The Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) has met with the Minister for Environment, Mairi McAllan, to advocate on behalf of the crofters and biodiversity suffering the damage caused by geese.
“The population of greylag geese resident in the Hebrides has reached unsustainable numbers”, said the chair of the SCF, Donald MacKinnon. “An agreed maximum of 4000 for Uist, which in itself is higher than crofters want, has doubled since the end of the ‘adaptive management’ scheme that was funded by the Scottish Government. NatureScot, who holds the purse strings, has stopped all funding and we can see no hope of preventing an explosion in goose numbers. We have 8000 birds in Uist now and could be over the ‘tipping point’ – where traditional crofting practices cease. The situation is similar for other Hebridean islands.” Read in full here.
