probably herbivore impacts the most significant factors which is causing lack of favourable condition in native woodlands. However, as I've noted, the critiques which have been made of that survey already highlight that the level of impact is likely to be overestimated given the methodologies used and that the proportion of that which is attributed to deer is likely to be overestimated because of the methodologies employed. So I think there is room and this isn't my analysis, this is Steve Buckland and others. I think there is room to doubt the second of those statements that it is primarily deer. I think deer are indubitably a contributing factor, but I don't think we actually know which the major herbivores responsible across Scotland for loss of favourable condition in woodlands may be. Can I have other views on that? I think that that may well be true, but I think I would also hazard a hunch that it is deer that are having the impact. I think the thing is, is it changing? Because for sure, the culling effort that ranges in certainly forestry commission land has put in is phenomenal and you can see that in the statistics that are in the report. It's a very, very significant off-tape and it would be interesting to do some sort of what's recorded as catch per unit effort and that might give us some indication of actually whether the numbers, given it's very difficult to estimate numbers in woodland, are actually still rising or whether they're going down. Is that what everybody said? Before we move on, Duncan Halley, can I apologise? The question was asked in good faith by the member because that was what she heard in front of her. It's what all of the members have as your evidence. It clearly was not evidence that you submitted, so please accept our apologies on that and we'll make sure that that's corrected as required. But Claudia Beamish does have a more general question to ask along those lines to the panel. Would you like to reiterate your question, Claudia Beamish? Again, apologies for the situation that has occurred. I wanted to know from yourself and also other panellists about any tension between the public interest, particularly in relation to biodiversity and road traffic accidents and the interests of private landowners as you would see that and the contribution that perhaps they should be making of a more significant nature. It was actually a question that I wanted to ask myself and then I referenced it wrongly. David McRacken. To begin with, I've just realised that I was remiss right at the very beginning when you were asking about areas of interest. I should have declared that SRUC is a member of the Bedolben Deer Management Group at our Crean Larrach facility. I think it's been said, you know, deer management is one of these areas where there's always going to be an existing sort of conflict of interest between the wide variety of different people that are actually involved. So some people are looking at deer management from a sort of an economic perspective because that's part of what their business model actually is. In that example of the Bedolben Deer Management Group that we are part of, we are primarily looking at deer management purely from a pest control aspect because we want to keep them out of our montane woodland that we planted 17 years ago and also help to improve the uplands that you've lost again, species rich grassland that's in those Bedolben hills. In these sort of issues, it's a fact of life that there will be actually tensions like that. The challenge is how you actually address those tensions and actually bring people together as much as possible to try and get a consensus as to what's required at that sort of broader deer management group level. I'm still trying to delve into what responsibility any of the panel... I'll just wait, shall I? Can you hear us, Dr Halle? Right. I'm still trying to delve into, within that question, of course, the committee and I was on the Racky Committee before aware of the tensions. I'm still just trying to delve into any comment that the panel may or may not have about the responsibility of private landowners in terms of the financial contribution that they might make if that seems to be appropriate at the moment or not or if there's any comment anyone wants to make, there may not be. Dr Halle. I left Scotland 24 years ago. John Major was Prime Minister at the time. So commenting on what's the de-situation in Scotland is really not for me. In Norway, the system is funded primarily by a national hunter's licence. You have to buy it every year to go hunting at all. And in the districts, by what are called tag fees for red deer. At the moment, it's £39 per red deer. It amounts to a tax paid to the district council. And these defray in nearly the entire costs of the system apart from the equivalent of SNH employees are paid by the public purse. But the rest of the system is paid for by the system itself. This is not controversial in Norway. I couldn't comment on the social situation in Scotland in that respect. And also in getting where you have things like red deer or any other aspect of social and economic life where the deer in this case affect a wider group of people then it's not considered appropriate to have voluntary agreements of one section of the community deciding what the appropriate offtake is. Again, that's a matter for you but we in Norway would find it unusual if our landowners alone were the people responsible for doing all of the setting of what offtake is. Ultimately the offtake is set in cooperation in close cooperation with landowners but is set by the district, the local community. Under the UK and Scottish system the deer technically belong to no one. It is only the right to take deer which belongs to the landowner. It's going to be very hard to make a case that landowners must pay more than they already subsidise wider landscape management. The reason I wanted to come back on this was particularly the deer vehicle collisions evidence. I actually worked on that project for about 10 years and continued to work in analysis of the factors which increased the risk of accident. In fact, local deer density is a very low candidate in the factors which actually contribute to the risk of accident. The probability of accident is far more related. Obviously if there are no deer there are no accidents. If there's lots of deer there's a higher chance of an accident but the actual risk is much more closely associated with things like, is there woodland very close to the road edge? Is there woodland on one side and good grazing on the other side which would encourage animals to harbour on one side of the road and then cross to forage on the other side? It's things like tortuosity I think is the technical term twistiness of the road and therefore whether the deer can see the vehicle coming or you can see them well enough in advance to break. All of these factors have a huge impact on the probability of an accident and deer density comes quite low down on the list in fact. Okay, let's move this on at Mark Ruskell. Thanks convener. I think we've already had some discussion about the relationship between deer densities and stag carcass weights and general welfare of deer. Is there a consensus on the applicability of the data that Duncan Halley has been presenting to Scotland here? I noticed that there was a long-term study and Ron was pointing to higher fecundity rates for example with lower density. Does that general principle hold that the lower the density the more healthier the deer? Depending on the habitat type that the deer are grazing on has already been mentioned earlier on as well? I think I'd also like to distinguish between fitness and welfare. It's certainly true that in resource restricted conditions body weights fall, productivity falls, the number of calves produced per adult female is reduced and therefore the population dynamics of that population has changed. That doesn't necessarily mean the well-being of the individual deer is compromised. There is quite a distinction between ecological productivity, evolutionary fitness and actual welfare in terms of suffering or well-being of the individual animals. If there's a broad consensus on that, I'm struggling to understand where the impact is in terms of the private interest here. Going back 20 years ago, I think Macaulay, as it was at that point, did a study that concluded that large decreases in hines can be achieved without incurring a loss of revenue from stalking. Where's the conflict between the public objective of reducing deer densities to encourage native woodland regeneration, for example? The actual impact on the estate in terms of the income that it's getting from shooting stags? I have a go at that. As we've alluded to, you probably only need four or five red deer per square kilometre if you want to get natural regeneration of woodland. That population will be, as Rory said, very productive. You'll have high carving rates and you'll have higher survival. Potentially there will be lots of recruits that you can shoot. It's true to say that where there is significant interest in trophy shooting in non-wooded areas, you'll have higher densities. The work that you alluded to on RUM found that it was male survival and growth that was most impacted. The loss of productivity as density increases is differential across the weaker sex males are more likely to die, they're more likely to be stunted, etc. You can produce more larger males by reducing your densities, but it's probably at a higher level if that's your prime reason as a sporting estate. It's probably at higher levels than you would get natural regeneration of woodland. There is a conflict in that sense. I'll take that one up also. I think there really is increasing awareness that in the past, and we are talking 10, 15 years in the past, many estates carried far more hines on the ground than they really needed. I think the figures that the James Hutton Institute have been working with show that in fact numbers have been deliberately reduced over the last 10 to 15 years so that I don't think it is so generally true that across different parts of Scotland, hine numbers are still far too high for the public or private objective. I think in many cases a lot of the dear groups I've worked with a lot of private estates I've worked with have made a conscious effort to reduce hine populations sometimes by as much as 50%. So I think a number of estates have done this. Can we get Duncan Howey and David Cracken on this? Yes, just an observation. I would have to respectfully disagree with Professor Alban. In South West Norway, again, our stags are demonstrably larger, very much heavier and have very much better trophy heads at a young age and the densities they are at are fully compatible with natural generation of woodland as a great deal of evidence indicates. Yes, it was. I won't get into an argument with Duncan at the moment when we can agree to disagree. The point that I wanted to come back to was another one that I think was Claudia Watt raised. There is a difference between measuring impact and that's not necessarily the same as loss of biodiversity. So you could have significant impact. For example, on rum in this study population, which much of our detailed knowledge comes from about deer in Scotland, where the numbers have risen and the productivity has fallen. The impact on particular grasslands is very, very severe and it fails the site condition monitoring criteria because it's too short. But it's incredibly diverse. There's no indication that there's actual loss of species. It's just that they don't look as beautiful as they do out on the Macker of the West Coast where in the middle of summer you'll get these beautiful flower meddys. That's because the offtake is removed all of that. The other point is that I made in my submission on impacts on natural heritage and, ironically, although the sheep have been the villain of the past in terms of their impacts on heather moors and grasslands, we've got some evidence that where they've been taken off and then deer come in to fill the vacuum where sheep were grazing that they actually increase the impact on the adjacent heather. Remember where I described these mosecs? You get these pockets of herbaric grasslands surrounded by heather. Sheep dominated them and the deer stayed away. Sheep had removed the deer come in and then when they're not feeding on the grass and they actually have a bigger impact on the heather's swords around it, sufficient to actually lose diversity of plants. So we're dealing with very complex and dynamic interactions but I would say that we sometimes need to distinguish between impact, which is deemed as undesirable, which isn't necessarily meaning that we're losing biodiversity. Often, it seems to me, people confound these things. Loss of biodiversity is clearly an issue that we want to avoid. We're obliged to avoid it, et cetera, and we need to be aware that herbivores have a major potential impact but that's not the same as having high impacts. David Stewart. A lot of the questions earlier today have been about research because, clearly, as parliamentarians, research is really the hand-made end of policy. Have we got our research right? In other words, are we asking the right questions? I was minded of the canes line that has the facts changed, so do my opinions. Are we missing a trick here? Is there gaps in the market? Yes, you'll see from the evidence I presented to the draft conclusions from the report that we've done for SNH Forest Commission Scotland and Scottish Government. They asked us that very question to look for gaps in research that would be needed to help inform the sustainable year management going forward. As you would see from that and I think we state it in it or it may be in the full report, the vast majority of gaps that we found weren't actually research gaps in that there was a lack of understanding or a lack of information about something. Perhaps in knowledge exchange or communication we actually do know a lot about what we would need to do collectively to actually manage more sustainably for deer across Scotland but that information is either not known about or it's not accessible or it hasn't been translated into a manner that actually land managers and their advisers and others can actually take into account. So in what we have submitted we are probably one third research gaps and two thirds we just need to get our actual combined act together a bit more in helping to translate information to actually help people to manage things better on the ground or inform their gear management plans. The habitat impact assessment for example that I was saying earlier on we don't need more work to actually assess the detail of how you assess how a habitat has been impacted or not but we need much more in a way of training and skills development so that we feel confident and understand that actual process interpret it properly and develop it into their deer management plans and that's not just those private owners on the ground who are actually delivering the deer management that's everybody involved in the actual process being able to understand that a lot better just as one example. So it's much more sophisticated than really is a gap in research there's a gap in attitudes there's a gap in training is there a private public gap in terms of perceptions? Sorry, there is a gap in being able to actually lost me again there's a gap in being able to understand really where every individual is coming from there's maybe a misperception of where you might be coming from versus me there's a lot more needs to be done to actually pick that apart that's not research as such that's just getting people into a room with a facilitator and actually trying to talk through what their different objectives may be that those objectives understand what that may be and then find a common way forward and that is possible when conflict management doesn't just apply to deer management there's a long history of conflict management both research but also a practice and an application I think if I have understood the answers correctly earlier what I'm picking up is that there's too much emphasis on absolute counting of deer it's more about trend management which is rightly important and the effect in habitat is that a fair summary I think of? there's very much impacts and understanding, yes counts and trends are important but it's actually what's actually happening at a local level however we define that local level in terms of how the deer are actually moving and reacting to the environment to the weather to the management that's actually applied to them and going to preferred areas or not it's having a better understanding of that at a deer management group level for example just to say that and that has been shown to actually vastly improve the accuracy of the actual the predictions as to where the deer are likely to be and what you would need to do for them I'm upstanding what I've just said about numbers I think you raised a technical point as well about how remote sensors are quite important was that something you would emphasise as something we should be looking at? it was something that came up in our discussions that remote sensing might have a role to play either in helping to actually compliment the actual count numbers out on the open habitat certainly remote sensing might have an important role to play in helping local deer management groups understand the changes that have happened in the habitat over time somebody who's out in the landscape every day doesn't actually necessarily see the subtle changes that are actually happening if you can step back from that and see this is what the landscape was like 10 years ago 20 years ago now this is where you're trying to get to that can actually help inform their thinking a lot of deer management versus any other management helping people to sort of step back and think a bit more deeply about what's actually happening on their land and their neighbour's land and what they collectively want to try and achieve thank you, would the other panellists like to comment on this? stand into silence that's what I think I actually think that we've obviously discussed it before we came into this meeting and I think we are all seeing very much from the same sheets that it is the trends in local populations and the impacts of local populations and the interpretation of those in relation to the objective declared for the landscape area under consideration I think we all agree that those are probably the most important features I would agree wholeheartedly whether it's one third, two thirds I'm not sure I haven't been part of that review but certainly we do have a lot of knowledge that isn't translated as academics we have a responsibility to help in that translation I don't think we're the only ones who've got that responsibility the information is put out there it's not just put out there in learned journals often my colleagues and I and I'm sure others have written for the deer journal which is the British Dears Society's quarterly magazine and things like this so we do try to translate knowledge where and when it's appropriate I'm sure we could do more if only there was time and so on Thank you. Do you think that it was to come in? Well this is very much about conditions internal to Scotland so it's not a thing that I think I can inform you usefully on My final question is about the SNH report which I think has been touched on earlier and one point I just want to try and clarify is do you feel as panellists that the quality of the SNH report provides a good evidence base for policymaking which is obviously vitally important to us as parliamentarians? Well I think the first element of actual policymaking is actually to have a discussion so it's certainly actually started that whole discussion actually rolling and actually unpicking things in a lot more sort of detail as I said earlier on I would urge you not just to see that one report in isolation there's a wider suite and body of evidence out there to actually help inform policymaking per se Duncan Halley I would say that given what the remit for the report was as I said before I think that a competent and professional job was done if you wish to achieve the things that you have identified as wishing to achieve and those in dear densities will broadly be necessary to achieve this Roy Popman I am on record of us having found a number of things about the report which may be somewhat uncomfortable however I think what Davey says is pertinent which is that if it's done nothing else it's stimulated this debate and it's stimulated the committee seeking independent assessment from others and I actually think that's very important I would personally like to see the entire report put out for a wider peer review before the committee has to make any decisions about future actions but there may not be time in your timescale for that to happen Professor Auburn Of course I'll vigorously defend the bitters the analysis that we did is on status and trends as you're aware if there was an opportunity I think given it was as we agreed rushed and submitted before on a timetable set two years ago and submitted before we were able to finish our work and this current review done by SRUC was completed etc I would have said that if we regarded that as the beta version and we got another version at we could tighten up some of the concerns that people like Rory have expressed my comment I suppose seeing it from the association of dear management groups and their members would be that the concern is that it has been damaging to the journey that they're all on and I can having sat on their executive committee some five six years ago I can see where where they're coming from and feeling disenfranchised they have made a big effort they're willing to do make more effort and I think we need a bigger collaborative effort that we need to sit down and we have to decide what are the social societal objectives that we have for our landscapes and you know how do they differ across the country and the role of science given we're a science panel is you know not the one that a society should be dominant over another in terms of the prioritisation but is given that we collectively decide that we want to do this here and something else there then the role of us as scientists is to try and advise on the ways to get to those different outcomes and above all else I think you know then we need to collaborate and we need to have a dialogue okay just a question to wrap this up and I'll give you each a minute on to it based upon the current scientific evidence the approaches that are used in other countries that could be adopted or adapted and your considerable experience how should we best proceed here in trying to get this issue addressed once and for all David McCracken I'll step forward clearly I would say this wouldn't I but we've just finished this report that's identifying the priority perhaps in order to actually deliver the wild deer a national approach aspiration for Scotland we would be to say well I have said on record at another meeting that I would expect after identifying the priorities for both research but particularly for sort of knowledge exchange what then happens after that needs to be an action plan developed that actually says let's address these issues we've identified them on the way of issues that would actually help move the whole thing forward now whether it moves it forward to the step change that you were requiring within the timescale you're requiring I can't answer that but I would certainly say what we've identified are the key areas that we think would actually help the whole discussion not the debate we're having a debate the debate's been happening but we hope we need to move us from the debate phase into the let's move forward phase and we've identified a wide range of issues that we feel would actually help very strongly with that delivering it through the current mechanism of focusing much more still continuing to focus the effort through the delivery of the near-management group Duncan Howey I think the most that we in Norway can offer again is comparison not so much among scientists but more among landowners people who are managed here professionally and so on very few of whom have ever been here I have hosted several trips in recent years as this debate has hoted up in Norway but getting visits and exchanges of information can provide ideas and can provide new ways of thinking and can show things that are possible that might not be thought to be possible if it were possible to increase exchange in that way it might help inform a debate in Scotland on this subject Thank you Professor Albon I think I mentioned that my career began 40 years ago on rum and I can remember headlines particularly in the Scottish press too many deer in the hills and of course then the densities were much lower than they are now so I think we need to move on from there's something called the deer round table which is a talking shop it's got a fantastic cross section of stakeholders interested right through to the ramblers and I think we need as a society to actually debate well what sort of landscapes do we want because we have the knowledge and abilities to create those if we so choose but we have to sit down and make an agreement rather than continuing to talk about it decade after decade after decade so we certainly need some mechanism that would push this and I've also been involved a little bit in the land use strategy or at least commenting on the land use strategy and rather sadly there's no implementation plan for it but you know if we could move forward and we could sort of step back as many people are suggesting we could look at this more holistically I think we could actually make big inroads so we have these I'm not sure the land use strategy is a policy as such but we certainly have a land use strategy that's supposed to be overarching etc etc you know let's use it and let's develop an implementation plan and deer and all these other land use interests will be part of it I agree with Steve that I think we've got to tailor something which works for Scotland and for Scottish objectives both private and public in fact the committee may know I undertook a review of deer management systems across more than 30 countries within Europe with colleagues in Italy and Norway which was published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press and in essence I think there's a limit to what we can take from these other rather different management structures the different management systems resolve in effect into five basic models with greater or lesser degree of state control but the reality is all of them have associated advantages and disadvantages all of them deliver some of the things that you seek to deliver but not all all of them get hung up of this conflict between delivery of private public objectives I actually think that Steve said earlier we've already come a long way in the last two or three years we've made significant changes in the way that we expect deer managers and deer management groups to behave in very much the same sort of direction as Duncan has described for Norway a number of my colleagues in Norway tell me that although that's the theoretical system in Norway it's still rather a work in progress and there's still work to be done to make it better I think we're in exactly the same position we are engaged in a work in progress I'm not an apologist for the current system as I said earlier my work over the years with estates and DMGs tells me there are some good practitioners out there there are some who could do a lot better and I think they've had a bit of a wake up call so I am optimistic as Steve says that our cup is half full and that we will see positive developments over the next few years with the changes we have already brought into practice gentlemen thank you very much for your evidence today particularly can I thank Duncan Howey for his forbearance with the technical issues and also once again apologise for the mix-up with his written submission thank you very much all of you the next meeting of the environment, climate change and land reform committee is on the 24th of January when the committee will take further evidence from SNH on its report on deer management in Scotland the committee will also take evidence from Scottish Government officials on the draft climate change plan RPP3 as agreed earlier we'll now move into private session and I ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of the meeting is closed