Image: Intensive grouse moor management on Millden Estate, Angus.
A report on the damaging environmental and social impacts of the intensification of grouse moor management in Scotland is published today by the League Against Cruel Sports. The authors of the report are Dr Ruth Tingay and myself. The report can be downloaded here (658kb pdf) and a short video here.
The report highlights a land use that where Scotland’s hills are being turned into intensively managed game reserves, where protected species are being persecuted, where electric fencing and roads are being constructed with impunity, and where much of this is eligible for public subsidy.
Image: New grouse butt construction with Firmounth and Scottish Rights of Way sign indicating junction between the ancient Firmounth and Fungle routes (Grid Ref. NO499853) Photo: James Carron
The evidence we have uncovered is a shocking indictment of a land use that is out of control. The methods being deployed to maximise grouse numbers are damaging the environment and are subject to no effective regulation or oversight by the Scottish Government and other public authorities.
The report is published days after a scientific assessment of many of these issues was published by Scottish Natural Heritage. The report was requested in response to concerns of SNH Board members about intensified moorland management practices in some areas, including the spread of hill tracks, increase in muirburn, heavy culling of mountain hares, and using chemicals to dose red grouse to increase numbers of grouse for shooting.
It also comes on the day that the Office for National Statistics published data showing that 33% of jobs in Angus pay below the living wage – the highest percentage of any Scottish local authority. Two of the case studies in the report focus on grouse moors in Angus. This may have something to do with the fact that, as the report reveals, the 2640 full-time equivalent jobs in grouse moor management pay an average of £11,041 which is below the national minimum wage.
Heatmap of Confirmed and Probable Raptor Persecution Incidents 2005-2014
The report will be launched at a fringe meeting at the Scottish National Party conference on Thursday 15 October at 6.30pm.
This blog, together with a subsequent one published on 24 February 2016, were the subject of defamation proceedings brought by Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC against myself in a citation from the Court of Session served on me on 21 March 2017. Since 30 March 2017, following legal advice, the blogs have been password protected. The case (Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC vs. Andy Wightman A111/17) was heard by Lord Clark at the Court of Session from 29 October 2019 – 8 November 2019. A Decision by Lord Clark was published on 11 March 2020 which rejected all of the pleas of the pursuer in what was a comprehensive victory for me. As a matter of law therefore neither of these two blogs are defamatory. The Pursuer issued a statement to the media on 11 March stating that “we will certainly appeal the decision”. However, the 28 day period in which to appeal has now expired and no appeal has been lodged. I am pleased therefore to now remove the password protection and enable them to be read as they were published subject to one caveat.
Lord Clark concluded that in the blogs (and a few tweets which were also complained of) I had made four untrue statements. Contrary to claims by my detractors, none of these was a lie. Indeed Lord Clark made clear that I was a “credible and reliable witness” who “gave his evidence in an honest, straightforward and coherent manner”. Lord Clark stated that “I accept his evidence about what he knew and did not know at the time of the various publications” and that “the suggestion he made statements that he knew were untrue simply has no proper basis.” [Lord Clark at 73]. I have thus edited the two blogs with a footnote marked in red to indicate the relevant untruths and why they arose.
Finally, what was revealed of this case in Lord Clark’s decision was a fraction of what was revealed in Court. What was revealed in Court was a fraction of the evidence assembled in the 1494 Productions (written documents lodged as evidence) lodged in the Court (59 by the Pursuer and 1435 by Defender). And what was revealed in the Productions was a fraction of what I have learned in the course of extensive preparatory research over the past 3 years about the activities of Highland Titles and Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC. I will be publishing a detailed blog revealing what really went on over the past three years. Given the litigous nature of both parties, I will, of course, have these blogs legalled before publication.
UPDATE ENDS
If you plan to set up a fundraising campaign for an environmental project, it is a good idea to think carefully about who is involved and what techniques you plan to use.
Wildcat Haven is a project designed to protect the Scottish Wildcat by preventing hybridisation with feral cats and providing a network of reserves to manage as wildcat habitat. (1)
Yesterday, it launched its campaign. Sponsorship has been provided by Volkswagen, a company responsible for polluting the environment with nitrous oxide emissions that it attempted to conceal through one of the biggest corporate frauds of recent decades. The other sponsor is our old friend Highland Titles, a company based in Alderney that is wholly owned by a charitable trust (Highland Titles Charitable Trust for Scotland) registered in Guernsey. See my blog of February for further information on their operations.
Some time ago, Highland Titles Ltd. blocked my IP address but it came as something of a surprise to discover that I have also been blocked from Wildcat Haven’s website despite only having just seen it. Despite this, I have access via a proxy IP in Germany.
Highland Titles appear to have established a very close relationship with Wildcat Haven which operates via Wildcat Haven CIC (Community Interest Company) and Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC. The Registered Address of both is in Cornwall. One of the defining features of a Community Interest Company is the asset lock – provision that in the event of winding up, the assets must transfer to a nominated body that is a community interest company, charity or Scottish charity; or a body established outside Great Britain that is equivalent to any of those persons.(2)
In the case of Wildcat Haven CIC, the nominated body is a community-based company, Sunart Community Company. The money, however, is being raised by Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC and the nominated body here is Highland Titles Charitable Trust for Scotland. Thus, in the event of Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC being wound up, its assets will be taken over by Highland Titles Charitable Trust for Scotland in Guernsey.
Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC was incorporated on 30 June 2015 with two Directors, Mrs Emily O’Donoghue and Mr Douglas Wilson. Wilson is a Director of Highland Titles Ltd (1) and a Trustee of Highland Titles Charitable Trust for Scotland. (2)
Wildcat Haven has adopted Highland Title’s dubious methods of selling small souvenir plots of land and claiming that the purchaser is the owner (see extensive faq to this effect). This claim was comprehensively debunked in February this year by legal blogger loveandgarbage. If there remains any doubt, here is the content of a letter written by Professor George Gretton, Lord President Reid Professor of Law at Edinburgh University to the Daily Record newspaper.
Dear Mr Ferguson,
Under Scots law, ownership of land passes from seller to buyer by registration in the Land Register of Scotland. No registration? Then no transfer. This is currently set out at section 50 of the Land Registration etc (Scotland) Act 2012. (The previous law was essentially the same.)
(“Souvenir plot” is a term defined in section 22 of the 2012 Act.)
Therefore, if a souvenir plot is sold, registration is required, if the buyer is to acquire ownership of the plot.
But the Land Register does not accept souvenir plots: this rule is set out at section 22 of the 2012 Act. (The previous law was essentially the same.)
So if a company sells a souvenir plot, the sale cannot be completed. The buyer of the plot does not become owner of the plot. Ownership of such plots remains with the company.
Whether buyers of souvenir plots are informed that the seller will retain ownership is something I have no information on.
Sincerely, George L Gretton
Lord President Reid Professor of Law University of Edinburgh School of Law Old College South Bridge Edinburgh EH8 9YL
Professor Gretton should know – he wrote the Land Registration (Scotland) Act 2012. See also, a recent academic paper by Jill Robbie and Malcolm Combe which reviews the law in this area.
The plots being offered for sale by Wildcat Haven cost from £30 to £250 for one square foot of land which purchasers are assured, gives them a “personal right to a souvenir plot of land in Wildernesse Wood and the opportunity to change their name to Lord or Lady Wildernesse. Wildernesse Wood is described as “part of the first Wildcat Haven”. “We are asking you to help us by actually buying part of the land we plan to conserve.”, the website claims.
So where is Wildernesse Wood? The Wildcat Haven website does not say, but from this promotional video, it is clear that it is a plot of land above Loch Loyne on the A87 between Invergarry and Glen Cluanie.
In the video, Dr Paul O’Donoghue is filmed standing in the wood. He claims that “Every square foot of land we buy has a direct positive impact on the Scottish wildcat. By supporting this project, you’re helping save the Scottish wildcat step by step.”
There are two problems with this claim.
First of all, this land is, in fact owned by Highland Titles Ltd. who are already selling souvenir plots in a “nature reserve” they have named Bumblebee Haven where you can purchase plots ranging from 10 square feet (£49.99) to 1000 square feet (£499.99) and call yourself Lord or Lady Glencoe (even though the land is 50 miles north of Glencoe).
The land was acquired in February 2014 and the title can be seen here and the plan here The land is 75ha in extent which, if all sold in 10 square foot plots would generate £40.35 million in sales revenue paid to a company in Alderney in the Channel Islands.
But the more fundamental problem is that the Wildcat Haven project is in Ardnamurchan and Morven – see map below.
The land that supporters are being invited to acquire is not only already owned by a company in Alderney and being sold plot by plot for bumblebees, this “first wildcat haven” is 60 miles to the north of Ardnamurchan and Morven and well outside the area being promoted for wildcat conservation.
I offer this information in the spirit of consumer advice to anyone considering taking up the offer to become the owner of a square foot of land to create a Wildcat Haven.
AN ADDENDUM
As an addendum to the Highland Titles blog in February, I contacted the Chief Minister of Guernsey Jonathan Le Tocq to ask whether it would be possible to examine copies of Annual Returns and Accounts of both Highland Titles Ltd., registered in Alderney and Highland Titles Charitable Trust for Scotland, registered in Guernsey. As I argued then,
“Revenue is paid into a company registered in Alderney but as no accounts are published, it is impossible to be sure. The sole share is held by Wilson and McGregor as Trustees for the Guernsey charity. Under the law of Guernsey, no charity is obliged to provide accounts for public inspection and it need only file accounts under certain circumstances.
Thus nobody knows if in fact the charity is in receipt of any funds whatsoever. As the sole shareholder it is not entitled to have any of the revenues of Highland Titles Ltd. transferred to it. These revenues may well be paid out by the Alderney company as management fees or any manner of other payments to third parties.”
Mr Le Tocq informed me that under Guernsey law, the charity is not required to submit any financial returns and access to the Alderney company records would only be available to law enforcement agencies if there was evidence of criminal conduct.
Thus, because this land is owned in an offshore tax haven, we are unable to obtain any information about what happens to the money generated by selling off souvenir plots.
(1) There is some disagreement over the appropriate strategy to be adopted to save the Scottish wildcat. An official project, Scottish Wildcat Action is being run by 20 organisatiosn with the support of the Scottish Government and Forestry Commission among others. Those behind the Wildcat Haven project, however, have criticised the official programme.
(2) The Community Interest Company Regulations 2005
UPDATE 1500hrs 30 Sep 2015
The following response was emailed to me by Emily O’Donoghue and posted on the Wildcat Haven website here. The response is also contained in a comment below this post together with my follow up questions.
Dear Andy,
Just hoped to respond briefly to your primary concerns about the Wildcat Haven project.
Highland Titles Charitable Trust is currently listed as our nominated body, it is acting as a placeholder whilst we agree with a few local organisations in the West Highlands who would be best placed to become the ongoing nominated body. Of course, you’ll have to wait and see on thisone, but we have already sent in paperwork replacing HT with another organisation, I’m sure records will be updated shortly.
Our website repeatedly states that the plots being sold are souvenir plots and “a bit of fun”, our own FAQ outlines that registration of souvenir plots is legally impossible so this seems little revelation.
In terms of location, the current Haven fieldwork area is in West Lochaber (Ardnamurchan, Morvern and Sunart). We have been highly successful in neutering feral cats in this area (we have neutered 50 in the last 7 months alone, leaving close to 500 square miles free of intact feral or pet cats) and are now ready to expand. You are right to highlight that the land in Loch Loyne is north of the current Haven area, however that is the very point, we are expanding northwards and the the long term goal has always been to cover the entire Highlands west of the Great Glen. Loch Loyne is ideally situated being to the east of the Knoydart peninsula and near to a major land bridge to the rest of the Highlands, which needs to be protected from feral cat migration. Wildcat monitoring activities are already underway in the area, we are also looking to start operations in Sutherland which you will note is also well north of the current Haven zone, as well as looking to buy land within the current fieldwork area.
Part of the Loch Loyne site has been gifted to us by Highland Titles and no plots in the area provided to us have been previously sold, so it was free for them to pass on, allowing us to offer actual physical plots to customers immediately, rather than just a promise of buying land in future.
Wildcat Haven has been around protecting wildcats since 2008, our team comes with considerable scientific and conservation credibility, we are currently the only effort to protect wildcats in the wild rather than place them in captivity and our work has been commended and supported by organisations such as Humane Society International for its exceptional standards of animal welfare and delivery of humane feral cat control, as well as receiving considerable coverage across national media recording our work with feral cats, wildcats, local schools and communities for many years.
We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank you for providing us with reduced rate access to the Who Owns Scotland database around 2008/2009 when the project was starting up and needed to start communicating with landowners; you helped us get where we are today, thanks a lot for your support and promotion of the Wildcat Haven project.
Emily O’Donoghue, Director, Wildcat Haven
I replied as follows.
Emily,
Thanks for your response.
1. It may be a bit of fun but you are asking folk to help you by “actually buying part of the land we plan to conserve” You need to be much clearer that people who spend £100 do not become owners of the land.
2. You say that part of the Loch Loyne site has been gifted to you. Can you tell me when this transaction took place and when it was submitted to the Registers of Scotland for recording? Can you advise the extent and location of this land?
3. Are there any wildcats on the Loch Loyne land?
4. Why is my IP address blocked from viewing your website?
5. What is the role of Highland Titles in your fundraising? Do they receive any payment? Do they receive any commission on each plot sold?
Thank you.
UPDATE FOOTNOTE 19 APRIL 2020
(1)Douglas Wilson in fact was not a Director of WHE at the time of publication of this Blog. He was a Director of Wildcat Enterprises CIC from 6 June 2015 to 21 August 2015 (when he resigned) and again from 21 October 2015 until 17 February 2016 when he again resigned. Guernesy does not have a very transparent, publicly accessible registry of companies being one of the most secretive jurisdictions in the world. Thius, in order to obtain information about when a Director was appointed or resigned, one has to contact the Registry with a specific request. During my research for this blog, I thus phoned the Registry to find out if Douglas Wilson was still a Director of WHE and was informed that he was. I thus made the claim I did in good faith relying upon the only official source able to provide the information.
(2) Douglas Wilson was in fact not a Director of Highland Titles Charitable Trust for Scotland at the time of the publication of this Blog. Unlike the Guernsey Registry of Companies (see footnote (1) above), the Registry of Charities is publicly available online. I checked the entry for HTCTS during research for the Blog and noted that Douglas Wilson was recorded as a Director of HTCTS. I therefore relied upon this official source in good faith in writing the Blog. In fact, Douglas WIlson had resigned as a Director of HTCTS on 6 July 2015. This was not reported in the Guernsey Registry of charities until an update was published on 20 June 2016.
This is the Keynote Address by Professor James Hunter given to the Community Land Scotland Annual Conference, New Drumossie Hotel, Inverness, 21 May 2015.
James Hunter
In September 2009, the best part of six years ago, I was opening speaker at a Community Land Conference held in Harris.
The people there – some of you here today – were mostly from localities – from islands and estates – that, since the early 1990s, had been bought by the folk living on them.
We recognised in that a big achievement.
Our purpose, though, was not to celebrate success.
But, in a way, to do the opposite.
That’s clear from my own words that day in Harris.
I spoke, of course, of what had been accomplished.
More homes. More jobs. New businesses. Locally controlled renewables. Rising populations.
And above all else, what’s always seemed to me by far the greatest gain that comes from effort of the sort you’ve been, and are, engaged in.
What, at that Harris gathering, I called: ‘The boost community ownership gives to the self-esteem, self-confidence, of everyone involved with it.’
‘All this you know,’ I said then, ‘and I don’t propose to dwell on it.’
What I said next was this.
‘What I want to focus on is the public policy environment in which community ownership has taken off and prospered.’
‘For while community ownership,’ I said, ‘could not have succeeded in the absence of the tremendous efforts made by groups represented here, neither could it have succeeded without support from government and its agencies.’
‘It’s my belief,’ I said, ‘that, since the present Scottish government took office, this support, which grew steadily under previous administrations, has lessened very markedly.’
The government I spoke of was the SNP administration that took office two years earlier.
And since, let me be clear, I’m an SNP member, I wasn’t motivated by hostility to that party.
I was, I think, expressing what was then a common worry in community land circles.
A worry that, while in the early years of Scotland’s restored parliament, land reform, community land ownership, had been way up there in bright lights, those things – politically at any rate – had somehow ceased to matter.
That’s why, I guess, that Harris conference was called.
To work out what was needing done to put community land ownership, the wider cause of land reform, back on the Scottish government’s agenda.
Well that, for sure, ain’t something that need worry us today.
With a Community Empowerment Bill well through the Scottish Parliament …
With a Land Reform Bill being published in the next few weeks …
With all of that going on right now at Holyrood …
If anything, you wonder – now that land, and who controls it, is so central to our politics – just how the Scottish government’s got time for other things.
Why exactly this has come about is a big question.
It’s bound up, very clearly, with the wider politics of Scotland – with the way that, over the last year or two, for reasons we all know about, there’s been far more engagement, than for several generations, with where Scotland should be headed.
And not just constitutionally.
What’s been, what is, central to the thinking of an awful lot of people who, this last year or two, have got involved in what’s been happening … is something that goes way beyond where sovereignty’s located.
That something is, I think, a feeling that unfairness, inequality have of late become so glaring, so destructive … that this unfairness, inequality, need one way or another reining in.
This feeling’s not peculiar to Scotland.
Nor is concern about the damaging effects of inequality confined to people on the left.
Over the last year or so, there’s been growing recognition, in very many quarters, that extreme concentrations of wealth are not just damaging the world’s poor.
They’re hampering development across the board … by undermining the effectiveness of every capitalist economy.
Gobally, that view’s repeatedly expressed now by, for instance, International Monetary Fund president Christine Lagarde.
More locally, here in Scotland, to repeat, demands for greater social justice are increasingly bound up with politics of the sort that brought about the electoral drama that unfolded just two weeks back from today.
What, down the track, might a socially just Scotland look like?
Well, I’ve no exact idea.
But it wouldn’t be a Scotland, I believe, where half the country’s privately owned land is controlled by just 432 owners.
A lot of folk think likewise.
And that, I reckon, is one reason why the cause of land reform has of late been getting the attention that it has.
But it’s not the only reason.
Another one is you – Community Land Scotland.
From that conference in Harris, there emerged one main conclusion.
That the community land sector – the individuals, the local groups involved in it – had somehow to get organised.
The sector, it was thought, required a means of working out, and getting over, its collective – and distinctive – point of view.
A means of influencing public agencies and politicians.
A means of pressing the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government, to recognise that the need for land reform, for more community land ownership, had not at all been satisfied by what had been accomplished in the Parliament’s first session.
Important though that was.
Well, that means of getting over a community land sector viewpoint, it isn’t missing any longer.
You, to repeat, are it.
And I reckon you’ve been doing pretty well.
For starters, you’re encouraging, assisting, continued effort on the ground.
More and more of it – and this is heartening – in parts of Scotland where community land ownership is new.
Which is not to say that things are at a standstill in the areas where community land ownership – as we know it here in Scotland – first began.
In the Outer Isles, for instance, the most endangered species isn’t any more the corncrake. It’s the Hebridean landlord.
But like six years ago in Harris, it’s the politics of land reform I most want to touch on – what I called, back then, the public policy environment.
The institutional back-up to community land ownership.
The stuff that doesn’t of itself take more land, more resources, into local, and community, control.
But the stuff – like legislation, public agency support, the cash that’s needed for land purchase – the stuff that makes it easier for people to take charge of what’s around them.
Community Land Scotland’s made a difference – a big difference – in that area.
The arguments you’ve developed, the contacts that you’ve made, the influence you’ve managed to exert – all that’s helped greatly to re-energise the land reform process – a process that, six years ago, we felt had almost stalled.
In doing what you’ve done, if I may say so, you’ve been helped by your leadership.
And not least by your chairman.
He told me that on no account was I to say this.
So I reckon that’s my dinner out the window.
But David Cameron, I believe, has helped enormously to get community land ownership to where this cause now is …
Some milestones:
First, the Scottish Land Fund.
It’s re-establishment was something we called for in 2009.
Now it’s back.
And with more money. Not enough of course. It never, ever is enough. But that the Land Fund’s up and running once again is evidence that progress is being made.
The same’s true of the setting of a target of one million acres – nearly twice the present total – in community hands by 2020.
Still more significant was the setting up by government of the Land Reform Review Group.
With which I had a brief connection.
And which, after I left … and I hope the one thing didn’t follow from the other … and which after I left produced a report that’s both a good analysis of what wants doing and a pointer as to how it might be done.
From that there’s followed legislation.
The Community Empowerment Bill owes quite a bit to Land Reform Review Group recommendations.
The Land Reform Bill will owe a great deal more.
A word now about that Bill.
Uninformed, I stress, by any inside knowledge of what it might, or mightn’t, look like.
But informed by the consultation paper that was issued late last year.
And especially by what I think is the paper’s key suggestion.
In its Chapter Two.
Where you find what’s called a Draft Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement.
‘This [draft] statement,’ I quote, ‘ proposes a vision and a set of principles to guide the development of public policy on the nature and character of land rights in Scotland.’
I leave aside, for present purposes, the vision.
And of the consultation paper’s seven principles, I’ll touch on only one.
The first and – I believe – the most important.
It reads: ‘The ownership and use of land in Scotland should be in the public interest and contribute to the collective benefit of the people of Scotland.’
By way of underlining that, a borrowing from Donald Dewar.
When, in 1998, he introduced the Scotland Bill – the devolution Bill – he read out its first sentence:
‘There shall be a Scottish Parliament.’
Donald paused then for a moment, and said, ‘I like that.’
‘The ownership and use of land in Scotland should be in the public interest and contribute to the collective benefit of the people of Scotland.’
I like that.
Because it makes the point that ownership of land is in no way absolute.
What owners do, or don’t do, with their land, that statement says, is not, and can’t be, wholly up to them.
It’s contingent on the agreement, the consent, of the society, the community of which they’re part.
In some ways, to be sure, there’s nothing new about such thinking.
Although Scotland’s never experienced land reforms of the sort that long ago rid other European countries of the concentrated ownership that we alone still have, more limited reforms have several times been put in place.
Reforms made in the public interest.
Like giving crofters security of tenure in the 1880s.
Like giving tenant farmers similar – though less generous – security in the 1940s.
But reforms of that sort have had specific, limited and clearly stated purposes.
As did the Scottish Parliament’s Land Reform Act of 2003.
The new Land Reform Bill, if it includes a Land Rights Statement of the sort set out in last year’s consultation paper, will signal the arrival of a different approach.
One that opens the way not just to one or two particular measures but to an ongoing and evolving programme of reform.
A programme predicated on this powerful notion:
That the ownership and use of land in Scotland should be in the public interest and contribute to the collective benefit of the people of Scotland.
So how might a long-run programme of reform be developed?
Well, December’s consultation paper gives a steer on that as well.
Where it suggests that, in line with a Review Group recommendation, the Scottish government should establish a Land Reform Commission.
Which will have the job, presumably, of working out exactly what, beyond next month’s Reform Bill, will still need tackling if the public interest is to be secured.
Which is why the Land Reform Commission, if indeed we are to have one, has got to be got right.
This from Andy Wightman:
‘Key to the success of any such Commission will be its structure and remit. Clearly it needs to be autonomous and independent … [Members] also needs to be free of vested interest and [be] able to respond to a clear statutory remit without compromise.’
What might that remit be?
Well, I offer this from guidance given to the first Scottish Land Fund.
Not the present Fund. But the Fund launched in 2001 and afterwards – inexcusably – wound up.
One of that Fund’s objectives was simply this: ‘To diversify the pattern of land ownership in Scotland.’
Beyond that lay a recognition we need now to get back to.
A recognition that to have half of our privately owned land in the hands of 432 owners is, in itself, plain wrong.
Which is why a Land Commission needs to test, to scrutinise, each land-related measure to see if it’s …
Contributing to the collective benefit of the Scottish people … AND …
Helping to diversify the pattern of land ownership.
One more thought.
Arising from my having gone, on a Saturday in mid-April, to Glenfeshie.
Where Dick Balharry, who did so much for nature conservation, was being presented with a Geddes Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.
The day was, weather-wise, spectacular.
Some sun. Some cloud. Near perfect visibility. Snow still on the high tops that separate Glenfeshie from the upper part of Deeside.
The place a place of beauty. Seen that day at its best.
Which was good.
Because Dick, whom I’d known for a long time, was dying.
And just days later would be dead.
What Dick had meant to say that day was said for him by his son David.
There was media coverage of Dick’s message.
And if you didn’t catch it, you should maybe look it up. Because that message is important.
It has to do with how we might restore and rehabilitate environments and habitats that have been desperately degraded by misuse.
Evidence of just such restoration was all around us that day in Glenfeshie.
I hadn’t been around there for maybe 20 years.
And what I saw was truly heartening.
The rebirth of a native pinewood that, despite it’s having existed for millennia, appeared, until quite recently, to be headed for extinction.
Because of the priority given for ages in Glenfeshie – the priority given everywhere on properties like that – the priority to keeping up deer numbers.
With the outcome, in Glenfeshie, that no scots pine seedling there had reached maturity for at least a hundred years.
That the Glenfeshie pinewood’s now returning – without planting, without fencing – is down to stringent deer culls.
Conducted by a management team led by Thomas MacDonell – a local, Badenoch, man.
This team advised by Dick Balharry.
A team in place there in Glenfeshie because it’s owner is Anders Holch Polvsen – now in charge of more of Scotland than any other individual – except for the Duke of Buccleuch.
Mr Polvsen’s objectives are: ‘To purchase wild land to protect it against exploitation and to preserve as much wild nature … as possible for future generations.’
What might our prospective Land Reform Commission make of that?
Will what Mr Polvsen’s doing be judged to be, or not to be, ‘to the collective benefit’ of Scots?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that putting right the past misuse of Highland land requires more subtlety than seems to be allowed for in attempts to map what’s wild.
Not long after my trip to Glenfeshie, I was in Strathbrora.
I’ve been there quite a bit of late because, as David mentioned, I’m writing something presently on Sutherland.
My destination was a place called Ascoilemore.
Whose community, I think, I’ve got to know a little bit.
Which is a wee bit odd, I guess.
Because no-one’s lived in Ascoilemore for the best part of two centuries.
This being one of sixty-two Stathbrora townships destroyed in the course of the Sutherland Clearances.
There were eight, nine, ten, eleven dwellings there in Ascoilemore.
Now reduced to little more than squared off undulations in the turf.
I don’t know which of these vestigial ruins were once part of the house that – until Thursday 31 May 1821 – was home to a woman by the name of Jessie Ross.
I do know something of what happened there when, at two o’clock that Thursday afternoon, the house was entered forcibly by around a dozen men.
Those men, headed by a sheriff-officer called Donald Bannerman, were there to evict this young mother, her two small daughters, aged five and three, and her two-month old baby girl.
They were also there to empty the building of everything the Rosses owned.
Jessie’s baby, whose name was Roberta, had been born less than a year after another baby, a boy who hadn’t lived.
So Jessie Ross, then 27, had gone through, in twenty months, two pregnancies – one of which had ended tragically.
Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t in good health.
To Bannerman and his subordinates, this mattered not a bit.
They began by ordering out the little girls, Elizabeth and Katherine.
Their mother, unwell and hoping to safeguard the family’s belongings, refused to join them.
‘She would not leave … until the furniture was off,’ it was afterwards explained.
On Jessie Ross also refusing to help move the wooden cradle in which her baby was sleeping, one of the party, William Stevenson, picked it up – angrily it was said – and made to carry both cradle and baby outside.
Perhaps, as was later alleged, Stevenson was drunk – he and his colleagues having got through ten bottles of whisky the previous night and another three that morning.
Or perhaps he was just clumsy.
At all events, he somehow ran the cradle up against the house’s door or doorframe.
The baby, though not tumbled out, was badly shaken – and started crying in alarm.
She was still in distress when her cradle was set down in such shelter as a nearby dyke provided from a chill wind out of the north-east.
Here Roberta was found by someone by the name of Mary Murray – on her way to offer help to Jessie.
Like Jessie, Mary was a nursing mother.
Doing something we’d think unacceptable – but which, from the way it was reported, must have been common practice then – Mary Murray lifted the crying infant and quietened her, as a bystander put it, by ‘giving the young child a suck’ at her own breast.
The older Ross children weren’t so readily comforted.
Not long after the evicting party got to work, Elizabeth, the five-year old, was struck in the face by a piece of planking thrown from the house – Stevenson again responsible.
Elizabeth began to cry and, her injuries aside, neither she nor Katherine, her sister, could have been anything but traumatised by what was happening to them.
Both were said to have ‘looked cold’ and to be ‘trembling’ or shivering – their misery compounded by the fact that they already had, or were incubating, whooping cough.
Now rare, whooping cough was once a common childhood illness.
Its symptoms – a fever and the drawn-out cough from which the infection got its name – were always unpleasant, sometimes severe, occasionally fatal.
So what happened to Katherine Ross, might arguably have happened anyway.
But when, some three weeks later, the little girl died, it’s understandable that her father, Gordon Ross, unavoidably elsewhere when Ascoilemore was cleared, should have attributed her death to what he called the ‘inhuman treatment’ she’d experienced when the Rosses’ home was taken from them.
That, then, is how Strathbrora got to be the way it is.
From the hillside above Ascoilemore, the middle reaches of Strathbrora are laid out in front of you.
Devoid of habitation.
But awash with indications of there having for a long time been a lot of people here.
A mile or so away, at Kilbraur, another of the strath’s cleared townships, you can pick out the remnants of a broch.
From perhaps two thousand years back.
And in the shape of hut circles and the like, there are plenty signs of older settlements nearer hand.
Which is to say that, out of the last fifty centuries, this part of Strathbrora’s been lacking people for just two.
In relation to what went before then, Strathbrora’s present emptiness is very, very new.
And being new, might it not also, in the end, prove temporary?
Getting a new community, or new communities, established in Strathbrora, and the many places like it, will be more challenging than getting pines back in Glenfeshie.
It won’t happen this year.
Or next year.
It might not happen this century.
But my plea to Aileen MacLeod, who’ll be speaking here tomorrow, is this:
Don’t let any Wild Land Map close off that possibility.
Dick Balharry, one of Scotland’s foremost naturalists died today. Last week, in Glen Feshie, he was awarded the Geddes Environment Medal for a lifetime’s achievement in environmental work by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (pictured above). I am grateful to the Society for its permission to reproduce Dick’s paper together with an introduction by Mike Robinson, Chief Executive of the RSGS.
Mike Robinson, RSGS CEO, introduces Dick Balharry’s vision for land use in Scotland.
Our most recent Geddes medal was awarded to the highly respected conservationist Dick Balharry, at a special event in Glenfeshie this past weekend. A popular awardee, Dick has influenced, inspired, advised and encouraged so many institutions in Scotland and helped establish the country’s first nature reserves at Beinn Eighe and Creag Meagaidh. Surrounded by family, friends and colleagues, Dick, who is terminally ill, asked to share the award with his wife Adeline, and used the event to highlight his hopes for the future of environmental land management in Scotland.
His belief was that the current tools used to encourage environmental land management were not sufficient, and that in addition to the basic legislative carrots and sticks, there was a need for a scheme that can give formal recognition to good practice and be respected by all interested parties. For instance, he asked, how is it fair that a land manager who chooses to reduce deer numbers to enhance the habitat and forest cover, has to pay to ‘fence out’ deer from neighbouring estates who continue to artificially prop up high densities of deer, instead of those neighbouring estates being forced to fence high numbers ‘in’?He also stressed the apparent absence of any integrated vision as to what constitutes the “public interest” in Scotland.
His paper is critical of both government and landowners but seeks to provide a middle ground for discussion rather than further polarised debate. As someone who has worked at the forefront of Scottish land management for the past fifty years we thought more people should be given the chance to hear his views, and have reprinted his paper in full below.
DELIVERING CHANGE THROUGH VISION, EMPOWERMENT AND RECOGNITION
by Dick Balharry
Today I would like to promote the concept that an “agreed vision” for land use has the potential to be a powerful motivator for change. The basis of the concept is simply that, with a vision you open up the possibility of recognising and celebrating success. As I will explain the idea is based on adding value to the existing tools of “carrots” and “sticks” to empower change.
If the opportunity allows I would welcome discussion.
Before that I would like to say a little about my formative years, where the ideas I wish to share today have, at least in part, their origin.
Background
As a boy, living in a small village on the outskirts of Dundee, I was fascinated by the natural heritage. I was given total freedom to explore the woods, marshes and fields and these became my natural habitat. Little escorted walks soon became lonesome adventures. My interests took many forms including creating collections, hunting and hand rearing wild animals. Through these activities I gained an insight into the lives of many different animals: including rabbits, kestrels, jackdaws and jays.
I soon realized that the natural world presented more questions than answers, not to mention that my activities also provided me with a healthy diet and a fast pair of legs.
At sixteen years old, on completion of a year at Dundee Engineering Trades College I turned up for work at an engineering plant. Whatever my destiny I knew then that working in a factory was off the agenda, the noise, the smell of hot oil and cigarette smoke were simply alien and a far cry from my interests, I was gone within the hour.
As is often the case with youthful poachers my first job was as a gamekeeper. The job was on an estate near Tighnabruach and involved controlling predators to protect wild pheasants, and patrolling a river against salmon poachers.
In essence, I was charged with sterilizing the environment of predators in order to maximize the number of birds and salmon available for guests.
However, it soon became clear that the keeping of a fox and a raven did not meet with the Landlord’s image of a gamekeeper. An ultimatum was given to the head keeper “either the pets go, or he goes” – so I left with my furry and feathered friends.
From there I became a deerstalker in Glen Lyon under the watchful eye of Archie MacDonald the Head Stalker. Archie mentored me in the soft skills of the hill and it was always a privilege to be in his company. He was a sincere man of carefully chosen words, immense knowledge and a sensitivity to all that was around him. I have much to thank him for and I remember him fondly.
When the Red Deer Commission advertised for stalkers in 1959 Archie’s teachings gave me an advantage. The combination of the increased salary and opportunity to work across the whole of Scotland pulled me into a new phase of my life, albeit still focused firmly on red deer. While travelling the length and breadth of Scotland culling marauding deer and marking deer calves I often found my attention diverted to the signs, tracks, dens and eyries of other animals – wildcats peregrines, eagles and even martens.
My career in conservation started in 1962, when at the age of 24, I was appointed warden on Beinn Eighe NNR in Wester Ross. I was given responsibility for over 10,000 acres of mountain and Caledonian pinewood. This was the first NNR in the UK and the focus was primarily on research. At that time the public were regarded by The Nature Conservancy as more of an inconvenience than an asset.
In addition to working with scientists, being a Warden was also my first introduction to what I might loosely call “the establishment”. The establishment can be defined in many ways and it is fascinating, even today, to see how networks based on wealth, social status, formal qualifications and public education influence decision making and how they often over-ride logic and evidence to protect their own interests. Being “out of the loop” as one might say it was soon clear that my dream job came with limited ability to influence decisions taken in Edinburgh and London. Tactful advocacy, persuasion, passion and promoting public support became the tools of my trade.
Throughout my life I have seen the establishment work in weird and wonderful ways. For example I was once informed that educative foreign travel was the province of the Officers, in essence those with degrees rather than Wardens with field skills. However despite this rebuff, with determination and family support, I broke the format and in 1969 attended a course on the Administration of National Parks visiting most of the mid-west National Parks in the USA and Canada along with 40 other delegates chosen from around the world for their experience rather than academic prowess. This was a turning point in my life and fueled my desire to drive change and promote the benefits and joys of Scotland’s natural heritage to a wider audience, by whatever means I could.
Since then I have spent my life improving my knowledge and enjoying the opportunity to enthuse others. I have engaged with everyone I could, including shepherds, stalkers, urban audiences, land owners fellow campaigners, hill walkers, top civil servants, leading politicians and royalty. I have made extensive use of the media. Those who know me well, know that my language still gives away my prejudices and frustrations with the establishment.
Reflections
On reflection my career has been a vocation, privileged and fortunate.
It was a career that brought me close to many of Scotland’s iconic species and allowed me to discover the magic of the Highlands and Islands. It introduced me to the knowledge and the culture of the people who live and work there and it allowed me to meet many of the scientists whose names were made by the opportunity to work in the Highlands and Islands.
I am always pleased to hear that my interest in the natural world has helped inspire others and if, through my talks and media presentations, I have contributed to developing the interests of a wider public then that is a worthwhile legacy.
Sometimes I am asked to name a favourite animal, plant, bird or place and I give an answer. However as Patrick Geddes would have said to give an answer is like plucking one petal of the six lobed flower. This is an easy trap to fall into: the simplicity of the individual is always easier to describe than the whole.
Now with the focus of mortality, single and sectorial interests seem less important. Rather it is the whole which captures my imagination: the need for quality jobs in rural areas, the need to break the dependency cycle, the need to see our wildlands as an economic asset, the need to have regard to carbon emissions and the need to think long term.
We depend on our rural environment and it depends on the public being interested. It is this phrase “public interest”, used so freely by many that now strikes me as of paramount importance in the land use debate and is central to our ability to make change.
I have no quarrel with wealth, who owns the land, how they were educated, or their country of origin, so long as they manage the land giving due respect to the interests that we all rely on.
Public Interest and Vision
So what does “public interest” mean? or indeed look like?
The uncertainty and absence of clear thinking around this commonly used phrase is the main problem as I see it. Managing the land with respect for specific interests and specialisms is fairly straight forward and one that defined our approach to nature conservation from the 80’s through to today.
However, integrated land management for a collective “public interest” remains to be addressed. The main challenge being the absence of any understanding as to what the collective “public interest” looks like at a landscape level.
Change requires vision and leadership. Without the vision and the necessary clarity of purpose, the debate on rural land-use has become polarized and permeated by the politics of envy and criticism.
It is not only the vision that is important for change but also how it is presented, the weasel words of “balance” and “sustainability” need to be avoided if we are to progress. It should have been done long ago and I cannot help wonder why not? Is it simply too difficult? Perhaps the structures of government with their respective experts are too divided? Perhaps there are too many interest groups? Perhaps as a society we are too fragmented to allow for a simple vision to emerge?
Whatever the excuse it is my personal belief that the vision can, and indeed must be defined in order to promote integrated delivery and empower those who own the land with responsibility. It is my view that the vision needs to be defined in a way that provides scope for flexibility, allows owners to make choices and provides the opportunity to be respected for the approach they take. Our current system, focused on protecting single interests, was necessary and while it continues to have its place it has its limitations. My objective here is to suggest an additional approach that adds value to the existing system.
I ask you to think for a minute and consider, if it were possible, where is the vision and the leadership necessary to make it happen going to come from? Who is going to lead the charge against the sectorial approach and promote the need for an integrated approach? Who is going to review public policy mechanisms from outside the box and come up with new thinking?
I do not know the answer to these questions, but to future leaders who have the opportunity to respond to the challenge, I would like to make an observation.
Formal recognition and Empowerment
Existing attempts to deliver public policies rely on two simple means of influence, offering monetary incentives (carrots) or punishing through regulation (sticks). In effect a two legged stool.
This is a shooglie stool and it is my belief that a third leg of influence could be added to help promote a more sophisticated approach to influencing human behaviour. I believe this type of approach will empower those who own land to take responsibility and make changes. That third leg is “formal recognition” and I believe it is necessary, for three reasons.
Firstly it will require an agreed vision
Secondly it will empower owners to manage with confidence
Thirdly it will promote transparency
These are the three reasons why I think it is necessary. The reasons why I think it has potential to deliver are simple and both come from familiar observations of human behaviour. We are all aware of the motivational benefits of rewarding people with recognition and we are equally aware that people need to fit in and feel secure, comfortable, safe and protected.
Throughout my career I have seen the insecurity and fear of being different from the norm of a social group working to maintain inertia and stifle change. The establishment, I mentioned at the start, relies heavily on this insecurity to protect its interest in the status quo.
The beauty of “formal recognition” is that, if well designed, it offers security. The key to this security comes from the level at which the recognition is awarded. The concept will only work if the recognition provides an effective shield from the critics in the establishment, interest groups and government.
The detailed basis and process for awarding “formal recognition” is for others to think through, but to me the key elements are, that formal recognition:
is respected, not necessarily liked, but respected.
comes from both government and interest groups.
is based on robust logic and best evidence.
is an award given to landowners for all their holdings.
is based on a flexible and intelligent understanding of the integrated land management challenges, rather than being prescriptive.
Whether “formal recognition” as a scheme would have levels of award and how long the award would last for are details to be worked out in the future.
It is the simplicity of the principle and its potential to empower that I would like you to take away today.
So, given the known benefits and the simplicity of the approach why is “formal recognition” missing from the government tool kit?
It strikes me that the problem is that no one has taken responsibility to grasp the nettle and explain what the “public interest” looks like at a landscape level. The consequence is that we live with no clear vision and we have developed a culture that highlights what we don’t want rather than what we need.
If we could describe the vision, then that would open up the possibility for this third leg of formal recognition to be added, alongside the carrots and sticks, as a complementary means of influencing land owners.
In summary if the public interest was expressed at the level of land management units and high profile recognition was given to those who deliver it, then I have no doubt that the associated benefits of security and marketing would help change the behaviour of those who own the land.
In effect you have set out the safe, moral high ground and you have provided security for those who wish to break from what has become the established norm of “traditional sporting estates”.
Remember not everyone wants to lead when it involves sticking his or her head above the parapet.
An example
An example is Glen Feshie; where we are today.
I have had a long history with Glen Feshie that spans from 1964 to 2015 involving 6 different owners. I have seen the result of the carrots and sticks at work here, indeed I spent many years doing my best to deliver a positive outcome with these limited tools.
But did these two tools achieve the desired results? No they did not, as a critical look at the evidence shows.
Consider the facts, the current owner has neither taken full advantage of all the carrots offered by government, nor been cowed by legislative sticks nor indeed been restricted by sectorial interests. He is delivering well beyond what these crude tools ever sought to achieve.
Glen Feshie has remained a “sporting estate”. Yes, a “sporting estate”, and like you I am fully aware of other “sporting estates” in Scotland where large tracts of land are managed solely for the benefit of a few wealthy people with little or no regard for the public interest. However these are the “sporting estates” of the past and the ones to which Glen Feshie sets an example for the future.
So how does Glen Feshie estate differ?
Well it generates income by providing opportunities for paying guests to shoot deer and grouse just like any old fashioned estate. But there the similarity ends. Today, Glen Feshie is being managed towards a vision, a vision of stewardship, inward investment, local employment and public interest. This vision is delivering tree regeneration without fences and allowing for the development of a natural tree line. It is welcoming to all who take responsible access into the glen. It maintains, and landscapes the foot paths along with the few hill tracks that are necessary for management.
The result is an estate that matches and possibly out performs any government owned land that I can think of, especially in terms of attracting private inward investment, delivering conservation benefit and generating income.
I respect that the results we see here today have come from a visionary land owner who was willing to put his head above the parapet and never sought recognition. It is my belief that if we recognise leaders who are willing to change, others will follow.
Red deer and fencing
Finally, and without apology, I would like to speak about the management of red deer and the regeneration of trees without fences.
Those who said it wasn’t possible spoke loudly, and those with a vested interest in managing the land for the benefit of the few, still do.
I suspect that the reality is that those who objected never doubted that trees would grow or that deer numbers could effectively be reduced, but rather they realised it would be a long costly road and one they didn’t relish having to travel themselves or indeed could not afford to travel. Controlling deer numbers at low levels is costly and requires resources including young fit men. However, it also presents the opportunity for marketing an activity that is essential for protecting our wildland and one that requires greater levels of skill from both the stalker and the client.
The sad fact, witnessed throughout Scotland today, is that in many areas fencing deer out of young native woodland has become a way to maintain easier stalking opportunities and to protect established relationships and social networks. In effect many deer fences are built to protect the interests of the few.
In the context of red deer and of Scotland I see this as a major injustice. If people wish to manage land exclusively for the benefit of the few without regard to the wider public interest then they will never have my support. To those who argue that fences are required to make sport shooting economically viable I would simply say that you are inviting society to question the legitimacy of your ownership model – one that places trophy stags higher than the long term interest of the public and the planet.
But if you must fence then it is my view you should, at your own cost, erect high boundary fences to keep your deer in. This is “not natural”, but then what is natural about maintaining deer at artificially high densities for the benefit of a few?
Higher densities help maximize the sporting opportunities for a few but they also increase the numbers of deer that die in winter from lack of food and shelter. Owners tend to distance themselves from this responsibility claiming that deer are wild animals for which they cannot be held entirely responsible. As it stands that is indeed the law. However the decision to have high numbers of red deer on the hill and the decision not to provide native woodland for shelter remain unequivocally the management choice made by owners.
The result is that, on what we have come to call “traditional sporting estates,” most owners receive the benefit of income from shooting red deer without either accepting effective responsibility for their welfare in winter, or having true regard to a wider public interest. “Traditional sporting estates” cannot stand on the moral high ground of estate ownership as they have tried to claim for over the last 200 years. Rather they embody the selfish greed of a Victorian era, outdated and ludicrous.
The moral high ground of the future will be for those who wish to hunt deer in a natural environment, free of fences, where deer have access to the food and shelter they require; where there is a natural tree line and the public are welcomed and give recognition freely for a job well done.
These are the “sporting estates” of the future and I believe we are standing in Scotland’s first.
If a mechanism existed to formally recognise the results that have been delivered here, then I have no doubt that the positive outcomes would be replicated on other large estates in Scotland.
As I mentioned earlier not everyone is a visionary leader willing to challenge and make changes from the front. Most like to remain within the fold of the status quo until the route to the “safe ground” has been mapped out for them. The route I am outlining is a position of transparency and clarity where the public interest is genuinely delivered within a wide range of different approaches to management: a route that provides others with the confidence to break from the establishment.
In the 1980’s all the vegetation in this Glen, including the heather, was shaved bare by the incessant demand of hungry red deer. Today, following a few years of investment by a visionary, the natural processes that began 9000 years ago are giving revival to the land.
I have lived to see an impossible dream come true and that – is very special.
I sincerely thank Anders Povlsen, Thomas & Ali MacDonnell for hosting this day and for working so hard to make it very special and thank all the estate staff, whose efforts we now witness in this beautiful glen. A Natural Living Caledon Forest Treasure with all its associated life dating back to the ice age, approximately 30 tree generations. Here we have an example of how a sporting estate and the public interest can work together.
The challenge I leave behind for those who follow is to clarify the vision, devise a method of formal recognition respected by all sides in the debate, give rewards on delivery of results and seek change through empowerment.
The Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS) is the leading educational charity in Scotland providing geographical understanding on contemporary issues which shape our future.
Established in 1884, it has a long and distinguished history of promoting an understanding of the natural environment and human societies, and how they interact. In addition to awarding prestigious medals RSGS seeks to make connections and contribute to scientific and policy debate, so as the years march on it is my hope RSGS along with others will help provide the motivation required to make “a vision”, “formal recognition” and “empowerment” central parts of public policy.
It is an honour to be asked to accept the Patrick Geddes Medal and I am delighted that Glen Feshie was chosen as the venue.
Patrick Geddes, biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner was born in Ballater 1854. He was well known for innovative thinking and promoting the idea that physical geography, market economies and anthropology are
“inseparable interwoven structures, akin to a flower”
He was famous for, amongst many things, being critical of thinking that focused on single elements. In 1917 he commented that
“Each of the various specialists remains too closely concentrated upon his single specialism, too little awake to those of the others. Each sees clearly and seizes firmly upon one petal of the six-lobed flower of life and tears it apart from the whole.”
I think the concept of formal recognition for land management that delivers on an agreed long term vision chimes well with Patrick Geddes’s approach and I hope my career has contributed in some small way to increasing the value we place on our people and our natural resources.
It is with pleasure that I accept the Patrick Geddes Medal in Glen Feshie.
Wild deer in Scotland belong to no-one – in legal terms they are res nullius. Yet this public resource has traditionally been managed exclusively by the owners of land. How to ensure the public interest in the private management of a public resource remains a challenge and, in this guest blog, Dr Helen Armstrong provides some thoughts on the way forward.
Dr Armstrong is an ecologist who has spent more than 25 years providing advice and carrying out research on the management of deer, sheep and cattle, and their impacts, in the British uplands. She has worked for Forest Research, Scottish Natural Heritage and the James Hutton Institute. In 2012 she set up her own consultancy.
The future of deer management in Scotland
To continue the discussion of deer management started by Duncan Halley in his guest blog (Hjorteviltforvaltning i Norge, 23 Jan 2015), here are some thoughts on how deer management differs between Scotland and Norway, along with some suggestions of how we might start to make deer management in Scotland compatible with the regeneration and expansion of woodland (for a discussion of the advantages of increasing woodland and shrub cover in Scotland see: Armstrong, Holl & Halley, Restoring the Scottish Uplands). I have focussed primarily on deer management in the uplands i.e. the Highlands and Southern Uplands. The increase in roe deer numbers in lowland, and peri-urban, areas is also of concern but presents different challenges.
Differences between Scotland and Norway:
In Scotland, there are far fewer land owners than in Norway. Since the right to shoot deer, in both countries, resides with the land owner on whose land the deer are present at any time, shooting rights are in the hands of far fewer people in Scotland than in Norway. This means that, in Norway, far more people hunt and many of these hunters harvest only a few deer to provide venison for friends and family. Deer hunting in Scotland is primarily carried out for sport; as let stalking or as a recreational activity for the family and friends of the land owner. In areas where trees have been planted, or are being encouraged to regenerate naturally, and where deer fences are not desirable or are too expensive, it is carried out principally to protect young trees from browsing. Venison is produced largely as a by-product of these other activities. This is despite the fact that demand for venison in the UK is growing rapidly, to the point where it is not being met by local sources. In 2012, around 20% of the venison coming onto the market in Scotland was imported, largely from New Zealand and Poland.
In Norway, absentee ownership of productive land (as opposed to holiday cabins) is not allowed, unlike in Scotland where any individual or organization, based anywhere in the world, can buy land. Absentee landowners are often less involved, and less interested, in the approach taken to deer management on their land than are those are who are resident. As a result, persuading landowners in Scotland to adopt an approach to deer management that takes into account wider public interests can be a difficult task.
In Scotland, Highland estates where deer stalking is the main land use tend to be valued on the basis of the number of red deer stags that are shot each year, regardless of the size and quality of the stags. This is despite many recent estate purchases having been by private individuals, or Non-Governmental Organisations, that have nature conservation, not sport shooting, as a primary aim. In Norway, by contrast, land is valued on the basis of its type and quality as well as that of all its potential outputs. Currently, maintaining the capital value of a Scottish stalking estate entails maintaining the annual take of stags at as high a level as possible. Traditional deer managers often believe that, to achieve this, the estate needs to hold large numbers of hinds that will, in turn, produce large numbers of stag calves. As a consequence of the resulting intense competition for food and the lack of shelter from woodland, Scotland’s hill deer are small and stag trophy heads are unimpressive by European standards. On many estates deer are fed in winter to avoid high levels of mortality. As in Norway, the social life of many of the people who own land in Scotland is bound up with the culture of sport shooting. The maintenance of these cultures is not dependent, however, on having artificially high populations of deer. The apparent reluctance on the part of some land owners to take action voluntarily to reduce the damaging impacts of the current high numbers of deer is therefore more likely to be related both to the outdated system of assessing capital values and to entrenched ideas of what constitutes good deer management, than it is to any potentially damaging effect on sporting culture.
In Norway, the impact of deer on the environment is monitored by those who have the right to shoot deer. Numbers of deer are required to be maintained at a level that does not compromise the public good. In Scotland, those with the right to shoot deer have no duty to either monitor the impacts of deer or to limit their impact on the public good. As a result, high deer densities across much of the country are preventing woodland from regenerating naturally, cause large numbers of road traffic accidents (RTAs) every year and promote high tick numbers that, in turn, may be contributing to the increasing incidence of Lyme disease. All of these have a high public cost. There is around 2,250 km of fencing on the National Forest Estate in Scotland (land managed on our behalf by Forestry Commission Scotland; FCS). Between 2010 and 2013 FCS spent around £4 million on deer fencing to allow young trees to escape from browsing. This is a cost not borne by competing timber producers in other European countries such as Norway, where fencing for this purpose is unknown. The Scottish Government has a target to expand woodland cover from the current 17% to 25%. The cost of achieving this would be considerably reduced if deer numbers were brought down to a level where deer fencing was not needed.
Unlike Scotland, Norway has in place a modern system of wildlife management. This requires annual counting of deer numbers over large areas, the collection of information on every deer shot and the assessment of deer impacts on woodland and other habitats. To achieve this requires a national system of oversight to ensure that appropriate methods are developed, that those doing the monitoring are trained and that the information returned is of a high quality. A similar system in Scotland would tell us how many deer there are and what impacts they are having. Data on RTAs and, ideally, also on the impact of deer on tick densities and the incidence of Lyme disease would also help inform deer population targets. A Government Agency (most likely Scottish Natural Heritage) would need to collate and analyse all these data, most of which would be provided by land owners and hunters. They would then advise each Deer Management Group, of which there are currently around 70 in Scotland, as well as individual landowners, on appropriate deer management. This would include the setting of harvest levels. All this costs money, but the Norwegian system is funded from fees paid by hunters and there is no reason why the same approach could not be taken in Scotland.
Scotland currently has much less woodland cover than does Norway (17% v 33%), even though a greater proportion of Scotland is climatically suited to woodland. Much Norwegian woodland is semi-natural, and so contains more forage for deer than do our dense conifer plantations. Roe deer are almost always found living in, or near, woodland so they generally have access to relatively large areas of woodland. As a result, their impact on woodland is closely related to their density and this can be set such that woodland /RTA /tick objectives are met. Regular monitoring would allow any initial assessment of an appropriate density to be adjusted over time. Red deer are also woodland animals by preference but, in Scotland, the lack of woodland has forced many of them to live in the open where, unlike roe deer, they can survive, if not prosper. Red deer almost always seek shelter in woodland in winter, where it is available. Many of our open hill estates have so little woodland that the pressure on the remaining woods from deer (both red and roe) in winter is intense. As a result, densities of deer that are compatible with achieving woodland regeneration and expansion are often low and considerable effort would be needed to keep numbers low enough. The remaining deer would, however, produce more, bigger, and more viable offspring due to reduced competition for food. Individual deer would therefore produce more venison and stags would have bigger antlers that reached their full size at a younger age. As a result, sport shooting may remain financially viable. Numbers of jobs associated with deer management would need to be maintained, or increased, to keep up the high culling effort that would be needed.
In Scotland, a ‘recovery’ phase is needed, where appropriate deer management allows woodland to regenerate and expand. Once we have increased woodland cover, higher numbers of deer could be supported and the sustainable harvest increased accordingly. Significant reductions in deer numbers are needed to give us the step-change in Scotland’s woodland cover that is needed to both meet woodland policy targets and to achieve the long-term health of the Scottish uplands (see Armstrong, Holl & Halley).
Deer Management Groups across the Highlands, with some financial support from SNH, are currently writing deer management plans. The aim of the plans is to present information, where available, on deer populations and impacts, and set population and cull targets in light of both private and public objectives. These plans will be publicly available and the success of DMGs in writing the plans, and making progress towards sustainable deer management, will be assessed in 2016. While many estates and DMGs are fully committed to producing well informed plans, some are less committed.
While the system remains voluntary it is unlikely that all estates, and all DMGs, will put in place modern deer management systems that adequately address public as well as private objectives. Those that do will need to bear the additional costs of taking this approach while those that do not will have fewer private costs but their deer management is likely to have higher public costs. A fairer system would legally oblige those who have the right to shoot deer to put in place a high standard of deer management that takes into account public as well as private objectives.
An Initial step towards this would be to put in place a modern, state-of-the-art system for the monitoring of deer populations and their impacts so that local population sizes, compatible with acceptable impact levels, can be determined. Deer population and harvest targets could then be set. Currently deer management is often tradition-based rather than being based on carefully collected deer population and impact information. This approach needs to change.
There should be a legal requirement for land owners to regularly count the deer on their land (including the number of young per female) and return this information to SNH. Count methods should be specified by SNH and regular checking would be needed to ensure accuracy. There should also be a requirement to return basic data on all deer shot (sex, weight and age class as a minimum). This would provide information on the deer population that could then be used to determine the size of harvest that will be needed to adjust deer numbers to a level that best meets all objectives. It would also allow land owners, and SNH, to track improvements in deer weight and productivity resulting from better management of populations.
Land owners should also be required to collect basic habitat impact information and return it to SNH. All of this is standard practice and legally required in most other European countries. A levy on land owners in return for the right to shoot deer, which in Scotland are currently owned by no-one, would pay for the system. The fee could be set at a rate per ha of land and might be increased if targets were not met, to reflect the consequent costs to society. The fee should not be per head of deer shot, since that might provide a dis-incentive to control populations. A land owner who did not participate, would be obliged to pass the deer management on their land to a person, or group, who would. If they could not find anyone else to run the deer management then, as a last resort, SNH would need to take over deer management on the estate. This might mean either carrying out appropriate deer management themselves or letting the hunting rights to others who will. Deer are a national resource and information relating to deer management should be publicly available.
Two other actions would help to ensure that deer numbers are brought down to sustainable levels:
Extend harvest seasons. There is no welfare reason for not having a year-long season for stags and the hind season could be extended (deer managers can currently apply to SNH for an extension for reasons of habitat /forestry/ agricultural protection). The current seasons were put in place to protect deer when numbers were low; but that is not the current requirement. All hunters should be required to hold an appropriate qualification (as in Norway).
Discourage winter feeding of deer. This is a common practice for hill red deer and results in populations that are artificially higher than the habitat can support. If deer numbers were lower there would be no need for winter feeding.
These three actions would have a major impact on the way that deer are managed as well as on their numbers. They would also provide the information needed to take the next steps of setting target deer densities and harvests at a local level to minimize conflicts and maximize the benefits of the national deer resource to all the people of Scotland.
In this article, entitled Hjorteviltforvaltning i Norge (Deer management in Norway), Dr. Duncan Halley and Dr. Erling Solberg of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research describe the framework for deer management and wildlife management in Norway.
Dr. Duncan Halley was born and educated in Scotland. He moved to Norway in 1993, where he works on wildlife management, restoration ecology, and Scotland/Norway landscape management comparisons. Dr. Erling Solberg is a leading researcher on deer management in Norway and an active hunter. They are research ecologists at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Norway’s leading applied ecology institute (www.nina.no). Contact: duncan.halley@nina.no
The Scottish Government’s proposed land reform bill contains a very modest proposal for improving the democratic accountability in relation to the management of this public resource by private interests. To achieve a wildlife management system fit for the 21st century, however, more fundamental reform is needed. The Norwegian experience offers some insight into what might be involved.
Guest Blog by Duncan Halley & Erling Solberg, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research
Land Reform legislation in 2015 will include strengthened powers to allow the authorities to regulate deer populations in Scotland. Further action is promised from 2016 if the current voluntary system “has not produced a step change in the delivery of effective deer management”.
It seems likely that action would follow the precedent set in the recent Wild Fisheries Review, where the remit was to:
“develop and promote a modern, evidence-based management system for wild fisheries fit for purpose in the 21st century, and capable of responding to the changing environment”;
and
“manage, conserve and develop our wild fisheries to maximise the sustainable benefit of Scotland’s wild fish resources to the country as a whole and particularly to rural areas”.
Here we present a brief look at what a modern system, functioning not far from Scotland, can look like. South West Norway is on the same latitude as Northern Scotland and is similar in landforms and climate – hilly to mountainous and highly oceanic. The deer resource in the region is mainly red and roe deer, though there are also some moose and reindeer. (1) Here we discuss the system as it applies to red and roe deer.
Landowners in Norway, as in Scotland, do not own the wildlife on their land but do own the hunting rights to game animals such as red and roe deer, and the carcasses that legal hunting produces. These rights can be, and in many cases are, sold.
Modern deer management in Norway is the result of development and refinement over many decades. The core of the system is a partnership of government, landowners, and hunters, each with a defined role. This is backed by professional wildlife management skills, monitoring of harvests and populations to provide high quality data for future management, and binding harvest management plans which regulate and maintain population levels of the national game resource in accordance with democratically accountable national, regional and local goals. This has included in some regions managed reductions in populations to ensure natural forest regeneration (which local and regional authorities are required to plan for, and landowners to achieve, see below).
The system has been effective in managing the resource at sustainable levels, which take into account wider environmental, social and economic interests. It enjoys broad public support.
The government has been keen to encourage a market for wild game meat. Food Safety Authority regulations for sale of meat on the open market by hunting rights owners, hunting teams, and/or individual hunters are simple and the system efficient. This has considerably expanded the market, to the benefit of hunting rights owners, hunters, and consumers.
Image: Hunting in Norway (Erling Solberg)
Who does what?
The Norwegian Environment Agency oversees the regulation of the system. It determines and finances research and monitoring requirements and determines the normal hunting seasons.
The Regional authorities (fylkeskommuner) are responsible for building management competence at local level among Municipalities (kommuner) and landowners, for guidance on population management at a regional level in accordance with wider societal goals such as biodiversity, prevention of overgrazing, and road safety; and for overseeing coordination among hunting rights owners and local councils to attain regional management goals. (2)
Municipalities (kommuner) have the authority and responsibility for managing local harvest levels in accordance with overall regional goals and with directing harvest levels at a local level with regard to minimizing conflicts with e.g. traffic safety, biodiversity, woodland regeneration, agriculture, and public enjoyment of nature. They issue the final harvest permits, can extend the usual hunting season, and must report permit levels and actual harvests to the National Deer Register. They may also report results of local monitoring. Section 9 of the Forest Law of 2005 mandates that Municipalities (kommuner) investigate deer damage to woodland regeneration and incorporate this in harvest management planning.
The owners of hunting rights are responsible for population regulation through a binding harvest plan for the hunting beat (vald), a defined area of land for which a named individual is responsible for relations with the authorities; and for coordination with neighbouring beats. They must also comply with Section 6 of the Forest Law of 2005, which requires satisfactory levels of woodland regeneration following any harvest of wood.
The police and National Nature Inspectorate have a legal right to inspect hunters in the field (to check licences, etc.), which may be delegated to Municipality (kommune) hunting monitors. Municipalities (kommuner) can require that harvested deer are brought to designated points for inspection.
Setting Harvest levels
Data on deer populations is collected centrally and maintained by the National Deer Register (www.hjortevilt.no) on a public internet database. This data, and the population plan submitted by the hunting rights owner, is the basis for determining harvest permit levels for each beat. Deer may not be hunted without a harvest permit.
Permits are issued by the Municipalities (kommuner) to the hunting rights owner, based on the tools available at the National Deer Register website, local consultations, and the population management plan for the beat submitted by the owner.
A population management plan for up to 5 years ahead (may be for a shorter period) is obligatory and can be for one or more (contiguous) beats. It must specify annual harvests (stags and hinds by age group), often in the form of a minimum % of younger animals and a maximum of older ones. The authorities must approve these plans, and in particular must ensure harvest levels are in accordance with local, regional and national population management goals. Approval can be withheld for not being compatible with, or withdrawn for failure to achieve in practice, these goals.
In the absence of an approved plan the Municipality (kommune) sets a harvest quota in accordance with local and regional and national population management goals.
Image: Hunting in Norway. Taking a meal break (Erling Solberg)
Using harvest permits
The owner of the hunting rights may use him/herself, give away, or sell any part or all of the permitted offtake in a free market. Typically, the sale of hunting rights is financially structured by the owner in a way that gives a strong incentive to achieve the required offtake, as the owner remains legally responsible for achieving offtake levels.
Reporting requirements
Each hunting beat must report annually offtake levels broken down by age and sex, within 14 days of the end of the hunting season. These are publically available in the National Deer Register.
The hunter individually must also, when required by the authorities, report the number, age, and sex of harvested deer; report total numbers of deer seen; and provide specified animal parts (typically one side of the lower jaw) for verification of harvest levels, population monitoring, and research purposes.
Training requirements
All hunters resident in Norway must pass a written exam on hunting law and regulation, reporting requirements, species identification, and firearms safety to obtain a hunter’s licence. They must also pass a test of shooting accuracy every year at an approved firing range.
Non-resident hunters may hunt if they can produce equivalent qualifications from their home country.
Image: Grouse shooting and fishing for char and trout (Erling Solberg)
Financing the system
To hunt in Norway a hunter must purchase an annual Hunter’s Fee Card from the central government. This is separate from any fees paid to the owner of hunting rights. Hunters also pay tag fees for each red deer harvested to the Municipality (kommune). There is no tag fee for roe deer. The revenue generated is dedicated to running the management system and to support local game promotional projects.
Norway is of course socially different to Scotland, and has had a different institutional history. Introducing a modern system of deer management would have to take this into account. However, the principle of managing a public resource for the common good through a democratically accountable system, on the basis of solid information on actual populations and on the population levels which will maximize that common good, and where landowners have the right to the offtake determined and the responsibility for achieving it, is fully transferable. A system attaining these goals and enjoying broad public support is achievable, and can be achieved.
A working example can be seen an hour’s flight from Scotland.
NOTES
(1) Moose were native to Scotland. It is probable that reindeer became extinct naturally, as suitable habitat is restricted for climatic reasons.
(2) There is a two tier system of local government in Norway in some ways analogous to the former Scottish Regional/District system. The powers at each level are more extensive than was the case in Scotland. Municipalities have an average population of 11,800 compared to 163,000 per local authority in Scotland.
Yesterday, gamekeeper George Mutch was sentenced to four months imprisonment after being found guilty of four charges including the illegal killing of a trapped goshawk, which he clubbed to death, and the taking of two other birds, a goshawk and a buzzard. See Raptor Persecution website reports here and here and BBC report here. Mr Mutch was employed on Kildrummy Estate in Aberdeenshire.
Under Section 24 of the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011, an employer can be also be guilty of a wildlife offence under the doctrine of vicarious liability. Where an offence has been committed by an employee, the owner or agent is also guilty of the offence and liable to be proceeded against unless they can show that they did not know the offence was being committed by the employee AND that they took all reasonable steps and exercised due diligence to prevent the offence being committed. Mr Mutch was asked whether he had received any training from his employer and he said that he had not. Whether he did or not of course cannot be ascertained from such an admission. But the possibility exists that the Crown will proceed against the owner on the basis of their possible vicarious liability. If proceedings were to be brought against the owner, who is that person?
The owner of Kildrummy Estate is Kildrummy (Jersey) Ltd. The point of this blog is to try to find out who exactly is the human being or beings behind Kildrummy (Jersey) Ltd. who might end up being charged with an offence.
Kildrummy (Jersey) Ltd. is a company registered at 23-25 Broad Street, St Helier, Jersey.
Coutts & Co trustees (Jersey) Ltd. &
Citron 2004 Ltd.
at 23-25 Broad Street.
So…..
Kildrummy (Jersey) Ltd is owned by Coutts and Citron through their ownership of Magnus, Fidelis and Rostand.
So who owns Coutts and Citron?
Coutts is owned by Royal Bank of Scotland International (Holdings) Ltd. registered at 71 Bath Street, St Helier.
Citron is owned by
Coutts & Co Trustees (Jersey) Ltd.,
Magnus Nominees Ltd. &
Fidelis Nominees Ltd.
So who owns Coutts, Magnus and Fidelis?
Coutts is owned by Royal Bank of Scotland International (Holdings) Ltd. (see above). Magnus and Fidelis are both owned by Coutts and Citron (see above). And Citron (which is owned by Coutts, Magnus and Fidelis) owns (together with Coutts) Magnus, Fidelis and Rostand.
Magnus, Fidelis and Rostand of course own Kildrummy (Jersey) Ltd.
So, after spending £24 on Annual Returns of the above companies who does own Kildrummy (Jersey) Ltd.?
Go back up to the top and start again.
Best of luck to the Crown Office.
Big thanks to Simon Brooke for coming up with a flow-chart which attempts to illustrate the relationships.
UPDATE
These arrangements led to a court case – Kildrummy (Jersey) Ltd v. Inland Revenue Commissioners 1991 SC 1, 1992 SLT 787, 1991 SCLR 498 – in 1990 over the liability to stamp duty. The decision outlines the deal that was entered into with Kildrummy (Jersey) Ltd. and the case is now the foundation for the proposition that one cannot contract with oneself and retain control over the outcome.
The socio-ecological NGO, Reforesting Scotland launched a campaign in May 2011 to promote the protection and expansion of hutting in Scotland. The Thousand Huts campaign has achieved a considerable amount in a short space of time. Last week the new Scottish Planning Policy included provision for huts in the planning system for the first time. Last night, BBC Scotland 2014 carried a great wee film by David Millar followed by a studio discussion with the journalist Lesley Riddoch.
Guest Blog
by Jess Smith, Scottish author, musician and story-teller from Perthshire’s Travelling People
The Tinker’s Heart is a small arrangement of white quartz stones embedded in the ground at the junction between the road to Strachar (A815) and Hell’s Glen (B839) in Argyllshire.
For years it has stood as a testimony to the survival of Scotland’s Travelling people. A sacred place where couples wed, babies were christened and the dead blessed. In 1872 there is proof of two local people getting married there. There is no written evidence as to how old it is and like the oldest ballads that Burns listened to, it is all oral – no dates nor names. Reasons for the stones being placed there are associated with the Battle of Culloden and the Highland Clearances as well as the eradication of the Culture by removing children from campsites. It is sacred to my people from all over the world and needs to be protected and restored.
Several years ago someone told me of the sorry state of the Heart. A visit had me in tears. Highland cattle were trampling over it, a single strain of wire threaded through three metal poles was all there was to protect it (see picture above). It was dying and I had to save it.
I began by writing to the landowner Ms Kate Howe but she refused to answer. I wrote to her cousin Christina Noble but got the same response. I spent ages looking through the internet and found a very informative piece in Secret Scotland – Gypsy Wedding Place. (1)
I needed help so contacted my local MSP, Mike Russell. He was excellent and he set up a meeting with Ms Howe but was not prepared for her negativity. He’d not come across her attitude before. I presumed by his reactions that this landowner did not hold Travellers with much respect. Here is a rich landowner who owns 7048 acres of Scotland yet is not prepared to part with a few yards of old road.
Every step seemed to be getting harder. I went to visit a couple representing the landowner with Mike but got no joy there. Another meeting, this time at Argyll and Bute council headquarters with Mike Russell, Councillor Louise Glen-Lee, the Council’s tourism officer and a gentlemen from Historic Scotland, resulted in more negativity with Historic Scotland stating they would allocate funding for restoration but only with the landowners approval.
Two years moved fast the little heart was crying for help! Then out of the blue a black cage was erected over the heart (see picture below). I was pleased to see the ‘heart’ caged and safe but it looked more like a prison than the decorative stone wall and cairn I’d long visualised. While it remains in Kate Howe’s ownership it is very vulnerable. it has no legal protection and at the stroke of a pen she could develop the area, its a prime spot and I feel she just might have her sights on such a plan. But even if she didn’t, she will in time die as will I. Who will care for the place then?
No – this has to belong within the public domain. I contacted the Scottish Parliament to lodge a petition. Four months passed and each time I phoned the reply was “not petition material”! However Mike Russell managed to convince them of the history and importance of the site to Scotland’s culture. Just before Easter came the news that the petition will go live!!
That is how things stand today. Our ancient culture, timeline, respect and historical truths are now at this final stage and I am praying to Mother Earth to do what is right. If we are failed then Scotland’s future will be at the mercy of wind farms, shooters of our wild life, greedy strangers, land fracking and nimbys with lots of cash.
My petition “calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to direct Historic Scotland to investigate what action can be taken to ensure the restoration and preservation of the Heart of Quartz stones positioned in a field next to the A815, opposite the junction of the B839, overlooking Loch Fyne, known as the Gypsy Wedding Place, referred to locally as the Tinkers’ Heart.”
The persecution of birds of prey is one of the most malign of wildlife crimes. Yesterday, the ever excellent Raptor Persecution Scotland (RPS) website (which has courageously and doggedly documented and reported on the topic for over 4 years now) carried yet another story of the tragic disappearance of a particularly iconic bird – the first Sea Eagle to fledge in eastern Scotland for over 200 years.
“We’re almost at a loss what to say. What can we say that hasn’t already been said each and every time? What words are there to describe the fury, rage, sadness, sorrow and overwhelming frustration about what is going on, right under our noses, in our own countryside? The Untouchables strike again. It is out of control and the Government seems powerless to stop it.”
The North Glenbuchat Estate in Aberdeenshire is one of a number of notorious hotspots of wildlife crime with a number of poisoned birds discovered and four eagles having disappeared, presumed dead. The estate is reported to be owned by George Ivar Louis Mountbatten, the 4th Marquess of Milford Haven who bought it in 2008 although the only evidence that Mr Mountbatten owns the estate is to be found in the Autumn 2013 edition of the magazine of Scottish Land and Estates where he and North Glenbuchat Estate are reported as having joined the organisation.
In fact the owner of the estate is a company called North Glen Estate Ltd. registered at PO Box 171, Bristol House, The Centre, Providenciales, Turks and Caicos (see whoownsscotland info including small map and larger zoomable map). It acquired the estate in December 2007 for £4,116,132 (Title here and plan here but beware – 42Mb pdf). Quite who is the beneficial owner of this company is unknown as such details are not divulged to the public by the Turks and Caicos authorities. There is, however, a company called North Glen Estates Ltd. (spot the difference in name) which is registered in the UK. According to the 2013 Annual Return, the sole shareholder of this company is Mr James Kelly (Oathlaw House, Oathlaw, FORFAR DD8 3PQ) who is a Director. (but see UPDATE below) The sole other Director is Mrs Laura Sorrentino whose address is 2 Great Trippetts Cottage, Rake Road, Milland, Hampshire, GU30 7JU.
This is another clue that Mr Mountbatten is the beneficial owner of North Glen Estates Ltd. since he is the owner of the Great Trippetts in Hampshire. In the 2012 Annual Accounts of North Glen Estates Ltd., it is revealed that the company has net liabilities of £1,053,733. The viability of this “deficiency of assets” is dependent upon the continuing financial support of North Glen Estates (sic) Ltd.(1) “who own the estate”.
This debt is thus in the form of a loan from an offshore tax haven – an increasingly familiar device that enables funds to be brought into the UK free of tax and (in most cases) be eventually written off or subject to high rates of interest in order to eliminate any profits that might be made by the UK company.
In the Turks and Caicos of course, there is no form of tax – no income tax, company tax, withholding tax, capital gains tax or other tax on income, profits or assets. Exempted companies automatically receive a Governor’s Undertaking guaranteeing exemption from taxation for 20 years. Furthermore, the Turks and Caicos have been under direct rule from the UK since 2009 as a result of government corruption and incompetence. In 2011, the UK Government underwrote a loan of £160 million to Turks and Caicos government. Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research UK, said at the time,
“We are in the extraordinary situation that the British taxpayer is underwriting a loan to support a tax haven, which will take away our tax revenues. There is absolutely no sense to this. The condition of these loans must be that they strip these tax-haven practices.”
In light of all of this it is worth remembering that I argued during the course of the Land Registration Bill in 2012 that the Scottish Parliament could take action to improve transparency in the ownership of land by simply refusing to register any title held by company in a tax haven. (2) The Scottish Government rejected the idea. In this particular case, the fact that there is no official record of who the beneficial owner of this land is may lead to problems in any potential prosecution under the law on vicarious liability (where the owner of land can be held liable for any wildlife crime committed by an employee – Section 24 of the Wildlife and Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011)
Meanwhile, HMRC might want to take a look at this company in relation to its offshore funds transfers.
UPDATE 2032hrs 25 APRIL 2014
I use Duedil for obtaining records of UK Companies. It publishes information a few days after Companies House and so I missed an interesting piece of information filed on 17 April and published on Duedil 22 April. The appointment of Mr James Kelly as one of the two Directors of North Glen Estates Ltd. was terminated on 7 January 2014. This leaves the company with one Director – Mrs Laura Sorrentino, occupation – Personal Assistant. Quite a responsibility with over £1 million liabilities being underwritten by a company in an offshore tax haven. I hope she has taken good advice.
(1) Confusingly the accounts refer to owner as North Glen Estates Ltd when in fact it it North Glen Estate Ltd (spotted the difference yet?)
(2) See the blog post linked to and (linked to in the blog), in particular, Fergus Ewing’s comments at cols. 982-985 in Committee where he argues that to restrict titles to companies registered in the EU would deter inward investment.
Image: Intensive grouse moor management on Millden Estate, Angus.
Image: New grouse butt construction with Firmounth and Scottish Rights of Way sign indicating junction between the ancient Firmounth and Fungle routes (Grid Ref. NO499853) Photo: James Carron
Heatmap of Confirmed and Probable Raptor Persecution Incidents 2005-2014
Image: Badinloskin, Sutherland
In this article, entitled 
Image: Hunting in Norway (Erling Solberg)
Image: Hunting in Norway. Taking a meal break (Erling Solberg)
Image: Grouse shooting and fishing for char and trout (Erling Solberg)
Yesterday, gamekeeper George Mutch was sentenced to four months imprisonment after being found guilty of four charges including the illegal killing of a trapped goshawk, which he clubbed to death, and the taking of two other birds, a goshawk and a buzzard. See Raptor Persecution website reports 
UPDATE
Image: Becky Hitchcock
