 Good morning and welcome to the 15th meeting of 2016 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 their mobile phones or electronic devices as they may affect the broadcast system. Agenda item 1 is with regard to taking business in private. That relates to items 3 and 4. Can I seek the agreement of the members to take those items in private? We are all agreed. We moved to the second item on the agenda this morning, which is to take evidence from stakeholders on the SNH report on deer management in Scotland. We have been joined by two panels of witnesses. I welcome the first. In no particular order, we have Richard Cook, who is the chair of the Association of Deer Management Groups, Patrick Creasy, the chair of North Ross Deer Management Group, Alec Hogg from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, Drew McFarlane Slack, the Highland Regional Manager for Scottish Land and Estates, Malcolm Muir from countryside and green space manager at South Lanarkshire Council and Richard Playfair, who is the secretary of the Lowland Deer Network. We have a number of questions, gentlemen, as you can imagine. I suspect that I know the answer to the first one, however, I ask it anyway. Could you give us your views on the accuracy of the SNH report and on how robust and evidence-based it provides? Who wants to go first? Richard Cook. Thank you, convener. When we were shown this report on the day that it was launched, I guess in a sense what SNH was saying to us is, don't take this too personally. This is a critique of the deer sector as a whole and it is supposed to be self-critical as well as concerned about the prospects for the future. I think for us this report is a mixed bag. It should potentially be a valuable gathering together of deer information, but it seems rushed and incomplete. It is unfortunately characterised by errors, inconsistencies and contradictions and is, to my mind, biased. It is written to suit the conclusions, which are a council of despair to which ADMG does certainly not subscribe. It acknowledges the statistically significant, as it says, progress by deer management groups but concludes that it is not confident that it will be sufficient to meet Scottish Government targets. In particular, we consider, perhaps our biggest point, that it is fatally flawed by its focus on near deer numbers and densities, which we have been told for years by SNH and its predecessor body DCS. We are not the issue that they are an indicator of one of the factors in assessing the impact of deer among all the other grazing animals and influences on the environment, and we should be focusing on that. I know that you have seen evidence from Professor Putman, who is a consultant in this area, which makes that particular point quite strongly. I found myself very much in agreement with what he had to say on reading his evidence. I am particularly sorry to be forthright about an agency with which we have long worked closely and well, but I need to convey the sense of frustration and injustice that our members feel at the negative tone of this report when they have taken so much trouble to respond to the 2014 recommendations. The written deer management group evidence—I know that you have had 10 or a dozen responses from deer management groups—confirms that sense of frustration and bewilderment, because quite a lot of the numbers in particular in relation to the deer numbers and densities chapter are a point of particular challenge in their responses at which we will have seen. That is really all that I have to say at this point. I am glad that you did not hold back through McFarlane's slack. I sit here as a representative of the Scottish Land and Estates by I am also the chairman of the Mona Lea deer management group. In response to your question, I could refer to one point that James Hutton Institute carried out a number of predictions of deer numbers in the report. It also referred to predictions relating to the Mona Lea deer management group, which it did not use. It referred in a response to a note from our deer management group to them to question them on the issue that their predictions were too risky, that when they carried out their predictions for the Mona Leas, their figures predicted a doubling of the deer population by 2016 and therefore they did not put any figures in for the Mona Leas. That gives you some idea of our feelings about the quality of the document itself. I have been a member of the section 7 steering group on Benjerig for the six years that has been in existence. I am here today because one of the greatest criticisms on habitat monitoring within the report was the condition of the habitat on Benjerig, where three out of the four main areas were shown as declining and unfavourable. I came and I put a paper in because it appeared completely at variance with our experience. We have two very recent reports, both carried out by external consultants for SNH. The first was carried out in 2013, the second in 2015, and the 2013 report really gave some very encouraging figures. In 2015, we were issued with a draft report on 11 November 2015, which showed us some remarkable declines over the two years, not in dear numbers because those had fallen on trampling, grazing on virtually every impact. At that meeting, the members of the steering group queried the report and they asked one question about the scientific basis of sampling. The second question was that the 2015 season was an almost exceptionally or uniquely exceptional year. It was the year when the BBC in November reported 73 patches of snow from the previous year up on the hills in late November. The previous time, anything like that, it happened in 1993. We asked, well, what sort of allowance do you make for the fact that spring didn't come and grass didn't grow in your assessments? The answer is we don't think we've made any. I put in a paper a week later, we were told by SNH that the report was being withdrawn and would be looked at again and then reissued. It was released to us on about the 4th of November this year after the dear management report was produced. There's one factor I want to focus on which is the effect of the abnormal weather. We've looked at the statistics and 2015 was the worst year for grass growth, herbage, everything else for the 20 years beforehand. It appears to be the worst for the 30 years and yet our report had been reissued, not one change had been made except for firming up of all the conclusions. Three pages were put in claiming that 2013 was actually a more severe year. The SNH said that it was not able to compensate for the effect of weather because it couldn't measure it accurately. The feeling that we had—I think that SNH now believes with me—is that that 2015 report, which feeds right through the dear management report, rarely doesn't give any certainty and we ought to go back to 2013 and we suspect that the two-year increase in impacts is not real but just a factor of one very exceptional year. That's as maybe, but the whole dear management issue was back over many years, not just one. Richard Cook used the word biased in reference to the report. You would accept that some people would look in on this and say that you gentlemen would take the view that you do because you start from a prejudice position as well with the greatest respect. How do we get to the point where, for a parliamentary committee and for a Government, we have robust and trustworthy evidence in front of us? Yes. What you were saying, convener, is that we would say that, wouldn't we? I think that we have to accept that the dear management has had to change a great deal in the last few years and that it could certainly be faulted before and, indeed, still can. There is a great deal to do in the future, but we're up for it. That's the picture that I'm trying to paint for you. What I want you to take on board is that we're a sector that's making real progress. I hope that even our critical friends on the next panel may acknowledge that. We are getting increasingly better at working together. Although the 2020 targets, which SNH is concerned that we will not meet, are slightly abstract because they are totally environmentally focused and sustainable dear management in the public interest is supposed to address not only environmental but also social and economic benefits. I think that all we can say is that we're trying and we will continue to try, and we're committed to doing that and working with SNH and all the other relevant stakeholders. We're looking forward, not backward, and much of our frustration is to do with the focus on dear accounts that go back to the 1960s and were carried out on a different basis with different techniques. Really, we thought we'd left that behind. If I'm conveying a sense of frustration, that is why we're having yesterday's argument, not tomorrow's. Mark Ruskell, do you want to come in? I just wanted to pick up on a point that Drew McFarn slightly raised. It was in relation to the modelling that James Hutton Institute have done based on a regional basis. I'm going to accept your criticism and hear what you say. What about page 20 of the report? That talks about the national data and the national densities, and that, I believe, has been constructed on a different basis. Are you critical of all the data that's in the report, or is it just the modelling of the predictive data? Do you accept that there's a firm basis for the other data in the report, which points to quite high densities across the whole of Scotland? I think that my criticism of the way that they attended to the Mona Lea situation doesn't give me confidence that the method for modelling can give us confidence for the totality of the report. My suggestion is that, if they were using modelling techniques within the Mona Leas, which gave predictions of a doubling of the deer numbers within that deer management unit that were not biologically possible, there is something flawed with the way that they're doing their business. I understand your point. That's about predictive modelling. My point is about the actual data that we've got on page 20 of the report, and I assume that you've read that. Do you see that as inaccurate? If so, why? I don't have the document in front of us, I'd have to refer to it. Page 20 is where it refers to individual deer management groups and groups that are in bands of deer densities, which is not a very meaningful comparison in any case, but we've given examples in our written evidence of where that is playing wrong. In particular, the example that I would like to use is the Inverary Tyndrum Deer Management Group, which has challenged the band in which they've been found, which I think is something like 12 to 16 deer per square kilometre. Whereas the deer group's own record of counts, which is carried out with the assistance and support of SNH, I might say, indicates a very much lower density, a density of under eight per square kilometre. In reaching the conclusions that have been reached in relation to that group, JHI, with the data that was given to them, have indicated to us subsequently that they were only given official count statistics, in other words SNH count statistics. There are no recent SNH count statistics in respect of that group, so without advising the consultants of it, I understand what was done, is that they took the groups, not the official, but the unofficial groups, count for 2013 and took that as a reference point for their statistical analysis of trends. If I could add to that on the broader picture, the graph on page 21 shows the steady rise in deer populations from the 1960s, and as I said, there is some question about that, because the count approach was quite different in the 1960s. Steady rise from the 1960s to about 2000, and then it levels off and begins to turn down. If you extend that line of increase, we would be looking at an overall population now of over 15 per square kilometre. Whereas, in fact, SNH indicates that the overall population is about 12, our calculation, based on SNH's own statistics, with a much less complicated approach, simply comparing the figure that Robbie Cohnhawn reported to the Wrecking Committee in 2013, comes up with an overall figure of 10.1, I think it is, per square kilometre. As I said at the beginning, the discussion about overall national populations is somewhat academic, because deer numbers need to be considered on a local basis, because management is delivered on a local basis, impacts are assessed on a local basis. Deer numbers are an important reference point for a deer management group when it is deciding what its policies should be, alongside the other considerations that it needs to take into account, like other grazing animals, sheep in particular, but also has rabbits, and wild goats for that matter. In your own data that you have submitted as part of the appendix, there were, I think, eight deer management group areas that admit freely that they have under-reported the deer numbers? I do not recognise that from our data. Sorry, I was just reading your appendix. I think that it is certainly the case that deer numbers can be under-reported, tend to be under-reported, and the tendency is to be under-reported. If you look at our evidence, you will see that we have used as a sample a graft of the annual deer counts, aerial counts, carried out on the Isle of Rhum, which is a single property owned and managed by SNH, owned by the Scottish Government, managed by SNH. You will see from that, which is council of perfection counting, a closed deer population with aerial counting on an annual basis, that the numbers are all over the trend line. In fact, two of the counts that are shown red in that graph are admitted by SNH as being biologically impossible. I am saying to you that deer counting is not a precise science. It is an indicator that is important in considering what the carrying capacity of the land is and in indicating what the approach to deer management should be in terms of a population model. There is a bit of a danger, Mr Cook, that we will just keep going round and round in circles here, that somebody else produces stats and you dispute them and they dispute your stats. We have some pieces of academic work coming up in the next few months that are carried out, for example, by SRUC and James Hutton, which, at face value, would offer perhaps an objective insight into the situation. Would you, gentlemen, accept that what is produced by those reports would be accurate? Do you anticipate that that would be the case? If I could respond to that, I think that the SRUC exercise has been extremely useful. It has identified where more knowledge would be necessary and helpful. The James Hutton Institute is carried out to the highest possible scientific standards, but I am not sure that they have been asked the right question. As I say, it is a backward-looking question about populations. The Strathcawley study, which is on population in woods, we have no better way, but the conclusions that they have reached about deer populations seem to us to be about right. It is a good guesstimate. I think that they are all really helpful. As I said, what we want to do is not to have yesterday's arguments but to move forward. I think that the more information we have, the better, and the more we can work together going forward and take all the factors into account when we are considering how to address deer populations as an integrated part of upland management, the better job we will do. We are very determined to do that. Alec Hogg, I think that, as a practical point of view, our money is deer up the Tweed valley in a 5,000-acre block of forestry. One of the days that we were out stalking, we met two scientists in the woods and they were done counting. That is trying to assess the deer population with done counting. They had no idea that there was 50 sheep in the woodland as well, none whatsoever. Now, just hold their hands up a gas when we are told them. I just wanted to make the committee aware that, in best practice, it says, be aware of the potential error margins surrounding population calculations and, therefore, limitations in the value of information generated as a basis for management decision making. That is in SNH's best practice. Okay. Let's move on and get down into some of the detail of this. Finlay Carson. Excuse me with reference to the lowland deer management. Can you tell me how successful you feel you've been to date? Some of the evidence that we heard from SNH previously suggested that there's not a model that can just be rolled out and that landowners don't have the same investment or interest in deer management. Taking that in mind, what do you think the barriers are facing farmers and landowners in the lowlands? If I could respond to you on that, I think in the five years that the lowland deer network has been in operation, we've seen considerable movement in the right direction, a lot of progress, and a lot of the parties involved in deer management in the lowlands actually sitting down discussing, talking with each other and developing mutual ways forward, which has been really good. We have to admit that there are still barriers, as you say. One of those, I would say, is data. We don't yet have enough accessible data to work with, and what we do have allows deer management on a local, and if I could say prescriptive basis, so where there are issues that arise based on data, for example, deer vehicle collisions, damage to crops, damage to trees, that type of thing, then action will be taken. But because of the complexities of the number of landholdings involved in the lowlands, that type of thing, then it's much harder to develop a, if you like, a catchment-wide deer management planning system. I don't think that there is a case or a requirement to replicate the system that exists in the uplands. What there needs to be is a move to take collaborative deer management, understanding deer management into areas where that doesn't exist at the moment. That doesn't necessarily mean that we need a lowland deer group in every area or in every council area, because a considerable amount of work is being undertaken by individual deer managers, individual farmers on individual estates, and a lot of work that really passes under the radar. There's much to do. There are gaps in the map that we all know about, but I think that in the five years that we've been attempting to try and solve some of the problems out there, an awful lot of work has been done. I'd also like to say that this report did drill down or attempt to drill down in an upland context on numbers. It seems slightly anomalous that, in a low-ground context, numbers barely come into the equation at all, but we have to recognise that we do have a growing row population. I think that the only mention of numbers of row deer in the low-ground report—in relation to low-ground in the report—is in one paragraph where there's an extrapolation of a national UK figure that arrives at a low-ground row deer population for Scotland. It strikes me slightly odd that, where we have so much focus on numbers on the high-ground and in the low-ground, we really ought to be thinking about this type of information a lot more, there's very scant evidence given in the report to that. You made a written submission. Can I ask how you put that written submission together, because it's my understanding that there was four out of your 11 groups didn't actually take part in the consultation? In terms of your written submission to the paper, how did you consult with the groups? Did everybody make up? No, they didn't. The written submission was very much put together, if you like, from the officials of the committee. And on what basis did they put that together? Well, basically what we attempted to do in the written submission was to give you a statement of the facts as they are, rather than draw any conclusions or recommendations. Okay, in your objectives, the objectives to represent the interests of members to government and its agency, do you think you're getting the balance right between the deer groups and your paymasters, if you like, between Transport Scotland and Forestry Commission and so on? How are you getting the balance right? It's a very fine line, I have to say. Our membership is actually very small, although there are 11 deer groups, there are two and a half thousand, I think. Vocational Stalkers out there working in low-ground Scotland. I would like to think that we carry forward their views, but we don't necessarily know what their views may be at any given time. I think that, as we've all pointed out, there are large areas of the map that fall into a low-ground remit, but which don't have representation of the Lowland Deer Network at this point. I'm conscious of you, Mr Playfaro, of a view that I've certainly heard, that the model for tackling this issue might be flawed, that perhaps trying a slightly different approach whereby there's much more use made of recreational and vocational stalkers, not the arrangement where Forestry Commission bring in contractors to carry out the work, but they would rely more on these guys. Do you hear that argument made? Yes, and absolutely we have to use that local resource. I mean, as I said, two and a half thousand stalkers out there who could do a job that is otherwise needing to be done by. Why is it not happening then to the extent it might? I think that, again, it's down to barriers. There are certain areas where we need to see a wake-up call, if you like. More ground needs to be made accessible to these guys to go and do their job if there is a job to be done. There has to be a recognition in certain areas with several exceptions, I would say, but with regard to local authorities that there is a duty for them to manage the deer on their ground. Now, where you don't even have that recognition taking place, then it is incredibly difficult for these chaps to get, if you like, a toe in the door to do a job that they want to do. However, I should say that there are some exceptions. Malcolm here in South Lanarkshire, who are, if you like, an exemplar in terms of getting the job done by a deer group, which is efficient, which sets the highest standards in terms of training, in terms of its expectation of how its members should conduct themselves, and in very difficult situations. I'm sure that you've heard the urban or peri-urban deer context, which is not an easy situation in which deer management can be undertaken. Malcolm here, do you want to come in? Yes, I will. It's a tricky situation this for local authorities. There is very little information about deer numbers, the extent of the problem, or in many areas, whether even if there is a problem. We do have a very useful deer management group who work in South Lanarkshire, and we work quite closely with them. I have to say that SNH has been very, very supportive. Despite having a small team, there are people who have been down working with my ranges and various others, helping them to assess deer numbers and all sorts of things, so we're more than happy with their input. The only solid information that I would say we have are deer vehicle collision numbers from Transport Scotland. It's very difficult to get any accurate figures from our own cleansing police or the many other people who maybe pick up deer carcasses to deal with them on the wider roads network. It is reasonably straightforward to establish habitat damage from deer. In our opinion, the only areas where they're causing a problem are in new planting, where it's fenced and if deer get in they can cause havoc, and in those circumstances we will have them dealt with professionally. The other instance in the urban area is where they get into habitat bottlenecks, and especially in May-June when the youngsters get kicked out of the territories, that's when you start getting your problems with the roads. Apart from that, maybe we're lucky in South Lanarkshire, we have a good network of urban green space, our woodlands are quite connected and I think the animals can move relatively freely through the towns. With the deer management group doing a lot of the shooting on the surrounding farmland there's a sort of vacuum created, young animals can move out towards that and we seem to have a bit of a balance. As you get closer into the centre of towns it becomes a lot more complicated obviously. Yes, we very much support our local deer management group and we appreciate what they're doing. Councils however for quite natural reasons tend to be quite risk averse, and when it comes to things like people with high velocity rifles working in urban areas it's not something they're used to dealing with. One of the things we've suggested and we've been working with the deer management groups is another layer of qualification above the DM2 that actually makes sure that people have evidence of being trained to work in urban areas under the public gaze, which is quite a tricky thing to do and a real consideration. Currently I have to say yes, when it's in settled areas we will, you tend to use the Forestry Commission who we know have trained people who can go in at night and deal with an issue without bringing it to the public's attention, and to me that remains the best way. For the farmland surrounding the towns then we're more than happy to work with the deer management groups. It does sound a little bit like so many of the things that we hear on this committee that here's a council and a DMG working quite well together. There's a best practice example but how is that shared across the country? I mean does COSLA have any role in this because local authorities have a responsibility in this area? We know that. I can't speak for COSLA at the minute because currently we aren't a member of COSLA but it actually is a perennial problem and you're dealing with council green space across the board and the environment is actually getting representation across 32 authorities on these issues. It's a difficult one to even formalise a policy on. I mean I have initially I thought yes we'll develop a council policy on deer management. I've actually stepped back a bit from that. I still think ultimately we will get to that but it's sometimes not something you want to form a political decision on because you don't want to come to a decision that says right we're going to be a no-call council or various things like that which could actually inhibit our being able to deliver our duty as the deck says. Okay Alec Hogg you wanted to go. I just wanted to say that deer management groups privately have jumped through hundreds of hoops in the past couple of years but I sit in the lowland deer network and there's only two councils out of 32 who have got a policy. I thought some have got an old call policy so it's really low. So we've heard what the problems are. How do we fix them? Richard Cook. Convener I'm involved in the lowland deer network as well and you asked about obstacles or barriers to progress in future and the local authorities issue has been referred to and described very accurately by Malcolm and Dick and all public bodies have a duty in terms of the Wayne Act to manage the deer on the land or the land for which they're responsible and I as the chair of LDNS and the chair of SNH have written to the local authorities on more than one occasion to draw their attention to this so addressing this is a priority in the lowlands. I'm afraid another area where we have yet to make sufficient progress is with the agricultural community who are not terribly conscious of deer management except as a potential threat to their economic interests and so I'm very pleased to say that we've recently got a representative from the NFU to join the committee which is encouraging. If I could just say briefly to why the lowland deer network was set up it was an initiative that was brought forward by ADMG because ADMG has always aspired to represent all deer managers of all species of deer anywhere in Scotland. We found that trying to propagate the DMG model in the lowlands simply wasn't working which is why we came up with the idea of a network because the range of interests in lowland deer management is much broader than it is in the highlands. The types of land use are much more diverse so the idea was to give everybody with an interest an opportunity to get round the table and really a rather vague aspiration but it was to build a culture of collaboration which does exist in some localities and you've already heard of the South Lanarkshire deer group as a good example and I've read the evidence and I think it's very good but there are a lot of areas where that isn't happening but it was pointed out by SNH at the start and I agree with Malcolm's view that we've had enormous help with all of this by the dedicated SNH team who work with us. They said at the start, don't assume because there isn't collaborative management going on or a lowland deer group in some area that there necessarily needs to be because the impacts of deer vary enormously across the lowlands just as they do across the highlands so the progress we've made in five years is actually considerable in getting people together and in discussing something that is quite imprecise in terms of how to manage deer in any particular location but certainly we do need assistance I think to address the issue of involving the local authorities with two exceptions. Okay Emma Harper. I think at my I had a recent meeting with the forestry people in Newton Stewart and they were generally positive that the management of deer in the Galloway Forest was like they were meeting targets but I just wondered how you worked together with forestry to see if we can collaborate better. In terms of the lowland deer network we have both Forestry Commission, Forest Enterprise and private forestry contractors through COM4 represented so we're all in discussion and the development or the arrival of new groups down in the south west as well has been useful in helping to take that forward. I'd just like to go back to a comment that you made Richard Playfair earlier if I got that accurately in relation to lowland deer management and you said that a lot of good work passes under the radar. I'm wondering what the structure is for the lowland deer network in terms of transparency and also why you would shy away and I'm just interested in this answer it's a neutral question why you would shy away from the establishment of more lowland deer management groups when it would seem to me that those structures even if they're structures that have a different sort of emphasis to the highland ones would enable those in a particular area where there isn't one and I understand they're only 11 so far to come together to share good practice on a more detailed and area-based level than your network altogether? I think that in the SNH report it actually identifies three different types of low ground deer group. We are beholden to a significant degree to the enthusiast who wants to go out and practice deer management to do this job. It needs a lot of like-minded individuals to make up a group that will operate over a significant area and even where we have groups operating as identified over separate local authority areas they don't have 100% cover of that whole area or anything like it so you need a lot of people or a number of like-minded people to want to get together and do this and that's a commitment for them that means a constitution that means a chairman a secretary a treasurer means time when they could actually individually go out and do the job that they want to do do that job as as an individual as opposed to a member of a group but we have seen a number of new groups spring up one in East Lothian-Nedembrough which is very recent arrival one in Inverclyde in Dumbarton which is another recent arrival and those have if you like been mentored and modelled on existing low ground deer groups but in certain situations they just isn't the requirement for a group and one's thinking I guess of certain areas where there are quite significant land holdings in the borders and down in the southwest up in Angus where perhaps what you need is an annual get together if you like a small local forum of people just just to compare notes on what is going on rather than a formal group structure. I have to stand perplexed by you saying that simply because there's a large land holding that that's the reason for not having a deer management group our record committee actually took very clear evidence about the need for inclusive deer management groups which involve the local community NGOs and I think that the size of the land holding is not really the relevant point here and would you not agree with that? Well I'm trying to tell you that I think the group structure that you see in the uplands isn't necessarily the right structure for group for deer management in the lowlands in every context and even where you have local deer management groups in operation they won't follow the upland deer management group model. Right so could you just kindly answer also the first part of my question sorry rather bombarded you in the first one but in terms of transparency for the lowland deer network and how would members of the public if they wanted to check or learn from good practice or whatever how would they would they do that? You already had the point from Finlay Carson about concerns about involvement and consultation. One of the first elements of communication that was put in place at the lowland deer network was its website so its website is up and running, it's there with information for people to see. It's a vitally important aspect of the lowland deer network's work that it is seen to be out there in the public domain educating the public as well. We have a job to do in terms of talking to the public because deer management isn't necessarily something which in the public's eyes is something that they necessarily would all want to see going on in their locality. So we have to be quite upfront about that and take that into local communities. We have a project called Deer on your doorstep. I've attached some of the information about that to the evidence which is an outward facing communications exercise in taking the lowland deer management message out into communities, out to the general public and really trying to get some level of understanding out there as to why deer management is necessary and where we're going with it, what direction of travel is in the lowlands. Drew McFarlane's slide. I'll refer to the situation again within the monolid deer management group where for the last two years we've held a fairly substantial stakeholder event on each year where we've invited local actors, local groups within the area around Avymor, Lagan, Tomatin to come to our deer management meeting to get a presentation of our deer management plan and its objectives and allow enough time during the day to give a time for question and answering sessions. We invite Forestry commission, local authority, members as well as staff, police, fire service, a whole range of stakeholders to come to these events. They've been quite successful. We're holding another one next year at Glen Feshay where we hope to perhaps add an extra challenge to our deer management planning processes by inviting people who are perhaps not quite as supportive of our deer management objectives as our members are. However, that's an attempt to try and generate some debate that will provide outcomes that we can then use to insert in our deer management plan going forward. That's one idea that we are using in the monolid years and it's certainly one that, perhaps in the lowlands, it could be a model for going forward as well. To make the committee aware, if you can imagine 30 men shooting 10 deer in the lowlands in the Glasgow area, for instance, that's 300 deer, at the minute they can't get rid of these carcasses, they'll shoot enough of their family and then they're not shooting what maybe it's needed because they're nowhere for them to go. The big big game dealers don't come in, so there is an idea to get a wee processing plan up and running where the local venison could go to butchers, restaurants, the schools could come in and see it running, all that, so that's on the go. We're not there yet, but... Okay, that's useful. I'm going to move this on. Alexander Burnett. Refer to my register of interest on matters connected to deer management. Coming back to deer densities and there's considerable discussion, a lot of submissions that there's too much focus on the numbers rather than the impact. I'm just like the panel's opinion really on what they think of the counts, whether they have the accuracy of the counts. I know you've touched on some of it already and what you can see to be improving the counts going forward. And then following on from that, what they feel about deer density numbers themselves and whether there's a magic number. I did ask, pose the same question to the panel in the previous session, and Eileen Stewart from SNH said, well, if there wasn't a magic number, she did say later that they would look at a density of four to five deer per square kilometre if you're looking to establish trees without fencing. So just on those two points in terms of accounts themselves and the accuracy of them and when we have a product of those numbers, if there is a magic number to come out of it. As I said earlier, numbers are an important indicator on a local basis as to the deer management policy that should take place. As you say, SNH in their evidence here three weeks ago said there is no magic number, and I completely agree with that. I'm sure if you were to ask this to the next panel, as to what the right number of deer for Scotland is, they would have had as much difficulty with that as we do and SNH does. As I said, it must be impacts driven. If your management objective is to have regenerating woodland, you need a much lower density than it does if you are looking for deer to be the basis of an economic operation. Both situations are the norm in just about all deer management groups, so the difficulty very often is in providing one level of population for one type of management objective and a lower level of population without fencing for another. What I would say about densities is that even if you get it down to four or five in a particular area for the purpose of environmental change or without fencing, you will still find that if you are creating an environment that provides a better offer of food and shelter in the winter for deer, that even if the number is reduced to very low levels, that is where the deer will go naturally enough on a cold winter's night and that is when the damage is done. Even getting the densities at a very low level four or five will not necessarily deliver the outcomes that everybody wants. I am afraid that, costily though it is, that is where fencing very often becomes a necessity. Even with low densities, fencing would still be necessary to allow regeneration to take place. Just on the subject of fencing, because it is always an issue that attracts more heat than light, fencing would be necessary even if there were no deer, because you still have sheep and rabbits and young trees and hares, and young trees are very susceptible to damage by those species as well. Anyone else on that? Angus MacDonald? I follow up on the density rates and you just mentioned sheep there. What is the average density rate for, or the recommended density rate for sheep on the same type of land? And also, how many sheep can eat the same amount as a deer, if you have these figures? Yes, it is a complex juggling matter controlling grazing impacts. As we have said in our written evidence, sheep numbers have fallen by 45 per cent in 25 years. Nonetheless, sheep are still supported in the uplands by subsidy within the CAP, which is not the case for deer. Normally, as a rule of thumb, two deer equals one sheep in terms of livestock units, and for that matter, six sheep represent one cow represents six sheep. There are accepted yard stakes for comparing the different scale and impact of the different animals. When we talk about impacts, the important point there is that that allows us to bring in all the factors that have an impact. You are not just talking about deer impacts because it does not make a lot of sense to consider the impact of a certain density of deer if you are ignoring the number of sheep that will also cover that range. There is a huge variation because a lot of sheep farms are no longer stocked. There is a huge variation in the number of sheep across the highlands as there is a huge variation in the number of deer across the highlands, and all of them are driven by the carrying capacity of the land, the quality of the land exposure, climatological factors and economic factors. It is very difficult to produce a yard stick. I can say that in order to qualify for subsidy under the basic payment scheme, you have to carry not less than 0.05 livestock units per hectare, so there is a minimum density required to support subsidy for sheep farming. Those criteria are not applicable in terms of deer, which are not. As far as the agricultural regulations are concerned, deer are not taken into consideration at all. We have strayed into other herd before, so I am going to go to Corrie O'Beamish, and Jenny Goh-Ruth will come in with supplementaries. I will come to Alec Hogg. Just to broaden out for yourself and the rest of the panel that question, I would like to know your comments on whether deer pressure is indeed the main factor explaining the lack of progress, particularly in meeting native woodland planting and restoration targets. I am thinking very clearly of the 2020 challenge to Scotland's biodiversity, the strategy that has been developed, and there have been comments made in written submissions about these issues from a range of groups, some of whom we are going to hear from in the next panel. However, I would like to know what the views are, especially in view of the fact that I understand that more than a third of all native woodlands were in unsatisfactory condition due to herbivore impacts and that evidence supports the view that deer are the major factor in limiting the recovery of woodland condition. I would like to comment on those remarks. Goh-Ruth, do you want to come in just now as well, and then we will get answers? Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. In the submission from the Forest Policy Group, it states that smaller woodlands obviously suffered more disproportionately from high densities of wild deer, and the SNH report, as Claudia said, makes it clear that that planting target is not going to be reached unless we go down the route of culling or fencing, which we know there are issues with as well. Just to follow up to what Claudia said, do you agree with the Forest Policy Group, who argued that the deer management group sector needs challenge on this directly? Alex Hall, do you want to come in first? If any give you a practical story about deer impacts, the committee will be aware of Cain Lockham, which is up near Glenshaw, and it was a triple SI site. Now, the deer on the summer mans were up in the torts, but because of the pressure on the hill walking over the past 20 years, it was growing and growing and growing, they were all driven down into areas, and one of those was a triple SI site. This was sent to me by Peter Fraser, who works up there. At the time, there was roughly 200 sheep on the site, and there was a high percentage of hares. Now, they shot over 12,000 deer. Several years into the section 7 agreement, representatives were invited by DCS and SNH to go on to the site and see what was there, and to see the alpine plants in bloom, and what was immediately noticeable was the hair droppings. SNH is still 200 sheep on the site, and no hares have been shot whatsoever there. It shows you that it is really difficult when you are trying to point the finger at the deer. Richard Cooke On native woodlands, I will provide a bit of context. This is in our written evidence, but the native woodland survey of Scotland accounted for a total of 324,536 hectares of native woodland. Of that total, 143,323, that is 44 per cent, lie within the area covered by the deer management groups, the Highlands. Of the smaller total, 33 per cent is identified as being impacted by herbivores. Although the default assumption is that herbivores means deer, it does also mean sheep in very many cases, or a mixture of the two. As the SNH report acknowledges, it is completely impossible to tease out the different impacts. That is not to say deer are not, to some extent, a factor that prevents the regeneration of woodland, but it is important to remember the whole picture and also to remember that it does not apply in all native woodlands. It is also important that one of the functions of native woodlands is to provide shelter, and very often on farms, particularly farms that are lead, access to woodlands is really important for winter shelter and, in some cases, for feeding for domestic livestock. Just to go back to my statistics for a moment, 67 per cent of the native woodlands, in terms of rising impacts, are satisfactory. The rest are suffering damage through grazing and inhibition through grazing. It is also important to remember that native woodlands are in unsatisfactory condition for reasons other than grazing. If you take that 1, 4, 3, 3, 2, 3 hectares in the deer management groups areas, 67 per cent, as I said, are not suffering due to browsing. If you take into account the other detrimental factors, in particular the present of non-native species, which are very often planted and invasive species, that average comes down to 50 per cent. My point here is that we all want the native woodlands to be better. The management of deer is an important part of that, but it is not the whole story. Other issues need to be addressed as well, like the removal of non-natives, and the grazing impacts. We need to know far more—this is where the research comes in—about the interplay between sheep and deer in terms of those impacts. We are here to try and fix that, but we need to know more about that, and we need to work more closely with the other land uses concerned. Anyone else? Drew McFarlane Slack Perhaps just a word. Again, within the monolees, we are developing a new woodland creation plan for all of our members, headed off by one of our members who is a forester of some note. That will necessarily have to do with the various issues that the MSP has just mentioned. There will have to be, in some areas, deer fencing put in place to look after those woodlands, but there will also be potentially sites where deer will have to be excluded to allow that regeneration to take place. There will be a range of opportunities within an area that is the size of the monolees for both of those activities to take place. Just out of interest, who will pay for that fencing? It largely has been down to local land managers to do that, but there may well be opportunities for applications to Government, while the SRDP is still going on to get some funding from there. But there would be an input from the private sector. I am just looking on, I do not know who has got the report in front of them, page 69, at the category 3 retained existing native woodland cover. I have to say that in relation to deer management groups, there are a lot of amber and red lights in that graph still, and I wonder if you would comment on that at all. I know that you have already referred to—you do not have to repeat what you have already said and explained, but could you comment on that particular SNH graph? Yes, as you say, there is still some amber and red. For me, the interesting comparison is on the improvement between 2014 and 2016 in those column graphs, but as long as there is amber and red, there is a job to be done and, as I have already acknowledged, we need to do that, but it needs to be a solution that embraces all aspects of the negative impacts, not just a part of it, so we need a co-operative approach to improving the situation further. The new deer management plans, incidentally, all address this issue of both native woodland regeneration and providing space for the Scottish Government's target of additional forestry 10,000 hectares per annum. They all provide for that, but those plans are really only just at completion stage. The next stage is to deliver them, and the task for ADMG and its member groups is to go out and now make their plans effective in practice rather than look right in theory, which is the point that we are at at the moment. The Scottish Land and the States fully supports that consensual co-operative approach to deer management planning. Within the monolayers, we are at year 2.5 of the delivery of our deer management plan. That is very early in our 10-year plan. We are working hard to try to make sure that we deliver all the outcomes that we have in that plan, but it is going to take a long time to deliver all of them. It is difficult with a group of more than 40 members making sure that they are all working together to help to deliver that plan, but we are trying to do it. It is very early in the process. We have received some interesting evidence from Norway where a national policy was put in place to reduce deer densities. One of the main policy drivers for that was to increase carcass weight and the quality of the head. What is your response to that? Me again, I am sorry. Duncan Halley put in that piece of evidence that I spent a week with Duncan in Norway this year because I wanted to get to the bottom of my head of why we are always being told that Scotland should be more white than Norway. I have to say that the Woodlands are wonderful. We have some of it here, but there is room for more of it. That, again, is wrapped into the deer management plans, making a bit more room for nature. As far as the condition of the deer is concerned, he is absolutely right. Deer do better. It is more nurture than nature. Deer do better in a better environment. That is plenty of evidence for that even in Scotland. Particularly in the south-west of Scotland, where the biggest red deer in Scotland are to be found in woodlands, there is clear evidence of that. Even if hill-born deer find their way into woods, they in their own single generation will improve considerably in terms of condition. That is not to say that there is not a role for red deer on the uplands. They have adapted very well to that over many centuries. As far as land use is concerned and bearing in mind that the economic and social role of deer is important in this discussion, they provide the basis of a very valuable tourism industry, deer stalking. I have not yet answered a question on the economic side, but the packet report that we commissioned jointly with the Lowland Deer Network and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association indicated that that industry is worth £140 million. SNH have chosen not to refer to the multiplier effect of that sector. It was more the point on the carcass weight. Yes, it is correct. The weight of the carcass. It is correct that deer will perform better in a better environment. That, by extension, is reduced densities. There is also evidence from RUM that is closer to home. Can I just like later come back on this in a minute? There is also evidence from RUM that suggests that with an increased density of around 13 heins per kilometre, as a result of that, there is a declining birth weight. There is reduced fecundity with the heins. They are giving birth later. There are fewer stags that are born and that they have smaller antlers when they are adults. I do not know that points to me to being less economic value through higher density, but what is your response to that evidence from Scotland? The RUM experiment, if one could call it that, has been going on for about 50 years and it produces some fascinating information. As I said earlier, RUM is a unique testbed for deer management. In a sense that there is a part of RUM where deer have been tested to destruction by no culling policy. You are absolutely right in that the findings from that study indicate that if you allow your population to build up without control, the fecundity of the heins reduces and the survival rate of the stags, which are always the first to suffer from overpopulation and climate stress, declines. The situation is a whole across Scotland. It is very far from that overpopulation situation that was tested in RUM. The reduction in population over the years—I refer you again to the drawing on page 21—alongside the reduction in sheep numbers is an indication of the reducing pressure of grazing across the highlands as a whole. Of course it needs to be looked at. There are wide local variations and it needs to be looked at locally. It is certainly true that if you take extremes from overpopulation to a much lower level that there will be some relatively marginal improvement in the carcass performance of deer exclusively on the open hill, but it is not by any means to the extent of the improvement that will take place if those deer have an opportunity within a sheltered closed habitat such as in Woodland. I would like to refer to what Mr Ross was saying, because that really is the basis of the monolio deer management plan. It is about developing a plan that suited the entirety of our 40-plus members, all of whom, to an estate, wished to carry out some form of stag shooting during the season, but they all recognised that the quality of the stags had been deteriorating over a number of years and they wanted to see that improve. Even estates with strong environmental objectives wanted to shoot some stags during the year. The basis for the monolio deer management plan outcomes is to allow better quality stags by increasing the hindcull. That is the basis for our plan is to reduce the overall numbers to allow the stags to improve quality during that period of time. Just to get us on the record, what Duncan Howey says as I quote, most Scottish red deer, are nutritionally stunted due to the effects of competition with each other for food. If you want a yes or a no, as I have already said, that is the case, but it is driven by the habitat in which they live in the same way as it applies to human populations. I am very interested in looking at long-term planning. You may have noticed the evidence that we took from SNH when I asked the question about cost-benefit analysis. The answer was that there needed to be more focus on cost-benefit analysis in the future, which I thought was a quite interesting answer. To what extent do you balance up economic, social, economic and animal welfare factors when it comes to deciding to make decisions about the long-term in individual planning? I am not sure that I completely understood the question, but I agree with the SNH statement that we need to know more about the economic impacts and the social impacts of deer management in the mix that they find themselves, which is with other economic land uses, and with environmental considerations. It is quite clearly addressed in the long-term policy document, the wild deer and national approach, where deer management needs to deliver on all three bases. Out with the protected sites, where environmental considerations have primacy, all management needs to focus on maintaining economic outputs, maintaining the employment associated with it and the communities in which that supports. Let me ask a very specific point. In the SNH report, one of the conclusions that I quoted here, management of deer in Scotland results in a net monetary loss for both the private and public sectors. What are your individual assessments of that? My assessment is that I challenge it because SNH has chosen the direct spend effects, the primary expenditure, primary income figures from that report, which was carried out by an independent economic consultancy who has done many other rural sector studies in the past and have a very good track record using a normal economic model based on questionnaires and surveys. They have chosen to ignore the multiplier effect, and in comparing the impact of any sector on the rural economy, the national economy, it is important to get the trickle-down effect. I challenge the way that they have used those figures. One of the interesting figures that they have picked out is that 36.8 million, if I remember correctly, was the cost of deer management to the private sector, alongside a total of 5.2 million of public sector expenditure per annum on deer management. It does raise the question as to how we are going to pay for deer management in future if we do not do so with the present model because more of that cost will shift to the public sector if less independence under the voluntary principle is left to the private sector. It is a very considerable annual cost. SNH at the moment estimates the allocation of costs to deer management to 1.5 million, which is considerably less in forest enterprise because they are managing far more land. However, those costs together are a small proportion of the total cost to the industry, which I think comes to £42.5 million per annum. If I can perhaps set the context a bit better. When I was raising the question to SNH, it was around in really simplistic terms about culling versus fencing. I think that the point that I was making at the time, and I am grateful to the convener for his statistic here, is that since 1990, 13,500 kilometres of fencing has been developed, which is the same distances from here to Cape Town. You will have to know that prepared at earlier, but it is not something that I tend to know off the top of my head. However, that is going to be £250 million over a 10-year period, which is a phenomenal cost. That was the background to my question of cost benefit. Fencing, yes. To remove it a moment from the deer context, you have to speculate to accumulate, and any business expects to invest in its capital. In the case of afforestation or woodland protection, the capital is very often fencing. Nobody wants to spend £12 a metre if they do not have to. They do it because it is necessary to do so in the pattern of land use in the area. Fencing is not just about deer, as I said earlier. It is also about excluding other herbivores, albeit that the cost of stop fencing with rabbit netting is only two thirds of the cost of deer fencing. I would say that culling and fencing are not alternatives, they are complementaries. It has been the practice of the Deer Commission for Scotland to recommend for probably 25-30 years that if you are enclosing a piece of ground and removing it from the deer range for another purpose, in particular afforestation, that a compensatory cull should be taken so that you are not increasing the density of the population outwith the fence. That is normal practice and is taken into account in every land management change where deer and, for that matter, stock are an issue. I bring other panellists in my conscious of time, but could you say something about the amount of fencing that has been built since 1990? There are clear issues about maintenance for that. That is a huge cost. Absolutely. As I said earlier, you speculate to accumulate that if you invest capital in a business, you need to maintain the equipment that you have bought with it. In the case of fencing, maintenance is absolutely essential. Deer are pretty ingenious when it comes to finding away round offence or under offence or overoffence when the snow is high. Maintenance is absolutely necessary and there is a considerable cost associated with that. As Drew McFarlane slacks said not long ago, a great deal of that fencing is private, albeit it may be carried out under a grant scheme where some public money is involved. A lot of the fencing is also state fencing in the sense that it is erected by Forest Enterprise. Forest Enterprise has invested a great deal over recent years in recharging their ffence stock. They have replaced a lot of ffences and put up a lot of new ones. Their policy is changing as we get into second generation, second rotation forestry, in that what they are now attending to do is to erect perimeter ffence and maintain it resolutely rather than trying to ffence small parcels. The amount of ffencing per hectare of established woodland is actually declining, but the quality of the ffencing and the quality of its maintenance needs to be better. Within those ffences, Forest Enterprise is quite rightly on our behalf as the taxpayer paying them to grow trees, taking a very rigorous approach to the presence of deer and culling them down to a level where the casualty rate in terms of leaders on trees is below 10 per cent. There are some areas where they are achieving that, some areas where they are not. I am proud to bring out the number of Mr Hug once again, but is there any statistics down on what the average shelf life would be of ffencing, others who put ffencing up today, what would your expectation be of the time that that ffence would be effective? Fifteen years maybe, and then needs repaired, but what surprises me is that when we started the way back with the deer, the Government paid £7 million to how ffences taken down to save our copper caley. That was when the first issues started with the argument with the deer and trees, because a lot of those, and they must have been taken more down than what they've put up for to save the copper, and the copper is still diving down. Anyone else like to come in on that? I would probably guess that in many areas, ffences will last longer than 15 years. With simple maintenance and checks, experience in my areas that 25 years protection ffences will still be in good condition. The quality of the timber, the basis of the ffence, whether that timber has been impregnated with anti-rotting chemicals to keep it in good condition for a longer period of time, if the quality is good, then it certainly should last 25 years or more even. Let's move this on, Kate Forbes. I'd like to ask a question about deer management plans. The reason we're here today is that in 2014 it was agreed that a reasonable timeframe for all DMGs to have adopted a plan was by the end of 2016, and those plans should be environmentally responsible and able to demonstrate how they were delivering positive outcomes for deer population and natural heritage. However, in the SNH report, there's a suggestion that plans are not leading to action on the ground. Some DMGs in written evidence have made the point that impact takes time. What is the panel's view? Are the majority of plans environmentally responsible and delivering change and have groups had enough time? I'll look at a couple of stats, because you've been quoting stats most of the morning. The report claims that fewer than 50 per cent of the DMG plans adequately identify actions to manage herbivore impacts on designated features or improve native woodland condition, and fewer than 25 per cent adequately identify sustainable levels of grazing for habitats in the wider countryside. Are those figures accurate? The figures are based on the assessment process, which was carried out as a baseline exercise towards the end of 2014 and repeated in May, June this year to assess in very close detail the progress made by deer management groups. As you'll have seen from the report, the general picture is one of considerable improvement, statistically significant improvement. That is not to say that all DMG plans are yet scoring 100 per cent, how many of us scored 100 per cent in the school exam. This is an on-going process. Some groups are a lot further forward than others. The others are moving forward rapidly. There are a number of groups that do not yet have completed plans, but they're working on them, and a number of new ones emerging all the time that will continue to make progress. DMG plans will never be there is no destination. That is an on-going adaptive process. DMG plans will need to adapt to circumstances and will need to continue to show more progress. It's ADMG's job to assist DMG groups in making that progress, and as we have up till now, we'll continue to do that. That's not necessarily about delivering the progress. It's about identifying something and the plan by way of action to take. I agree. That's an important distinction, because, as Kate Forbes said at the beginning, the task was set to create plans in a short space of time, a couple of years, that were environmentally responsible, identified the public interest, were open and consultative with the public. As I am happy to acknowledge, we're a very long way from being able to say that in respect of all plans. What I am able to say to you is that almost without exception, in fact I'm not able to identify an exception. DMG groups have taken that on board and, with the resources available to them, which is very often voluntary time, I may say, are moving that direction and have achieved a very considerable amount. Can I just ask a supplementary to that in terms of the differentiation in some of the plans? Pinning that down, what are the reasons for why plans have varied in their successes? Well, as you said yourself at the beginning, this first stage is to create plans which address all the points of public interest. Some of them are better than others. Why are some better than others? I suspect because the creation of a plan is an iterative process. Probably the best ones are the ones where they've been created by an independent consultant, not just because they know more because they don't necessarily, but because they provide an external objective means to address all the issues, to speak to all the individual members of the group and identify what their management objectives are, put them into the soup bowl and come up with something that works for everybody. Other groups have adapted existing plans without the assistance of experts and their main source of external guidance has been from the SNH wildlife management officers, which has been extremely good. Those are the ones that I suspect are towards the bottom of the spectrum in terms of distance travel so far, but none of them are a basket case, none of them are not trying. I would point out to one of the examples made in the report of a failing deer management group, which in fact is the Harrison Lewis group, which they said scored, I think, 76% red and no greens in terms of public interest. That's one way to tell the story. The other way to tell the story is that this is a group which was no more than a nominal group for the years leading up to 2015 when they got going. They have now got the message, employed a consultant to write a deer management plan, started having meetings, getting people to buy into it. This is a success story. It's got a long way to go before you can say that it works, but this is a good example of where a gap is being filled. The SNH has rightly observed that there are gaps, but this is a good example of where that gap is being addressed and filled. We have identified other areas where that is necessary, which haven't even yet started, but we'll do so. Does anybody else want to come in? Yes, Chairman. I think that Kate Forbes has a question. At the moment, we now have fairly wide coverage of Scotland with deer management plans. Even if those plans are a mixed bag, we have plans that can be monitored now, so even the ones that aren't as good as the best can be made better by proper monitoring by the groups themselves and by SNH supporting them. I think that the monolio deer management group probably, hopefully, sits in the first group that Richard referred to. We have a plan that was assisted by an external advisor. All of our members were contacted and interviewed prior to the plan being put in place. The plan, as I mentioned earlier in answering a question, is only two and a half years old, so we are at a very early stage in the development of our plan. For the past two years, we have been concentrating on what we collectively believe has been the most important issue facing us, and that is controlling the deer herd within our group. There are other issues that we have been dealing with, and I referred again to our stakeholder engagement programme. We have a training day for our members that was set up for early in January this year. All the other public benefits that are part of our plan are being dealt with systematically, and they will be looked at and considered at the end of the first five years of our plan, and those that we feel that we haven't tackled properly will again be tackled at that stage. We are looking at the plan over a 10-year period to deliver all the objectives that we hope that will deliver the public benefits that SNH is looking for, but we are very early in this programme and we haven't had enough time to deliver it all yet. I think that we are one of the better groups. With respect, that is really concerning, because the evidence that we are hearing today and in writing talks about being told that it is too early to judge progress. Indeed, the British Deer Society wants us to wait another seven to ten years for a review before we come to judgment on this. Just how long, collectively—I am not having a go at your own deer management plan, Mr McFarlane—how long collectively do you and SNH need to sort this? If you are asking me that, I think that we need to be tested on this at the end of our first five years, so I would say that another two and a half years would give us the ability to say yes and no that we are making this work. I have a great deal of confidence that we will make this work, but it may take more time for some of those groups that are setting off from a lower stand point than ourselves. I spoke with Brian Lionel, who is a stalker up at Badenloch in Sutherland last night on the phone, and Brian has been there for 40 years. He said that since he has been working with SNH, they have changed the bar three times as far as habitat assessment goes. I have not got their heads around that. He says that Ray Mears was up doing a programme, a documentary, and he was telling the public how this habitat takes thousands of years to get to where it is, yet SNH wants it sorted in two years. They are not living in the real world. It is many years of decline that have got us to that position in the first place. However, you have to make a start to get it back, but it takes years and years and years on the hill because it is so exposed to see a difference. Let us move on and look at some of the tools that are available that are ought to be deployed by SNH in this regard. Let us look at section 7s, for example. Mr Cook, in evidence to the Racky Committee in 2013, you described section 7s as an enormous success. The SNH report states that, of the 11 agreements—and there is a dispute whether it is 11, I accept at the moment—dear density targets have been met for only six. Habitat targets have only been met fully for three. It also asserts that where section 7 agreements were established in DMGs, whether there were concerns over their impacts on natural features, the proportion of features in favourable and unfavourable recovery and condition is 7 per cent lower than in non-section 7 areas. I will accept that there is a Bridalbon DMG, for example, to take issue with some of the claims made about them, but do you still hold to that view, Mr Cook, and do others on the panel believe that section 7s work? Yes, I do hold to that view. It is an on-going process, so there is more to do. Incidentally, the minister at the time, Paul Wheelhouse, held at the same view in his response to the Reiki Committee, and that reflected the view of SNH at the time, so they have now, for some reason, taken a rather more negative view of section 7. There are a number of signs of real progress in section 7 areas. You have heard from Patrick Creasy earlier that teasing out the actual progress being made and how it is being monitored is, in itself, an issue, but section 7 has, in a sense—section 7 agreement is a mini-deal management plan that is anchored to a specific designated site. It is a very similar process and the great thing in my mind when I made that remark, what I had in mind was that putting in a section 7 agreement, which is a voluntary control agreement, brings together all the relevant interests, makes them consider all the factors at play and makes them come up with a collective solution to the problem. It may take some time to deliver, but some of the groups have yet to achieve their cull targets. Some of them are older than others. One or two section 7s, which have not even been mentioned here, and I am thinking of the one in Glen Islay, were set up at the behest of the deer group in the area because they were unable to control the population because they were fleeing into the woods. That section 7 agreement was actually closed down having been a success. The Bridalbon one, which is referred to there, was actually closed in 2015, despite what it says in the report. There are different ways of looking at this. Sorry, with respect, we have been talking a few moments ago about needing time to deliver. All but one of those section 7 agreements predates SNH taking responsibility for deer management. Those are not new developments. Those have had years to be implemented, and they are not working based on that evidence. Would you not accept that? Some of them have a long way to go. Some of them have worked. Some of them are working in progress. I do accept that. But they have had quite a few years to develop those. Section 7 has been available since the 1996 deer act. It is interesting that SNH, since it became responsible for deer management, has not sought to put in place any new section 7, or small number 1. Most of those were set up by the deer commission. As I keep saying, I do not want to sound like a broken record very often, and in particular in some of these cases, such as the Bridalbon one and the Kellocken one that Alec Hogg referred to, it is not just about dealing with the deer issue, it is about addressing all the factors that play. I would like to turn that on its face for a second. It has been my opinion that deer management plans are in themselves almost surrogate section 7 agreements. They are able to be monitored, they are voluntary, but they are operating almost as a surrogate section 7 agreement. That is why it is important that members of the committee should realise that the steps that we have taken to date to get more deer management groups to develop their plans is a huge step forward than we had even three or four years ago. Patrick Reeson. I say that on Benjerig, which is the second biggest of the section 7 agreement areas, the report suggests that it is not working three out of the four main categories of failing. We have a very recent report commissioned for SNH in 2013, which surveyed in depth four main habitat features, including that three out of four were in good condition and that it did a more local check on a further nine, and eight out of nine noted were in favourable condition. I would say that there are very real reasons for challenging the conclusions in our most recent deer management report. That is how we should do that particular section 7. A particular section 7, but that is one of the biggest factors that comes together to the overall conclusion. I am pretty sure that SNH will go and review the data that we have already got but not challenging the data. It has been very useful in many cases, and I was out last week on a collaborative exercise on SNH to address a small problem in a very inaccessible area, which came directly from seeing where the greatest habitat impacts were concentrated. However, because we had this extraordinary 2015, and it has all surfaced at the phoenix, it might have affected elsewhere, we have a series of reports whose conclusions have been harvested, I think, without proper scientific review, and may well be wrong. I cannot say that they are wrong, but a natural system with wild deer, land and all the rest does not respond that quickly. It takes a very long time to see where it is going. We have misleading information in this year's report to the stage that we need to check it further before we set our plans clearly as to where we are going. Just out of interest then, has there been any stage in the preceding years when any of those section 7s that we are referring to were actually hitting those targets prior to 2015 that we are aware of? As I say, some section 7s have been discharged, although they have been brought into existence and have done what they were intended to do. I am talking about the real live ones that are still on the go now. If we accept Mr Creasy's point that there was a bad year, you are making a judgment on that snapshot. Was there any point in 2013-2012 or 2014 when they might have looked at those section 7s and been able to say, well, in this regard, they are hitting their targets? If you take the Kenlochen section 7, which was referred to earlier, as an example, the reduction target is there. This is a slightly unusual situation where the impact is a summer situation rather than a winter one where the deer all congregate on the high ground and their impacts there are causing damage to an important nature reserve. The targets were reached over a period of about five years, I think now about five years ago. That was considered by SNH and the participating bodies as not having led to the improvements that were expected, so it was adjusted and a further call was taken. If you look at another example, the West Drostea Management Group, the Fannoch Hills SSI, on which you received some evidence from the chairman of the West Drostea Management Group, Randall Wilson, the situation there, as it says in the SNH report, is that they have achieved their call target. Again, at this stage, the SNH and their surveyors and the group are concerned that it may not have been enough, so they are revisiting it. As I say, section 7s are an adaptive process. They need to respond to the evidence as it comes in, taking into account, as has been said, the length of time that it takes for a change in management to be reflected in the quality of the vegetation on the ground in very exposed locations sometimes. Let's look on section 8s now, Angus MacDonald. When SNH gave evidence to us a couple of weeks ago, Ian Ross stated that they would be prepared to apply section 8s following an assessment. He went on to say that legal action would not stop them. I have to say that we heard them say that on the All Racky committee a year ago. Also, the association of deer management groups noted in written evidence to the committee that SNH has yet to use the statutory powers, dating back to the DEAR Act 1996 and the Subsequent Land Reform Act, which you have already referred to in the previous question. ADMG has said that they would have supported the use of those powers, but SNH has chosen not to use them. Richard Cook, in particular, would support the use of section 8 powers to the wider panel. Why do you think that those powers have never been used? The system that we have is a voluntary principle system of collaborative management. In the great majority of cases—I accept that it is still an unfolding story—that collaborative approach is sufficient to deal with any problems that come up. It has a backstop, and it has a very clear framework in terms of statute and guidance from Government agencies. Where failure occurs, we would not and have not opposed the use of section 8 by SNH to resolve a situation where you have an intractable conflict between the participants in a particular area. I have had conversations with SNH at staff level, which has indicated a willingness to do that, but at some point there has been a lack of will to use the measures available. I am not saying that we should rush out and look for a candidate to make an example of them, but there have been examples, and will that be future examples, where there are problems that cannot be resolved without resort to statutory measures. I think that, before SNH suggests that additional measures should be necessary, taking into account that there are some additional powers already granted to them this year in terms of the Land Reform Act, we need to see them use some of their existing powers where it is unavoidable. I would commend SNH in the past for wanting to proceed by persuasion and encouragement and support, but there are circumstances, inevitably, in what is a very complex matter sometimes and a very conflicted matter sometimes. There are circumstances where, sometimes, one has to use the statutory levers. We have no objection and principle to that. It is fair to say that there is frustration straight across the board with regard to the implementation of section 8. You mentioned SNH officers who have said to you that there was frustration in their part without wanting to put words in their mouths, but Ian Ross, when he was giving evidence here a few weeks ago, also said that there was frustration at board level as well. If there is all this frustration around, why on earth is there a need for section 8 wherever, why on earth is it not going ahead? Members would go to the courts and challenge them. If there was a section 8 introduced and the grounds perhaps that they couldn't prove beyond reasonable doubt that the impacts were being caused purely by DEAR. As I have said, DEAR tends to get blamed by default when something is not going right and it is actually very difficult to say that that is DEAR and nothing else or it is DEAR in combination with something else, so you are absolutely right to say that, convener. I mean whether section 8 would stand test in courts can only be proven by testing it in court and if it is not effective, and I know that that has been said but I don't see why it shouldn't be, if it's not effective then sufficient adjustment needs to be made to section 8 so that it is effective, but at the moment we are caught in a situation where SNH do not feel confident in using a power that they have got and we are prepared to say that in some circumstances we think use of the power may be justified. It's also important that all stakeholders have confidence in the assessment process pertaining to upland habitats and the impacts of current land management practices. There is a document, a guide to upland habitats surveying land management impacts, which was produced in 1998 and which is used as the bible for those processes, but it's quite clear from the discussions that I've had with a number of our members that there is little confidence that that document is now fit for purpose and indeed a request was made to Andrew Thin when he was in charge of SNH to conduct a review of that document whether or not that is churning on within SNH at the moment, I'm not aware, but it is certainly an issue for us that the current documents are not fit for purpose. I'd like to ask your views on changes that should be made to deer management policy. Again, in written evidence we've had various suggestions proposed and the first is to do with SNH's powers. On one hand, the British Deer Society has suggested that there are currently a suite of powers that are adequate to manage any eventuality. On the other hand, the land reform review group's proposals, which were then re-proposed in written evidence by the RSPB, suggested that SNH should be responsible for determining co-levels that are required and that landowners should have to apply to SNH with the number of deer that they plan to shoot so that SNH can determine if it's sufficient. What are the panel's views on those proposals? As SNH said in this chamber three weeks ago, there is no magic number. So far as the land reform review group's recommendations are concerned about culls being set by SNH, I suggest that SNH would have the greatest difficulty finding the evidence that justified picking on a particular figure in a particular area for a particular purpose. It's difficult enough, as we just heard, in terms of section 7 areas, how much more difficult would it be in a complex deer management group situation. So I think that fixing culls by mandate, which would in effect mean that we've moved away from the voluntary principle, is not an option. I would maintain that because SNH is very closely involved at field officer level with all the discussions about culls in deer management group areas, that their input is as much available under that situation, engaging with a particular deer management group as it ever would be if they had to sit in Venice and come up with a figure. In practical terms, cull setting is fraught with difficulty. One aspect of the land reform review group's recommendations, which I would strongly agree with, is that perhaps the best proxy for deer populations and carrying capacity is the national cull. SNH has a power to require a return of cull to be made to them every year. Indeed, they do that, but they only do that in respect of the holdings that they are aware of as being holdings where deer are culled. As we've heard, deer are to be found on just about every hectare of Scotland. There is no question, particularly in the lowlands, but in the highlands, that underreporting of the cull is a serious shortcoming. It would be really valuable if we could come up with a system where we could get a proper, accurate, reliable handle on the annual cull and take that as a measure of deer management success or failure rather than the situation that we are in at the moment. It has been tried by SNH. It did add a box to the agricultural holdings June return some years ago, where farmers were asked to put in the number of neoculds in their holdings, but it was made clear that it was voluntary because this was something to do with human rights or something like that, so they couldn't require it, as they can require data to be returned on domestic livestock. That surprisingly got a very low level of response and was dropped. Ironically, I think that there is another possible way where we could get at that, and that is through the new imposition of sporting rates on deer management. I won't go into what I think the effect of that will be because it's mostly negative, but the regional assessors, as I've certainly sub-sied them in this chamber on the past, have referred to. If a full revaluation is carried out, which they're determined to do, and I know they have started the process, it will cover 55,000 holdings across Scotland as a whole. Now, that will be just about all the rural land in Scotland. That's the intention. When it was done pre-94 when the rating was suspended, it was only ever 8,000 holdings, so what the assessor will have is a database that covers just about the whole of rural Scotland. I'm sure that that could be a basis for a cull return that was an exhaustive assessment of what the annual cull is in Scotland, and that would be an enormously valuable piece of information, so that bit of the LRRG report I firmly support. I think it is hypocritical that environment groups are calling for more regulation when last July the John Muir Trust left 85 stags in July on the hillside. When we've got food banks and starving kids, it's an absolute disgrace. I just wanted to make that point. Because many of us would agree with that point that you've made, Mr Hogg, that doesn't mean that the general point that's being made isn't valid, does it? But there's no excuse to leave deer on the hill, 85 of them to rot. None puts over. There's no argument there. It's an absolute disgrace. Yes, but I return to the point that I just made to you. While many of us would agree with that point, it doesn't detract from the argument that's made by other environmental groups that would need for regulation right way or wrong way, they're entitled to make that point, and it may be justified. Is anybody else going to come in on that? I think, Chairman, it is vitally important that we maintain the voluntary, collaborative, consensual approach that we're using just now to try and ensure that the deer managers across Scotland are fully participating in this process. I think that if there were further regulation as outlined by Kate Forbes in our question, it might act as a disincentive for some of our members. I think that it's so important that we maintain this voluntary approach. I understand your point of view on that, but somebody has to make a judgment about what the coal rate has to be. If your member's concerns are that they might be hit with section 7 on then eventually a section 8, isn't RSPB's suggestion a way of actually passing a responsibility to SNH, then the responsibility is on SNH to make the right decision based on the right data and ensure that that can be delivered using a full collaborative approach? No longer becomes your responsibility, it's SNH's responsibility. I absolutely understand the point that you're making, but why then do we need deer management groups? Why don't we just let the SNH deal with us themselves? To carry out the actions on the ground. But why would our members want to participate in that? In this process, we have members who are carrying out functions on their own land to create economic activity, to create jobs, to provide services in remote rural areas. If the Government imposes its own strategies on that, I think that it will disincentivise those private owners from the business that they're involved in. I wouldn't necessarily shut down the business, it just might mean that you end up with deer with bigger carcass weights. Deer management groups are now being suggested as a model for collaborative management on a much broader basis. Landscape scale management is what we're all thinking about now, and considering the big picture rather than the minute picture of local management at site level. Deer management groups are a good model for that, because they engage all the players. I would like to think that we can expand, as is already happening, our range of responsibilities in terms of deer management to other types of management. I've said on a number of occasions this morning that when we make decisions about deer management, they need to be with full awareness and consciousness of all the other factors at play, and the same will apply to sheep management or reforestation or any other type of land use change. The voluntary principle is a precious thing. That particular suggestion, taken from the Land Reform Review Group proposal, is in effect statutory management. It transfers the responsibility for management for deer from the private individual to the state. There are cost implications there, and I've already referred to the costs in the report. There would have to be some discussion as to how that would be funded, because the participation—this is not meant to suggest any sort of a threat—would be, at the very least, seriously demotivated by undermining of the increasingly successful voluntary principle mechanism that we've got. I would remind you that the voluntary principle is very much curtailed in its wriggle room. It's not a free-for-all. We have a government, we have statute, three acts that have a bearing on deer management, we have a policy document that covers three years, we have the code of practice for deer management, we have ADMG's own benchmark, we have the tools that tell you how to do the job, and now we have the assessment process. I would suggest that there is more scrutiny and regulation and assessment of the public interest applied to deer management than any other land use in Scotland. The equivalent, as applied to arable farming, would be for farmers to have to submit their cropping plan on an annual basis to community councils. We welcome that. It's fine. We're prepared to operate under the microscope. We are prepared to respond to the challenge that was put to us in 2014 to be more transparent. There are 33 deer management plans online, as we speak, and that is increasing all the time. They are there to be seen. We are okay with that, but the vital spark is the individual involvement, the individual responsibility of the participants in deer management groups. It would be a great shame to lose that. The deputy convener is going to wrap this session up with a final question. Thank you, panel. We are nearly there. In terms of conclusions, the report makes no recommendations, rather it conducts evaluations and then a number of conclusions thereafter. In light of that, what proposals or recommendations would you like to make? As a supplementary within that, do you think that SNH is sufficiently resourced to enhance deer management in Scotland? Last word from me, anyway. Recommendations, and I would say this, wouldn't I? Recommendations is that we have done some very good work in the last two years. As you have heard from a number of people, seeing that in terms of environmental change is a longer-term prospect, but let's not forget that it is also about social and economic benefits. The quantum leap that we have made needs time to work. We accept that we will be back in front of this committee in three years' time. Hopefully—well, I am confident that we will have more to show for it at that stage. We are only at the beginning of the design period. Now we have to go and deliver it. We can do that. As far as SNH's role is concerned, we have over a very long period worked very closely with SNH and its predecessor body, DCS. That will continue, certainly from my point of view. The engagement at ground level has been particularly valuable, although the recent restructuring of the SNH wildlife staff has, I am afraid, not been terribly helpful and I am not sure that they have been involved in the scrutiny of this report. We will work with them. As I say, the picture that I want to paint is of a sector that is moving rapidly forward. I am going to tell you that that is what is going to continue. What do you mean by the wildlife staff might not have been involved in scrutiny of this report? When we were presented with the report, which was on the day when it was announced, we were advised that the next job of those who were presenting it to us was to go and announce it to their own staff. It had been kept for whatever reasons. It had been kept entirely within the compiling team and at board level. The next job was to explain it to the wildlife staff. I suspect that some of the anomalies that we have heard this morning in terms of the mismatches between DMG densities and the extrapolated densities of JHI would have been picked up by the wildlife management officers and said, this just does not make sense. We need to have another look. Can I just raise another point, Mr Coot? There is some suggestion that a couple of work streams have now had to be funded by the DMGs. Could you clarify that? We had an answer from SNH that left it out there a little bit three weeks ago. There is no doubt that the reduction in funding to SNH has had an effect on what they can deliver. We know that there are not, when they lose staff, they are not replacing them. We know that their wildlife team has been dispersed around the areas, which possibly for reasons of efficiency, but it has reduced their strength in working together. We also know that some of the really important tools that we need to do our job, and I am thinking of wild deer best practice, which has been allowed to wither on the vine, and also SWORD, which is a really important data processing system that we must have, are no longer sufficiently funded by SNH to go forward. We have been told that SNH will support us as best as they can with that. ADMG is raising funds privately, we are currently at a figure of rather over £40,000 and need it to be half as much again to do this. We are prepared to put money to this because we just need it to do what we are being expected to do. In answer to Maurice Golden's question, I would say that SNH needs more funds if they are going to deliver what is clearly in the public interest in terms of deer management. I would like to say that, from the point of view of Scottish land and estates, I would like to underline the point that many deer managers in Scotland will really feel disappointed and disheartened by the SNP report, particularly the SNH report. SNH, sorry about that. It is a natural comedian in me that put that out. I do apologise. The SNH report has put me off my stride as well. That report has done nothing to help deer managers in Scotland to carry on with their work in the way that they have been doing it. It is discouraging. It is disincentivising. What I would like to say is that SNH is properly funded to her sisters because I will underline the fact that, within the monolayers, the SNH has been a great partner for us. They have been very supportive and have been helpful in delivering their outputs. I cannot fault them for that, but the report does not generate the kind of partnership that we think that we have developed locally. Scottish Public voted the red deer as number one iconic species. If you look at the employees and SNH, there are 500 of them, but there are only 12 dealing with deer. So, they would desperately need help on that deer side. They are underrepresented. Thank you for those points. We will wrap this session up now. Thank you very much for your time, gentlemen. That was a useful session for us. I will suspend very briefly until we change the panel. We welcome back. We now continue the session on deer management in Scotland. We are joined by a second panel comprising Mike Daniels of the John Muir Trust, Maggie Keenan of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, Grant Moyer from Cairngorms National Park Authority, Duncan Orr Ewing, the convener of the deer subgroup for the Scottish Environment Link and Simon Pepper of the Forest Policy Group. I would say that, if you do not feel the need to answer any particular question, then do not feel the need to do that. If we do contribute where you feel it is appropriate, you will think all sat in the audience for the last couple of hours and you heard the comments from the deer management groups and others. They are quite clear that there are some significant errors in the report. I would welcome your thoughts on that, Duncan Orr Ewing. We think that the report is a fair one. All SNH are doing is bringing together all the evidence around deer management in one place for the first time, which is very helpful. To be frank, the evidence around the subject is never going to be perfect. The debate that went beforehand indicated that. SNH have used all the available data. The conclusions of the report are based around the hard data, not the interpretation that was described by Mark Ruskell earlier. Frankly, some of the discussions that we have just had around whether the data is precisely accurate, whether the population or the density of deer is 12 or whether it is 15 per cent is slightly arbitrary. The fact is that the deer densities are still too high to deliver the public interest. We know that in other countries, for example, deer densities are around 0.5 per hectare per kilometre square rather than the 12 to 15 that we have been talking about. SNH have also ensured that the report has had independent scientific scrutiny in the forward to the document at the bottom paragraph that highlights who has been involved in the collation of the data and how it has been scrutinised. However, there appear to be some factual errors in the report. Does that not undermine it, Maggie Keenan? Looking at the evidence, we spoke to SNH about this and they assured us that the figure on page 20 is robust. They said that the modelling by James Hutton Institute was modelling and that that in no way is how they draw the conclusions or the evidence of the report. The same as what has been said before, it is the impacts that are important and also the pace of change. For me, one of the most important things in the document is the figures on page 68 to 71, which paint the actual picture of how deer management groups are addressing some of the public interest issues that deliver the Scottish biodiversity strategy. As you have already queried with the first group, while some are doing very well and making good progress, a lot have not made the progress and the required changes will be necessary to deliver the Scottish biodiversity strategy. I would like to make the point that, although there may be some dispute about details, the overall thrust of the report is very robust. I think that suggestions that it was prepared with bias or with bad faith are very unfortunate. SNH has no motivation to exercise bias in this at all. Indeed, I cannot speak for SNH, but I am pretty sure that they would be the first to celebrate if there was genuine evidence in here that we were going to be meeting targets on time. Has there been adequate progress and is it going to meet targets? The answer to that in the report is quite clear. The sector is praised for the progress that it is making, but you can hear from the evidence that you have just heard. They are saying that they have not had time yet to demonstrate delivery of the results. It is hardly surprising that SNH lacks confidence that those results will be delivered on time. The question really is whether they have the opportunity to deliver those objectives on time. They have expressed fulsomly their intention to do so. It seems to us that they should be given that chance, but we should also be preparing for the possibility that some of them may not. To ask ourselves whether the arrangements are in place to make quite sure that those things are delivered if there still turns out to be difficulty in some cases. From a point of view, the information about the Cairngorms national park appears to be relatively accurate in terms of our understanding of what is happening within the Cairngorms. From that point of view, I can say that the report reads well from that. On its validity, it is not the fact that it is so critical. One might say that it is a condemnation of SNH's oversight of deer management, as much as it is a DMG. The fact that it is presented in that way should give us confidence that it is accurate. Would you accept that point, Maggie Keenan? We heard from our satyr listening to SNH giving evidence. There is no doubt that they have tried to bend over backwards to deliver the policy that is the voluntary approach. You could argue that, in some cases, they have given it too long to work, particularly when we were talking about the section 8 agreement. When it says in the act under section 8 that one could be enacted after six months. We have had discussions amongst ourselves about this. One of the feelings that we have is that SNH is asked to be regulators and enforcers, like a rule that SIPA has. They have to switch from being advisors and always looking for conciliation. It may not come as naturally to them as to others. One of the recommendations at the end is that they have to be much more robust and really be backed by Government to deliver the policies that everybody wants them to deliver. In a letter to the committee dated on 5 December, the SNH provided information about three research projects. Two are due at the end of January 17 and one at the end of March, so that is why I think it is dear research support and strath cally. I am just wondering if the SNH and stakeholders have the accurate data and research available to them in order to make robust evidence-based policy? Do you mean in terms of what they have said in the report, the conclusions in the report? Yes. Bear in mind that there are additional reports due at the end of January. As I said, the densities and the populations are not, there may be some dispute, but as everybody is saying, what we need to do is look at impacts and how, if we are talking about red day, how de-management groups are working in practice. There is no doubt that some are working very well, but there is no doubt that some are not addressing the public interest. SNH has scrutinised the 44 de-management plans and assessed them against the public interest criteria. Quite a lot of them have not come up to the mark, so their conclusions are based on how well the de-management plans are going to deliver the public interest because that was the whole point of the report. Because they are finding that most of them are not going to deliver it, that is why they have come up with the conclusions, that they are not certain that there has been the step change necessary that they need to see. Are any of you surprised, as I certainly am, that, given that the committees of this Parliament have taken a very serious interest in deer management for the past three years and that SNH knew that this review was to be conducted at the end of 2016, they hadn't commissioned and delivered the piece of work on the estimated count of red deer on the hill grown by now, or perhaps not, Duncan or Ewing? No, all of this data is helpful and informs deer management best practice. It will certainly be helpful to have more information on localised deer densities. Some of these projects take time to act, but I think that the point is that, over the piece, SNH has generally, and I think that Maggie used the term bent over backwards, to try and give the voluntary approach to deer management its best chance. They have invested heavily in research to help to inform that process. They have also invested heavily in the production of deer management plans. That cost £160,000, I think that the report says. We are also investing in a whole range, I mean the forestry commission as well, have invested here as well. Wild deer, in terms of timescales, a national approach was published in 2008 and that set out quite clearly the public interest tests that needed to be met. In terms of the timescales, we are not just talking about since the RACI committee considered the evidence in 2013. We had the deer code in 2012, which set out the public interest criteria as well. In terms of the full package, I should also say that SNH has also provided a huge amount of information behind the scenes to the deer management groups to help them to produce the deer management plans. Behind the scenes, SNH has bent over backwards to try and make the voluntary approach work. I think that what I am coming to the conclusion is that the voluntary approach just simply is not adequate and SNH needs support from government to use the powers that they have and to deliver a more functional deer management system. The policy group of acts that we touched on in their submission about SNH not being sufficiently well backed by government to do organisations, what specifically do you mean by that? Only that. I think that it is reluctance to move from voluntary to compulsory. As Richard Cook rightly said, it may seem a paradox but a compulsory backstop measure is an essential part of a voluntary system. There are reluctance to move beyond the voluntary to use the compulsory powers where it might seem appropriate. There are all sorts of reasons why I think that has happened. One of them is what Ian Ross in his evidence before you a couple of weeks ago referred to as the policy position, which is, I think, his rather cryptic way of referring to the extent to which he feels supported by ministers. Certainly, I feel that stronger, clearer support now from the relatively new cabinet secretary indicating a much clearer government resolve behind SNH's powers on this would be very helpful indeed. Existing powers on the powers that were delivered by the Land Reform Act? Both. Both. Emma Harper, do you have another question? I am aware that lowland deer management is not just about the south of Scotland. In evidence to the committee, the lowland deer network stated that it may lie in farmers and landowners taking more responsibility either individually or collectively for sustainable management. What barriers do you think are faced by farmers and landowners in the lowlands, which might prevent them taking responsibility for sustainable deer management? Could I respond to that by saying that I think Mr Playfair made some very good points about the situation in the lowlands? By the way, the distinction between lowlands and the hill ground is not as clear as sometimes it is suggested that red deer are dealt with by the deer management groups and all deer on ground below the sporting estates are dealt with by others. There are very large parts of Scotland. I think that 61 per cent altogether of Scotland is not covered by a deer management group and they cover everything from the fringes of the sporting estates right down to the centre of cities. The conspicuous absence that seems to us in terms of what is available to those trying to manage deer in those circumstances is a lack of data. The deer management groups have accepted and demonstrated the need for collective data shared between all the participants so that everybody knows what is going on. That data is not available to people outside the deer management groups. In general, there are a few exceptions, but generally those who are trying to or should be persuaded to manage deer responsibly in what are called the lowlands very broadly need to know what is going on in their area, especially if it is a small area of land and you have some responsibilities or you are affected by deer. You need to know what your neighbour is doing. You need to have the data as to how many deer there are and in particular to know how many your neighbour is planning to cull in the next file so that you can relate that to the impacts that you are experiencing. That discussion just is not happening in very large parts of what is broadly referred to as the lowlands. Our suggestion would be that one serious improvement that could be made to encourage the use of the voluntary principle would be to equip anybody who is interested with easily accessible, it can be done digitally, easily accessible, up-to-date information about the status of deer in the area and who is culling what and who is planning to cull what. You could add to that as time went on, add to the database information about impacts, public interest impacts and indeed private interest impacts that should build a picture that informs a local discussion, then you will get responsible people acting responsibility because they are able to access up-to-date information that they need. Does that have the effect of getting more local authorities to exercise their responsibilities in this area as well? I think that it would be. I would say that it is an absolute fundamental. Without this information nobody knows what they are doing, everybody is acting with a blindfold. As soon as you expose this information and allow a discussion, a debate to evolve in the local area, in the context of what the public interests are in the local area, whether it is to do with deer vehicle collisions or damage to gardens or farms or forests or anything, wildlife issues and natural heritage issues. Unless you have the information, you do not have any basis on which to make rational decisions. If I could return back to the issue of deer densities again, do you have any thoughts on what that magic number is for deer density? I think that I heard from the previous panel that it is very difficult to pin that down. Every estate, every circumstance is unique with unique habitats around it, unique conditions. Is it possible to generalise in terms of policy around deer density? I think that in your question you have put your finger on it. The answer is no, you cannot generalise. It is folly to generalise. What does not need to happen is that, in every local area, the facts need to be taken into account. The balance between private interests and the public interests need to be assessed. They need to be assessed fairly in a way that is accountable locally. Of course, there is a national component in there, but the decision about what is the appropriate number per square kilometre to have in an area varies enormously across Scotland, and to suggest that there is a magic number is quite wrong. The most interesting question is that we have just had the national park partnership plan consultation, which asked roughly those questions, which were around should the partnership plan set guidance on the appropriate range of deer densities necessary to deliver the public interest. We had a lot of interest in people, as you can imagine, in that and a lot of polarised views on that as well. The bit that I think is quite interesting is the public interest part. We are keen on the park and the park partnership plans to set out more clearly what that public interest is. Spatially, if you are looking at woodland expansion in those places, if you are looking at peatland restoration in those places, if you are looking at getting designated sites back into fair roll condition, what does that mean that you need to do in terms of not just deer, but other things as well? Do you do that through deer culling? Do you do that through fencing? Do you do that through other mechanisms that are available to people? However, you need to set out clearly what that public interest is spatially to be able to have that conversation. I think that that is pretty crucial. I think that there is a link back to the land use strategy and the side of things that was said about rural land use partnerships and the potential for plans being part of that. If you look at what is happening in both national parks, the park partnership plan is in effect that rural land use strategy for those areas. If you can have that conversation about what the public interest is, add in the private interest in terms of what people want to do with their individual estates, then you can have a conversation about what are the appropriate deer densities associated with that. That is the clear bit that needs to happen. If there is not agreement between that, there is the question of what is the backstop. That is a fair enough question in terms of whether that is intersection 7 and section 8, or is that a different mechanism? However, having more clarity on the public interest and how that is set out and being able to have that conversation more realistic, where people can get involved in it, would make a big difference. To get on the record the point about peatland restoration, I visited a potential project in Invermark in the national park where we were talking about what was quite an exciting project of peatland restoration, and then we had to consider having restored the peatland. We would not put a fence around it to protect that restoration, so deer impacts are quite significant across a range of issues. Mike Daniel, sorry. I think that densities are key to some way, because if you look at the public interest, if you look at SNH's own land, you look at Forest Commission's own land, you look at NGO's own land, what are the densities there compared with what the density and sporting estate are. Generally, the densities are much lower, and nobody really needs a density higher than four or five, apart from the sporting interest, I would argue. Also, if you compare the densities across Europe, as was mentioned earlier, they are 0.1 to 0.5. I think that there is a 10 times difference here that we have in our highest density area. I take Simon's point that you need to know what your objectives are, but a way of, as Grant says, a way of working out what your objective is, you then need to turn that into a number and work out what the density should be, really. Maggie. I just want to add a point about the land use strategy. I wholeheartedly support that, that would help, as well as ecosystem health indicators. Interestingly, reading Duncan Halley's report in Norway, they set cool targets as well based on the deer weights. If the deer weights are going down and I think that the carrying capacity of the land cannot support them, then they increase the cull and it's dependent on, you know, so there's quite a lot of factors, so they're taking in the deer welfare as well. Are you? Just to expand on this again, there's a number of our organisations also have practical experience of reducing deer numbers on the land that we manage, and to allow the habitat to recover. Once the habitat is recovered, you can then let the deer densities go back up again. The critical point is that you need to take the step in the first place to reduce the deer numbers to give the habitat time. We do know that a number of the habitats that are most seriously impacted by deer, particularly uplands, peatlands and woodlands, do take time to recover. Just in terms of the spatial mapping point, I agree with what's been said previously, but for some habitats, for example peatlands, we now have good spatial mapping of the peatland resource in Scotland. I think I've read that the deer densities that you need to allow peatlands to recover is around 0.4 deer per hectare, or square kilometre. Okay. Objectives are at the outset, including the economic objectives, presumably, as well around sporting estates, but putting that in the mix. Thank you. Good afternoon to the second panel. I want to drill down, please, with all of you who feel it's appropriate to answer in relation to whether the environmental impacts that we're discussing today to the extent to which they are due to deer. I've just noted what you said, Duncan, or Ewing, about deer numbers and evidence. It would be useful if you were able to send us some of that information that you just referred to previously, because that would be an interesting fact for the committee to consider. I think that you've all heard about the 2020 challenge to Scotland's biodiversity targets, and I'm not going to go into the detail of that again, because it was highlighted during the first session. However, the SNH report states on page 33, and I quote, of the 1,606 features examined, 56 of the features have a negative overgrazing pressure identified, compared with only 9 per cent having negative undergrazing pressures. It would seem from that report that deer populations are the main factor leading to insufficient progress in native woodland planting restoration. Now, there's been dispute of that, and I would like to know what the panel thinks about that and more broadly about whether it is deer or other herbivores. It's very hard to generalise these things, but any comments would be valued. I went back and looked at the Scotland's native woodland survey because, obviously, it can be mixed results. It could be deer, but one of the things it did say was that deer were recorded as a significant presence in 73 per cent of native woodlands, livestock 15 per cent, rabbits and hares just 3.5 per cent. In the conclusions of the report, it says that deer are the most widespread type of herbivore and are likely to be the major source of impacts. I don't have my own evidence, but I'm going on a Scottish Government long-term report. Sorry, what was the date of that report? It was the native woodland. Unfortunately, it wasn't out when we were giving evidence in 2013, so it came out. It's actually been quoted in here, but it didn't go into all of the details, which I think would have been a bit more helpful. Anyone else, Grant Moyle? In terms of the park, the King of the West Park is 49 per cent in the Ture and 25 per cent in the Triblus Eye, which is the highest in Scotland, quite a distance, but overgrazing rains the most significant pressure that is affecting 126 features ahead of disturbance and burning. It depends on where you are in the park and where that is significantly deer or where that is, in some parts, sheep grazing. It gets down to fairly local circumstances, rather than you can generalise across the national park to say that it's all deer, it's all sheep or it's a mixture of two. In certain places it will be one, in certain places it will be the other, and in certain places it will be a mixture of the two. However, overgrazing is still the main reason why 19 per cent of features are still not fearable or recovering, so that's— I'm picking up from the SNH report that 50 per cent of the deer management groups fail to identify actions in deer management plans to actually deal with deer impacts in designated sites, which suggests a failure of the current process. I mean SNH have provided that information up front, but still it's not being dealt with. Simon Pepper. The distinction between sheep and deer or, for that matter, other herbivores and deer is much easier to make in the lowlands. In the lowlands, most livestock is enclosed for livestock, and so damage that you experience in a woodland is most—if it's being caused by deer, it's very clear that it's only deer. If you ask anybody who is trying to grow trees anywhere below the head dike, anywhere in Scotland, they'll tell you that a major constraint and a major cost, often a prohibitive extra cost because it isn't supported by subsidy, is fencing. Jenny Gilruth. It's just a supplementary on that. Dr Keegan, we spoke previously to the previous panel about the impact of the deer management group sector in terms of challenging the tree planting target, I suppose, in terms of their role. There was a reluctance from that panel to perhaps accept that deer were to blame, as it were. We spoke as well about sheep and the impact that they might have in terms of reaching that planting target. Would you agree then with the forest policy group who argued that they need to be challenged specifically on that point? I don't think that you can argue with the conclusions of the native woodland survey report. We had a conversation with SNH following their evidence and we asked them specifically, can you tell the difference in terms of herbivore impact, if you do a herbivore impact assessment between deer and sheep, so that you can work out what the problem is? And they said that they could, they had confidence that they could. In some circumstances there could be a combination of both, but if you know what the primary cause is, then that's the one that you should be addressing. Does that answer your question, or do you? Okay. Mike Daniels, do you want to come in? The previous one as well. I mean, there's a general, to answer your question generally, if you look at a window in Scotland, you can only grow trees behind a deer fence and in lots of other countries in Europe natural regeneration is the most common way of woodland to grow. On the other side is it deer are actually a natural part of the woodland, we don't want to fence deer out of all the woodlands. Deer should be there, but at much lower density. I think in the report it was interesting, there were SNH board, there was some mention of 3,000 kilometres of deer fencing that's about to deteriorate in the next few years, which I think using some analogies like 20 times the Scottish border. In terms of the cost of options going forward to renew that fence in the public, this is public sector fencing. 3,000 kilometres of it in the next 20 years, there's going to be huge cost as opposed to having a lower deer number, not no deer, but having a much lower deer number. The reason that is deer fencing is because of, obviously, for woodland is because it's deer that is the main issue that they're trying to keep out. Thank you very much, a question for Grant Moore. I'm glad that you've raised the national park, which we share a bit with constituency, which I represent. We talked earlier about section 7 that had been in place and why some hadn't been lifted. I understand in my lodge, which is in both our areas, that section 7 was due to be lifted at the end of last year, subject to satisfactory habitat reports. Those reports have come through and are satisfactory, and the deer population has been reduced in the woodland areas, woodland zones. Can I ask what your view is on why that section 7 hasn't been lifted and what do you think its plans might be in the future? A number of people find the section 7 grouping quite useful in discussing some of those issues. It's not just a question of the formal mechanism of the section 7, because there's quite a lot of issues in that area. It's quite useful to bring those folk together. One of the issues that I would have brought up is the boundary issues between deer management groups. Moral Lodge sits at the edge of one deer management group, a butting of two other deer management groups, so we've got quite different deer management regimes. I don't have an answer to your question, but I need to go back and check on that, so I can't speculate on that. However, in terms of the people involved in it, I know that they find the grouping quite useful in discussing those deer management issues in that area, but I think that the boundary issues are one that is worth thinking about as well in terms of how deer management groups work with each other across boundary, because some of the big issues are between deer management groups and not within deer management groups. That's especially true in the Cairngormas, where there's quite different objectives within different deer management groups. Dave Stewart, I think that you're going to come to the line of question that we tried with Mike Daniel's last point. Yes, thank you, convener. I'm quite interested, as you'd picked up from the previous session, about costs and benefits that have to be made in decision making. If I can just quote the key finding 7 from SNH, it said, and I'm quoting, the management of deer in Scotland results in a net monetary loss for both the private and public sectors. However, many of the impacts and benefits are not easy to assess or do not lend themselves to monetary valuation. What is your assessment? Maggie Keegan? I could put it in terms of, say, natural capital. If we think of some of the opportunities that are not being taken in some areas because of the impacts of deer, so I could list a few. I was very struck by how deer were managed in Norway, in south west Norway, and how the opportunities that come to communities living there because of the lower deer numbers and the fact that they have some woodland regeneration. I'm not suggesting that happens everywhere, but in terms of carbon sequestration, timber production, wood fuel, woodlands used for foraging, berries and fungi, education, recreational opportunities, biodiversity, and natural flood management in terms of riparian habitats. There are quite a lot of things in there that would be very difficult to quantify, but they are actual benefits. I don't think that that was totally captured in the report, but it's difficult to put a value on those things, although we know that biodiversity in Scotland, the ecosystem service is worth about £21 billion to Scotland every year. In some senses, there's hidden costs but also hidden benefits as well. I'm sure there is. I think that the socioeconomic one is a question that really needs to be tackled more. I think that undoubtedly all the deer stalkers, both in the private sector and the NGO sector and the state sector, do it. It's a really hard job right there day and night, hard work, and I think that needs to be really acknowledged. At lower deer densities, you need more people employed, you need far more employment, and it's much harder to call deer when there's less of them. I remember Richard Cook once in a long time ago in a meeting standing, I've been saying that no estate owner made money from running a deer estate. It's true to say that you don't own a sporting estate to make money, you own a sporting estate because you have money. It's not a model that generates economic return, but there is economic activity and there's social benefit of employing staff to do that job. It's a misconception to say that if you have an environmental as a priority where you've reduced your numbers, you don't employ people. All the NGOs here represented who called deer to employ people to do that, and we employ in some cases more than we previously employed. There's a different type of employment, and there's certainly still an absolute place for traditional deer management, but it's just trying to get a sense where you have a much lower deer density in a healthier environment. I think that that would have all these other benefits, economic benefits that come from flood protection, that come from peatland restoration, woodland regeneration, and a whole range of benefits. Because we're looking at bare hills and we don't see them, we don't know they're there, but they will come and they will benefit the country as a whole, not just the landowners that happen to manage the land at this time. I think that this is a really crucial question around the employment side of things, because it is one of the main discussions where the states are in that, in terms of the amount of people that are employed in this sector, and it provides employment in remote areas, and that's something that we're keen to try and retain, is trying to keep people in remote areas, working on the land, etc. Is this the only way to do it, and what is the opportunity cost of doing it in the current model, and if you wanted to move to a different model, what would that be? I think that that's actually really difficult for people to get their heads around in terms of some of this stuff. One of the things that you can do is if you point to a number of states where there has been a significant reduction in deer numbers, there hasn't been a significant reduction in employment. It's not just a case of there's been a reduction in deer numbers, but there's just been a reduction in employment. Actually, that doesn't stack up when you look at some of the states that have done that around Scotland, so I think it's worth looking at the evidence on that in terms of what has happened on those states where there's been a reduction in deer numbers, because it's not a simple ratio between one and the other. That would be one of the gaps in the evidence that we have to consider at the moment, Simon Pebble. Just to add to what has been said, I would agree that it's very difficult to know what to make of the economic appraisal in the report, especially when included in it is an assessment of the value of deer, what nobody is suggesting that deer should not be there. The question is how many, and the argument that there will be fewer benefits arising if there are fewer deer doesn't really stack up, I don't think. If you send people down the road when you've reduced your deer, the first thing that will happen is that deer numbers will increase again, so it is going to be an on-going continuous requirement for a workforce and a very skilled active workforce, it is, too, that it should continue to have employment. The question perhaps goes back, though, to the vision that is brought by everybody concerned, the so-called WDNA, the Wild Deer National approach document, which talks about a vision of achieving the best combination of benefits to all, and that's where these arguments come into play, whereas the best combination of benefits to all. To look at the land reform agenda, which is about securing the benefit of land for the many, not the few, it's about more engagement by community, it's about revitalisation of the rural economy, and there's a strong argument to suggest that the particular preference for high deer numbers currently being imposed by a sector is not necessarily in the best benefit of all, which is the direction of policy, I think. I think just for the record as well that the community empowerment legislation has a role to play here as well. My final question, convener, is again if I can just quote evidence to the committee from RSPB who've said, in our view, there needs to be a rebalancing if the deer culling effort between the public and private sectors to ensure the private sector increases its efforts. How would you respond? At the moment, the facts are that the Forestry Commission actually take a third of the national deer cull each year, and they've managed to drive down deer densities, as is said in the report, on the national forest estate on 9 per cent of the land. That is an additional cost currently to the public. At the moment, I think the chart on page 20 of the report and the text around that suggests that the current levels of deer cull elsewhere, but also, probably including the forestry data, are not sufficient to reduce the current population of deer. I'm reading into that that we need more effort from the private sector and perhaps more engagement by others in the way that Simon has just described to help with that effort. We need more people culling deer and reducing deer, not the same number that we currently have. In 2013, the then Racky Committee was told that it was too early to come to judgment on the impact to the code of practice, which was introduced in 2011 as part of the Wain Act. Now, we're told that it's too early to come to judgment on the impact of deer management plans. How long do we have to wait to see a genuine return on that? Maggie Keane? Yes, convener. I was just sat there thinking I'm in 2013, but I think that an important point to note, which everybody recognises, is that the habitats take a long time to recover. There should be some urgency about not waiting. That would be the point. If we're given another three years or four years or five years, the habitats continue to deteriorate. We haven't got that time to wait in terms of delivering the Scottish biodiversity strategy. Okay, so let's broaden this out a little bit as you answer that point. What do we need to do to build some momentum into this? Duncan O'Ruey? Well, we've suggested, as was mentioned by Kate Forbes earlier, that I mentioned we need some rebalancing as well. What we're suggesting is more emphasis needs to be put on the individual here in terms of deer culling. At the moment, we have a deer management group structure, but those that are not following best practice, meeting the public interest, are able to hide under those structures. The land reform review group report did make some sensible suggestions about socially responsible cull levels. Ritch Cook mentioned that he didn't agree with the owners being put on the deer management groups by SNH, largely because he wanted the voluntary approach to continue. I think he's misread slightly what the land reform review group report is saying in that context. My reading of it is what is suggested is that individual landowners should come up with a proposition about what a socially responsible deer population should look like on their land, then they should submit that to SNH who will either say yes or yes or no if they don't feel it is adequate and maybe they would pick particular geographical areas where they think there is a particular problem, so a blanket approach would not be adopted. I think that that was the approach that the land reform review group was suggesting, which, to my reading, still gives the voluntary approach traction to a large extent in that process. That's what Simon Peppell-Nordie said in agreement there. Yes. I think that it's well worth dwelling, if we may, briefly on the land reform review group recommendations because I think they were significantly misunderstood or misrepresented earlier. I don't mean maliciously, I mean just unfortunately misrepresented. I've looked in this in great detail because it seemed to me when you look at the detail of what the, it wasn't particularly well expressed, I have to give them that, but when you look at the detail of the recommendations, there's a lot in there which is very well worth pursuing as grounds for improvement of the way that the voluntary principle might work. A key element that gets misunderstood is the use of the word determining that SNH should determine Carl in any particular area. I've looked into this in great detail and it's quite clear in the rest of what they say that they don't mean preemptively decide and impose top down. What they mean is that SNH should scrutinise and approve. With the option then to, as Duncan is saying, either let the plans proceed or go back to the owner and say, sorry, our perception of the public interest here is that you need to be culling more. A dialogue starts and if the case is put properly and courteously, you'd expect a responsible owner to accept the case that's being put that they need to cull more and you'd expect to see behaviours change. And there's a very courteous and sensible and low-key approach embodied in that proposal which I think deserves a great deal of further consideration. Perhaps so, but what would the backstop be? Well, that's the next key thing. So what is required in order to start that conversation is the data that I was talking about before and then there's this process of approving and perhaps it could evolve into a consent. I think that's the term that's used by the land reform review group, but then the question really, and this is the fundamental key to an effective system, the question is, is there a credible backup power? At present, with the best will in the world, given all of the difficulties that have been experienced, I don't think anybody would say that we have a credible backup power in place. It hasn't been used, as we've discussed before, for a variety of reasons, but nobody has any faith in it. So we need to be looking at perhaps slight adjustments to the legislation which enable a swifter, more straightforward, entirely accountable and appealable, of course, measure that allows SNH when the dialogue has come to a halt and no progress is being made, perhaps because the owner is not willing or not able or simply refuses to do what's asked of them, a measure to ensure that the required call to deliver the public interest is actually delivered. I think that you mentioned earlier that section sevens are not a new thing. They came in when the DCS was managing dearest use in Scotland. One of the big faults in the section seven process has been no time limit put on when section sevens come to an end and we move to the next phase. We've had considerable deliberations about whether to move to the next phase at SNH board level. The whole process is very time-consuming and costly to SNH to marshal the evidence and all the other information that's required to produce a solid case. We need a more streamlined process. Section eight, it is a shame that it hasn't been used and tested. I think that if it was tested in court, we would know whether it was a workable power or not, as you indicated earlier. SNH said that they were about to use it when they came to the Rural Affairs Committee in 2013. It hasn't subsequently been used. However, we need a credible backstop if people want decisions out there to be made and then they can operate. They may not like those decisions, but at least you've got a decision. I know that Mark Ruskell has always wanted to develop the section seven theme. I was going to briefly reflect on the voluntary approach because we've got the public interest categories that are reported in the report. My reading of that is that there's perhaps been some good work for the majority of the day management groups around quantifying things, assessing the condition of our sites and the quality of the environment, but the gap appears to be in terms of delivering actions. I know that it's only been a two-year process that has been analysed, but what's your thought on that in terms of how we drive actions? Is it a process of enforcing more section sevens or is it about driving through voluntary approach or whatever? We're on the go before then in some places. It's not just two years. Two years was the point at which this Parliament said, get your act together and set a review timing. Just to add to that, because when SNH looked through the 44 reports, there were giving advice on actions or addressing the public, giving advice to day management groups, so whether they chose to follow the advice or not is reflected in what you see in those figures. The other thing is that the AMBAs have not moved from 2014 to 2016. It might be that if we had this where the onus was on the individual, you'd probably get in some day management groups where there could be 80 per cent of the land owners' land managers who want to do the right thing. You deal with the other ones who aren't. That's a process of fairness. The other thing about this approach is that it could equally apply to the lowlands if you've got a traffic accident in a particular area, a hotspot, and you needed to land owner, manage it whether it's a local authority owned land. They could be compelled to or they could be asked to set some coal targets and then action taken if it doesn't happen. I think that one of the things about the deer management plans is that I've looked through the ones for the Ciaran Gorms area in terms of what they say. The issue is that they are variable in quality and, to my mind, the need around the actions has become more specific and more spatial. That's one of the key mechanisms and it's probably the thing that needs to happen next, which is that there are some good intentions in there and they're a lot better than they were, so let's be very clear on that as well. Taking it from intentions to what does that mean on the ground and who's going to do what, by what timescale and where, I think, is the next—that bit needs to happen as well. That's happening in some places. You heard about, I think, Drew mentioned this morning about the wooden expansion stuff from the Monolith. It's not everywhere again, but it's a question of, well, if there are people lagging behind in the voluntary principle, what do you do about that? I think that that game comes back to what's your mechanism for shunting the ones that are further behind to make them do the things that we're looking for. Step change that SNH are calling for. Is that your interpretation of that? We've touched on section 7s there, although somebody wants to add anything on section 7s and their effectiveness. Let's move on to section 8, Angus MacDonald. Cymru. Obviously, section 8s have already been touched on in this session, and you'll have heard my question regarding section 8s to the previous panel and my reference to Ian Ross's comments that SNH would be prepared to enforce section 8s following an assessment. Many, I think, it's fair to say, with a vested interest share of frustration that no section 8 has been enforced as yet. Can you tell us if there are any circumstances where, in your view, you would have expected a section 8 power to have been enforced and why you think they haven't been? I think that there's a lot of—I mean, the John Mayer Trust would have been involved in two different section 7s in one in Redalbyn and one in Ardvarra, which I've talked to it for. I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty going forward as to what that would look like in terms of how it's open to challenge, how effective it will be. All the different owners that are involved is the section 8 going to apply to all of them, or is it just going to apply to one of them? Is it going to apply to fencing? Is it going to apply to culling deer? So there's a lot of uncertainty, and I think that for that reason, to be fair to SNH, given the powers that I've got, John Millan's evidence a long time ago said that he just thought it wasn't going to work, and he was at the chair of the deer commission at the time. I think that there's a lot of uncertainty about it. I think that it also comes back to this idea that it's a very complicated way of delivering something, and a section 8, if it's delivered, what does that mean? Is that a one-off cull that then gets imposed and then you walk away, or is it a long-term thing? Whereas the mechanism that we've been discussing here is something that can actually A, it's based on the individual owner, and they're doing something or the not, and B, it could be repeated every year, so they keep the pressure up. The fear about a section 8 is that we spent years on this process, we get to section 8, and a decision is made to reduce the population to X for a one-off cull, and then what happens? It seems to be a very convoluted way of doing something. Experience, we've had deer management groups for 30 years, we've had deer management clans, we've had section 7 since 1990. I don't know how we'll to say it, but, for whatever reason, it isn't working and it's not going to work, and so I'm not overly confident that section 8 is going to be the answer to the problem. Dave Thompson, Dave Stewart, sorry, apologies. Thank you. Can I just make a general point? I'm not necessarily looking at the panel to reply to this. My general sense in Parliament is that if legislation is fit for purpose, the agency charged to carry out should carry out, be that the police, the fiscal service, whoever. If there's a sense that legislation is faulty or not fit for purpose, we've had examples of that with the coder ruling and the intent farmers, then it's up to Parliament to correct that legislation, and a committee can do that, or Parliament as a whole can do that. I suppose the general point I'm making is you either use it or you don't use it. The idea that it has to be tested in court, if that was what we did for every piece of legislation, the courts would be full every day from now to the end of the century. That's not the way a legislation is planned to work. I'll just make that general point. If the witnesses want to mention it, that's fine, but I'm afraid that I can't understand the general point that S&H is making. No one has suggested so far that legislation is faulty. If it is faulty, the Scottish Government has got space and time to correct it, and a one-line bill is going to be Parliament. I don't know if Simon Perth wants to respond to that. If I may, yes, just briefly. I think that the situation that we currently have, because Section 8 is so cumbersome and has not been used for so many reasons, whatever those reasons may be, unfortunately people pick up the signals of this reluctance and what develops is a culture of impunity. That doesn't help progress. Indeed, I don't know if you've asked S&H how much money they've spent on one Section 11 currently threatening to go to Section 8, but it's a huge amount of money. I don't have the numbers myself, but it would shock you, I think. If we're going to go through that rigmarole for every Section 11 that might turn into a Section 8, we're finished. We're not going to make any progress. That would turn into an 8. Sorry, Section 7 turning into an 8. In other words, I think the analogy with a guard dog is quite good. If you've got a guard dog but it takes you an enormous amount of time to let it off its leash and do its job, people will start ignoring that it's there. We need an effective, nimble, straightforward, clear-cut, effective back-up power, and the paradox of that is that it might never need to be used. Angus MacDonald. On Simon Pepper's point, would you not feel, however, that even serving one Section 8 would help to concentrate mines? If it's at the cost of, I don't know, £1 million, then you could argue that it's questionable value for money. On that, what would each of you suggest would be the best way forward from this point on? If you were in a position to make recommendations, Simon Pepper. May I make a fairly clear recommendation? We have reached the point where most of us would agree with the best will in the world that we don't have a system that is functioning smoothly. It's not delivering the goods. If it was, your predecessor committee would not have felt it necessary to light a rocket under the system and get things moving, as they clearly now are. Many of us have doubts about whether it can still deliver the goods. I think that the land reform review group proposals offer an extremely worthwhile avenue for further discussion between the necessary parties to come up with ways that the working of the voluntary principle could be improved to make it easier for everybody. I think that this would be an enormous advantage to the deer management groups and to those trying to operate in the lowlands. We need to be in a position, I suggest, where, if there are still some elements that are not performing in two to three years' time, whenever we come back to look at outcomes, again, if there are some that aren't performing, we must be in a position to be able to deal with that decisively. Otherwise, we're back into the same old going round the mulberry bush. We're in a position now. We acknowledge that there has been some progress from the deer management groups, albeit that's been quite late, even though we've had recognition of the public interest in wild deer and natural approach since 2008. However, what we really need is a system of deer management that doesn't just apply to the 40 per cent of the land area that is covered by the deer management groups. We need a system that covers all deer over all of Scotland. I mean, we have suggested, again, we would go back to the land reform review group proposals, putting the owners on the individual land owners to come up with a proposition that recognises the public interest and then for SNH to consider that, agree with it or disagree with it. We would agree that a sort of time-limited short task-led group with the basis of the land reform review group proposals and other considerations to come up with a formal proposition with the deer management groups involving FCS and SNH would be a good way to develop some more concrete proposals that might help to sort out some of this mess. That was two very quick points. One is, I think, the needs to be spatial articulation of the public interest. I think that that's really crucial at a level that people can understand and relate to in terms of flood management, in terms of all those other things, peatland restoration, boolean expansion, that the deer management groups can then relate to. I think that's absolutely crucial. That specific thing around section 7 and section 8 would be to see whether they fit for purpose. There's probably two parts. It's probably no surprise that I agree with Duncan O'Uing because we put in that response and we'd very much like to be part of a short term working group with a clear terms of reference and perhaps come back to the committee in six months with a solution. I think that I agree with all that. I just want to add at the point that there's also in terms of the stalkers out there, in terms of private and, as I said, public sector. There's a lot of concern and uncertainty and I think that the public interest isn't very clearly expressed. I think that that would really help to have SNH in a regulatory role where they're just saying this is what you need to call and everyone's clear. The deer management groups are in and you just end up with confusion and conflict relief, which has been going on for years and I don't think that that's really helpful to our rural communities. I think that we'll wrap that up now. Thank you for your time, as with the previous panel. At its next meeting on 22 December, the committee will take evidence from the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform on the Scottish Government's draft budget 2017-18. We also consider subordinate legislation. As agreed earlier, we will now move into private session. I ask that the public gallery be cleared as a public part of the meeting is closed.