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The value of farming for food and the environment by Adam Smith, Director Scotland
Scottish Government Minister Mairi Gougeon MSP and the head of Scottish Government’s biodiversity team visited our Scottish demonstration farm Auchnerran, to discuss the benefits and challenges of farming and adaptive wildlife management. © Adam Smith/GWCT
6 | GAME & WILDLIFE REVIEW 2018
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Scotland The Scottish Government Grouse Moor Management Review was a key focus. Our research findings from the Langholm Moor Demonstration Project were important evidence. Policy contacts helped develop thinking on ‘natural capital’; how to assess the public value of farming for food and the environment. New approaches to wildlife management licensing were explored to conserve wading birds. Last year’s Review recorded that by the close of 2017 we were aware 2018 was to be the year of a major review of Scottish grouse moor management practice, led by Professor Alan Werritty. We were reassured that the maintenance of moorland management practices in Scotland was in the terms of reference of this review, and not an immediate move toward licensing grouse shooting. Our focus has been to ensure the panel have the facts on the raptor, mountain hare, medicated grit and muirburn issues it has been considering, and we have worked closely with other bodies to ensure that the information sought from practitioners has been accurate and useful. The report will be published this summer. Our research team has been essential to this effort, preparing new work on topics from tick borne disease, mountain hares and buzzard predation against stringent deadlines. The Langholm Moor Demonstration Project made a valuable contribution with six papers submitted and it also hosted a visit from the ‘Werritty Review’ panel. The final report of the Demonstration Project will be published this summer. We reinforced our various projects with direct political contacts. There were meetings with Scotland’s new Minister for Natural Environment and Rural Affairs, Mairi Gougeon MSP. We met the convenors of the two Holyrood committees that oversee environmental and land management and our new chairman Sir Jim Paice, a former Minister of Agriculture, lunched with Fergus Ewing MSP the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs at the GWCT Scottish Game Fair. Our theme for the 30th anniversary year of the fair was game conservation’s role in lowland farming, focusing on our emblematic species the grey partridge. Farmland conservation faces many challenges. We produced papers on what the next generation of farm environment support should look like in Scotland and set up farm visits for a range of agencies involved in agri-environment design to demonstrate key aspects of our proposals. Consultation responses covered future farming, environment strategy and forestry and engaged with 11 advisory panels and bodies on a wide range of fronts. Work also began on defining the role that ‘Natural Capital’ assessment will have in identifying farming and sporting’s contribution to the management of public goods such as soils, clean water, species
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03/05/2019 14:20:00
