TROUBLE IN PARADISE
Editor Richard Bath investigates the commotion in Assynt surrounding a government-funded deer fence
The imposition of a costly government-funded 12-mile deer fence around an estate owned by absentee landlords in an area of outstanding natural beauty has sparked a right royal rammy in Assynt, pitching crofters and landowners against an alphabet soup of environmental quangos and charities. Richard Bath investigates.
In a sleepy corner of Scotland which is known primarily for its stunning landscapes and peerless wild trout lochs, a rebellion is underway against a major scheme which locals say has been sneaked in under cover of Covid and with no consultation with the local community. Assynt isn’t usually a maelstrom of political ferment and challenges to authority, but that changed in mid-August. The catalyst was a seemingly innocuous email to the Assynt Community Council from the Woodland Trust, outlining ‘an exciting initiative to restore woodland, heath and peatland across the 2,000ha [5,000 acre] Eisg Brachaidh Estate [which] has secured more than £420,000 thanks to support from the Scottish Natural Heritage Biodiversity Challenge Fund and Woodland Trust Scotland.’
So far so laudable, but it added that: ‘The project aims to restore a range of habitats including saving irreplaceable old woodland remnants and improving the condition of heathland communities on this part of the Inverpolly SAC. Key to its success is reducing grazing pressure from deer. We plan to do this by installing a deer fence around the estate boundary.’
The penultimate sentence was business as usual; the last sentence incendiary. A chorus of dissenting voices from Assynt immediately starting picking holes in the plan. The list of questions was enormous.
Is it appropriate to site a 12-mile fence clearly visible from iconic mountains such as Suilven in a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Special Protection Area (for birds), a National Scenic Area, a Wildland area and Special Area of Conservation? Why was there, almost unbelievably for a scheme that proponents admitted would be ‘highly controversial’, no environmental impact assessment before approval was granted? Why was there no consultation with affected locals? Why, at £22 per metre, is the fence so expensive? Could the money be better spent? Why not fence off the plantations of new trees, as happens elsewhere? How can the tenant farmer’s 571 sheep and 30 cattle continue to graze across 12,000 acres of Inverpolly and 5,000 acres of Eisg Brachaidh if there’s a fence across their range? How much would the estate’s owners, the absentee Wayne family, be able to claim in carbon credits as a result of this costly scheme?
But at the heart of the reaction to proposals is a recurring and increasingly problematic theme: deer.
The Woodland Trust’s plan is to fence in all of the deer on Eisg Brachaidh and then exterminate them in one or two out-of-season days, with up to 300 stags, hinds and calves being killed at a time when there may be no market for their carcasses. Once the fence is in place, deer won’t be able to use their normal migratory routes and will move to grazing via the low ground and the road, bringing them into direct conflict with humans. For local landowners – whether it’s Inverpolly Estate owner and Eisg Brachaidh agricultural tenant David
Davies, the Assynt Crofters Trust, or the 45,000-acre Assynt Foundation (a community buyout funded by taxpayer money) – the detrimental impact on stalking will reduce their already slim income, possibly to the point of unviability.
The subject of deer is a particularly emotive one in Assynt because there is recent context. In 2017, Scottish Natural Heritage (now NatureScot) tried to use their regulatory powers to force the Assynt Crofters Trust and local landowners to cull huge numbers of deer, before recanting in the face of fierce local resistance (some crofters said they would be prepared to go to prison to defend their rights as landowners) and agreeing to a plan of managing deer via culling, fenced enclosures and monitoring.
Nor are SNH and Woodland Scotland the only group whose willingness to put trees before deer brought them into conflict with locals in Assynt. In 2012 the John Muir Trust – which in 2015 infamously culled large numbers of deer on Knoydart and then left the carcasses on the hill for horrified walkers to stumble across – culled 100 stags on its Quinag Estate in Assynt, leading to a furious reaction locally.
The deer-reduction policies of Scotland’s biggest landowner, Dane Anders Povlsen, on whose Glenfeshie Estate deer were controversially culled using helicopters, simply adds to the sense that deer are under threat from all sides. So, too, does the indefensible decision of Scottish government agency Forestry & Land Scotland to order its contracted stalkers to shoot hinds seven weeks before the start of the legal season, while they still have dependant calves who will then starve to death.
Although many of the questions thrown up by the controversy over Eisg Brachaidh are around who is best placed to oversee the stewardship of the
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Deer won’t be able to use their normal migratory routes and will move to grazing via the low ground
countryside, at its heart is an ongoing debate around the place of deer in our ecosystem. For conservationists, forestry interests and Holyrood, most of whom are not based in the Highlands, the priority is trees, and their starting point is that, without any natural predators and with milder weather leading to significantly lower mortality, there are simply far too many deer for the countryside to sustain.
For the crofters and landowners who live in Assynt there is a belief that both the numbers of deer and the damage they do are overstated, and the steps that could be taken to mitigate their impact, such as fencing juvenile tree plantations, are understated. While most in Assynt are open to reducing deer numbers, there’s also a belief that ideologically driven diktats from well-staffed quangos are making policies a fait accompli, and that consultation with already overstretched local land managers is an afterthought, if it happens at all.
This is certainly the view of David Davies, the owner at Inverpolly and agricultural tenant at Eisg Brachaidh. Such an ambitious replanting scheme would, he says, normally be overseen through the Forestry Grant Scheme, but because there is an agricultural occupier (him), organisations which do not have the processes in place to run such a project have been handed the reins and are trying to rush the project through under cover of Covid. They are doing so, he says, in defiance of the Scottish Land Commission’s Good Practice Programme, which is designed to ‘support those with responsibility for taking decisions about land to navigate and implement the reasonable expectations of engaging with local communities impacted by those decisions’.
Instead, says Davies, ‘there has been no consultation, and no means to make any meaningful contribution to the development of the project. The initial funding appears to have been achieved with no background information or analysis back in March. Nothing was said all the way through the Covid lockdown, but the project is now apparently imminent, with Environment Impact Assessment still in progress, and no assurance about the outcome of that.
‘Many people would say that the iconic Assynt landscape is the last place in Scotland where you would want to be putting twelve miles of deer fence without any oversight or scrutiny and you would certainly expect an organisation like Nature Scot (formerly SNH) to pay more attention in Assynt when they have had their fingers burned here before.
‘The core problem is that the cash has been allocated first, and then the detail has been left for others to work out afterwards. We are said to be in a biodiversity crisis, everything is said to be urgent, and money needs to be shovelled out the door as soon as possible. The Government’s response to this will be measured in pounds spent, not on outcomes achieved. Proper process, which has been corrupted, must not get in the way or slow things down.’
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Ideologically driven diktats from well-staffed quangos are making policies a fait accompli
Davies’ argument is that the whole decision-making process has been flawed from beginning to end. He cites the fact that there was only one tender, when public procurement rules state that there must be five tenders for any project over £50,000 to proceed. Along with other knowledgeable locals – such as Phil Jones, the secretary of the Assynt Community Council, who claimed that ‘many in the local community regard this [scheme] as an extraordinary waste of public money’ – he also takes issue with the Woodland Trust Scotland’s characterisation of the parlous state of Eisg Brachaidh.
‘If you read the application form, you will be in no doubt that Eisg Brachaidh is in terrible condition, and that the urgency to do something is immediate and now,’ said Davies. ‘However, the broad range of habitats within the area are generally held to be in favourable or recovering condition, the woodland excepted. We know this because NatureScot have said so, and this has been confirmed again in the summer of 2020. The application process
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The money could be used to transform deer management across all of Assynt, beyond Eisg Brachaidh
overstated the need, and NatureScot read what it wanted to hear and awarded the money with no due diligence whatsoever. Because the money has been awarded, those receiving it are understandably reluctant to let it go.’
For their part, NatureScot are still presenting a robust defence of their scheme. ‘Sustainable deer management across Scotland is essential in helping address the climate emergency and biodiversity loss,’ said a spokesperson. ‘We continue to work with partners such as Scottish Forestry, deer managers and environment groups, such as the Woodland Trust, to strengthen and develop approaches to manage deer, as well as encourage and protect woodland planting, across Scotland. That way, we can meet the challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change.’
There will inevitably be some who believe that the imposition of the 12-mile fence is about NatureScot reasserting its authority after its 2017 climbdown on deer cull numbers. However, Assynt insiders believe this is more cock-up than conspiracy from a NatureScot organisation which is subject to huge pressure from conservation groups and the Scottish Government. On the one hand new chief executive Francesca Osowska is keen to establish herself with a marque project which signals the agency’s intent and ambition, yet more prosaic considerations also apply – in a pandemic it is difficult to spend money, yet every quango lives in terror of not spending its allocated funds in case it leads to next year’s budget being cut.
There is, though, a way through this impasse. Experienced woodlands consultant Victor Clements of the Native Woods Cooperative Scotland believes that rather than creating a huge Berlin Wall of a deer fence, a combination of strategic woodland enclosures and a selective reduction in deer numbers would be far less costly, less unsightly, come with none of the other downsides of the current plan, and achieve the desired end result while giving both sides a win.
‘My overall impression is that no-one is in control,’ he says. ‘The scheme is clearly identified as controversial and high risk, and the emphasis is more on public relations than practical considerations. But there is an alternative, which is to defer any payment to 2021/22, and give the people who know what they are doing the time to look at this properly.
‘If it is not possible to do this, find a way. NatureScot need to bend their own rules if they have to – which should not be problematic as they are already getting bent in every way imaginable to try and push this scheme through.
‘My own view on all this has long been that this fence is not necessary. If this sort of money is available, then it could be used to transform deer management across all of Assynt, north and south, well beyond Eisg Brachaidh. The issues at Eisg Brachaidh have been overstated and are not a fair assessment of reality.
‘There is a much better, lower risk and cheaper way to do this, one that will keep everyone happy.’