Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Official Report 462KB pdf

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Petition

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Control of Wild Geese (PE1490)

Our final item before we go into private session is consideration of petition PE1490, by Patrick Krause, on behalf of the Scottish Crofting Federation, on the control of wild geese numbers. I refer members to the paper and I invite comments from members.

I should make a declaration of interests, as the goose issue affects my constituency. This is an example of how you get to experience everything twice in life; I experienced it as a minister and I now experience it as the member for Argyll and Bute, which has a severe goose problem.

I draw the committee’s attention to two important documents. The first is the Islay goose strategy, drawn up last October by Scottish Natural Heritage and others, paragraph 1.5 of which reads:

“The strategy is required for two reasons”,

the first of which is

“damage by barnacle geese on Islay is continuing at a level which causes serious agricultural damage. On-going high levels of damage threaten the viability of farming on Islay, which underpins economic and social viability as well as providing wider biodiversity benefits”.

In December 2014, shortly after the strategy was issued, there was a press release from RSPB Scotland, in which Stuart Housden was quoted as saying:

“We believe that the evidence base on which that cull is proposed is fundamentally inadequate.”

There was no cull. He went on to say:

“We fully acknowledge that grazing geese sometimes affect agricultural operations, but past experience on Islay has shown that, with barnacle goose numbers at their current stable level on the island, less destructive means of managing those impacts are available”.

Over 10 years or more, there has been an attempt to bridge the gap between those two positions. One position says that increasing goose numbers—even the current high numbers, which seem moderately stable—are entirely tolerable and create no difficulty, and the other position is that of those who are actually on the ground and running farms and crofts and who can see the damage that is taking place. The reality is that the damage remains considerable. Although I pay tribute to the Scottish Government for its continued attempts to ensure that there is a reconciliation of those positions, they have not been adequately reconciled, and Patrick Krause is quite right to draw attention to the fact that there needs to be more substantial action to protect the livelihoods of those who are involved in agriculture in the Western Isles, in Orkney to some extent, certainly in the Argyll islands, and now increasingly on the Argyll mainland, where the number of barnacle geese continues to rise. I rarely hold constituency surgeries in Lismore, Campbeltown, Kintyre or Gigha, or even further into Argyll, at which I do not get people telling me that the goose numbers are causing them considerable problems in the running of their farms or crofts.

The issue is not resolved. It requires considerably more work, and there needs to be a recognition that the convention that governs the matter gives a derogation to those farmers and crofters who find that their crops and livelihoods are being adversely affected. The right attitude to the petition is to take the issue back to the Scottish Government and to press it to get the widest possible derogation for agriculture, so that the existence of agriculture in fragile parts of Scotland is not put at risk by what is taking place.

Again on a constituency theme, I very much endorse what Mike Russell has said. I am grateful that the communication problems that led to the Solway scheme not providing written evidence to us earlier were resolved and that it has been able to do that. I am also glad that the minister felt able to meet those who are involved in the Solway scheme fairly recently in the Parliament and that she has visited the Solway scheme.

That scheme has been hugely successful. It has doubled the number of Svalbard barnacle geese. The Solway is the only place in Scotland that they come to, and that is an important part of their life cycle. However, the problems that the farmers are facing are now being exacerbated by the fact that the CAP reforms are reducing the support that is available to farmers in that part of Scotland. A lot of these guys are at the end of their tether and are now threatening to come out of the scheme. That would be a disaster given the amount of funding and resource that has gone into it—so successfully—over the years.

I endorse the position that Mike Russell has taken, but with regard to my constituents in the Solway scheme, which I think is the biggest after the Islay scheme.

I have four brief points. First, this demonstrates the need for continued data gathering and analysis so that we can see which schemes are effective and represent value for money. The second point was partly made by Mike Russell, but it is certainly made in the response from Patrick Krause. It is that we need to balance food production and wildlife management, and analysis of the research is important to guide investment for the future.

Thirdly, we can see that investment in different geographical areas is making a big difference, and it is important to learn the lessons from that. Fourthly, the point about goose meat opportunities is an interesting issue to pick up in the context of the year of food and drink. We need to look at opportunities for public procurement and new market research so that, where geese are culled, a positive byproduct comes from that.

It would be good to go back to ministers and raise the issues, including the particular ones that colleagues have mentioned.

I agree with Mike Russell and Sarah Boyack that the issue has not yet been properly addressed and that further action is needed. The submission from the Scottish Crofting Federation raises a number of existing points that still require clarification from the Scottish Government. For example, there is still an issue in the Uists, which have not hit their targets. It has to be asked whether SNH is failing to deliver on the matter.

On the plus side, it is worth noting that the programme in Lewis is under way and the Government is allowing the sale of goose meat on Lewis and Harris as well as on the Uists. That is a plus, but we are still not where we want to be. The Government needs to clarify a number of points, as the Scottish Crofting Federation points out.

I would like to make a point about the Uists. Last night, in this very room, we had a celebration of the 2015 United Nations international year of soils, and the chief executive of SNH, Susan Davies, pointed out that the two major issues that it is tackling in that regard are the peatlands, which we know much about, and the fragile machairs, particularly in the Uists. Those issues have to come into play when we are talking about the way in which geese affect the fragile nature of those grazings and those lands in the Uists. There is a very good reason why we need to take them into account, and they have not been taken into account in the Government’s response at the present time.

Thankfully, I do not have a constituency interest in this, but it is a hugely important issue. By any reasonable judgment, the answers that we have received from the Government thus far have not been as comprehensive as we would like. Patrick Krause says that they are incomplete and inadequate, and that is a fair assessment. As a parliamentary committee, we should pursue both the lack of response to the specific questions that we posed and the important on-the-ground issues that colleagues have noted.

That sums up what we need to do. We need to go back to the Government and get those answers. Do members agree that we should write to the Government on the basis of Patrick Krause’s arguments and back them up by saying that we would like complete answers as soon as possible?

Members indicated agreement.

At our next meeting, which will be on 22 April, we will consider the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007 (Fixed Penalty Notices) Order 2015.

I wish everybody a great Easter recess.

12:00 Meeting continued in private until 12:37.