The Last Keeper (2024) Movie Script

I've seen
pretty unethical practices
about mass culling of deer
that I think would turn
most people's stomachs,
not just sportsmen.
They actually had seen
a helicopter moving deer and
they kinda shoot an arena.
There would've been at
least a dozen to 15 rifles.
So
if we don't manage them,
their numbers will grow.
They'll track the habitat,
and then they'll die miserable deaths.
There must
have been about five, 600 deer
in the circle, and it really was cruel.
You could see the steam
coming off this deer.
They were just utterly
stressed out to their mind.
There's certainly been
the use of helicopters to round up deer
and effectively get 'em
into large segregations,
where there's been multiple
shooters firing into the herds.
The deer have been left to rot and sit
and certainly grates
with the sporting ethics.
The
human effort required
to drag or carry stags out,
or even the practicalities of using ponies
to take them out in these situations
is such that the carbon cost
associated with economic cost
is so high.
And then, you have to weigh that up
against the biodiversity benefits
from leaving carcasses on the hill.
And of
course, there was a mass panic.
It was a complete disgrace.
It's just a case of killing deer.
It's not management of deer, no.
It's just killing deer.
The roar of the stags in
the highland is now gone.
So, this castle in Scotland is famous
for holding out against
Oliver Cromwell's invasion
after he chopped off the head of Charles I
and we had crowned Charles II at Scone.
I'm here to explore the
plight of the rural folks
that live in the Highlands
and their relationship with wildlife.
How does history affect
today's modern land use issues?
Scholar's relationship with the lands
encapsulated in that story.
You've got conflict.
You've got the relationship
between those and power
and those in lowly position.
You've got survival, greed,
who owns resources and how
to protect what's yours.
Picts settled along these outcrops,
tribal peoples who lived with the land.
The history and mythology
of the stone of destiny
are all wrapped up in
the biblical struggle
between Jacob and Esau.
The conflict between hunter
gatherers working with the land
and farmers controlling and managing it.
And then when landless
vikings came looking for land,
the Picts and Scots came together
to forge what we call Scotland.
Not long after that,
Norman's crossed English channel.
More second sons seeking
estates for themselves.
And David I of Scotland brought them
in feudal land tenure with them.
The king owned the land and
the game that honed on it.
A forest wasn't a place of trees.
It was a royal hunting grounds.
And he divided it amongst his nobility
and that division between high
and low became starker still.
But in the Highland, these tribal groups
developed the clans who
belonged to the land.
To them, they were clan lands.
And so, the chief was
a steward of the lands.
And so, you had like common
grazings and summer shillings
and of course, you had
cattle raids and clan feuds
when resources were scarce, yeah.
And the Culloden changed all that.
Culloden was where 10 groups
attached to the land ended.
It wasn't just a battle
that was lost that day,
but lifestyle.
New landowners were brought in.
Existing chiefs changed
from stewards who managed
to landlords who rented the land.
When this sort of sheep
is more profitable,
the human tenants were displaced, cleared,
and shipped across the Americas.
And the connection between
people and land was broken.
See, there's always been
tension for resources
in these islands.
Even to this day, the
English are always going,
"Yeah, we subsidize you
and we needed that money
for our own hospitals."
And of course, the Scots was going,
"Yeah, well you took our oil
and we needed that for cooking chips."
You know?
It was just.
Walter Scott popularized highland culture.
And Queen Victoria came
north, fell in love,
and bought Balmoral over the hills there.
The Victorian era brought trains
and estates became a playground for toffs
to come hunting, shooting, and fishing,
reinforcing that separation
between the people who owned the land
and those who had belonged to.
Much of our coastal and lowland areas
were stripped to trees by humans.
Based in secondhand Roman
chroniclers, popular history
established a narrative of
the great forest of Culloden
spanning the land.
There's been a movement to rewild the land
with age old trees, plants, and animals.
While Scots now have the
right to roam the land,
there is a group who feel targeted.
The keepers, stalkers, and gillies,
working for the landed gentry,
whose relationship with the
land spans almost two centuries.
They feel like they're in
the government's crosshairs.
It's a way of life that may disappear.
Scotland,
known for its rolling hills.
It's glens. It's heather.
But for many, the reality
is very different.
Greenock on the river Clyde
was once a bustling port,
handling tobacco, sugar,
rum from a global empire.
In the Industrial
Revolution, this town rattled
with the sound of some of the
world's first steam engines
driving factories and mills.
And back then, Clyde built
was a mark of shipbuilding excellence.
The highlands were being depopulated
as the Scottish central
belt, factories, and mills
soaked up the displaced,
often in poor housing
and cramped conditions.
And to this day, 70% of Scots
live in this narrow and
industrialized central ban
long after the shipyards
and mills fell silent.
And this Central Belt dominates politics
with Scotland's parliament
and affluent Edinburgh
having autonomous control of domestic law.
From highland life, these people
are generations removed, a world away.
But in Scotland, the difference
is often just a matter of perception.
Scotland today is in the midst
of a battle over land use.
On one side are the so-called
conservation groups,
politicians, and climate activists.
On the other are landowners
and the rural communities
impacted by the policy decisions.
At the crux of the conflict
are sporting estates,
which generate income that
fuels the rural economy
through the recreational hunting of deer,
grouse, and pheasants.
So we have a government
now, a Scottish government,
that two ambitions.
One is a breakup the union.
The other is a breakup
of a sport in states.
And they're making life so
unbearable and unmanageable,
unworkable, that it's very
difficult to do our job
the way it should be done.
We are managing these areas of habitat
for the benefit of very, very few people.
They'll conveniently overlook
the very large amounts of money
that those very, very
few people will pay to do
what they wanna do, what they hope to do,
and aspire to do on those
bits of ground, which in turn,
generates all sorts of
socio and economic factors.
They just look at the downside,
which is we're smashing things
up, we're suppressing it,
we're doing bad stuff,
and we should be stopped.
We are in the midst of a
bit of a biodiversity crisis,
a nature crisis.
We are a country that
is traditionally thought
to be rich in nature,
but actually many of
our wildlife populations
are suffering.
We're also a very deforested country,
quite a degraded country,
industrial agriculture,
industrial forestry.
The habitat that you see
around here, the landscape,
the animals that inhabit it,
and the way it's laid out
is all the consequences of human choices.
All the shepherds that came
to live in the Highlands
came because the sheep were here.
All the gamekeepers, and
gillies, and stalkers
that were here to show
benefit to sportsmen
from grouse, and salmon,
and deer came here
and lived in the houses
that were built for them
to support that activity and that habitat.
The big challenge really
is to manage our wildlife resources,
our wider habitat resource
in a sustainable way
and resolve many of the
big conflicts there are
over how that management takes place
and who makes the decisions.
Trying to find middle ground in there
and a workable solution
is definitely problematic at times.
The wildlife side of things,
the actual sort of
wildlife conservation then
can get completely lost
in the people politics.
One keeper is Alex Jenkins,
who at age 38 is working his dream job
at Edinglassie estate in Straton.
My job is to look
after the running estate.
We're primarily a sporting
estate, a driven grouse moor.
I manage the deer as well.
I oversee a lot of the
grazing aspect to the estate,
conduct all the muirburn,
look after the roads, infrastructure,
property side of things,
and a bit forestry work as well.
We also do a lot of conservation work
on the in by ground for waders.
We plant species rich grassland.
Red grouse is one of our
indigenous grouse species.
My whole year revolves
around trying to hopefully
produce a surplus stock
that we can take.
When numbers are very low, we don't shoot.
It's not in our interest to shoot.
We count our grouse
twice a year every year
and have done decades now,
if not a hundred years.
Generally sitting over a hundred grouse
to the kilometer square.
And that's gonna allow me
for a very moderate
shooting program this year.
But we know from generations of experience
when we can afford to
shoot and when we can't.
It can be a hugely rewarding
way of life being a keeper.
We're very fortunate
that we get to work up
in these environments.
The majority of the
people that live here
and their families have
been here for generations,
very supportive and understanding.
You feel like you belong.
You don't feel like an outsider.
I'm the last traditional
employed gamekeeper
on an estate left on the Isle of Skye now.
Skye used to have a
rich sporting tradition,
with private estates
employing gatekeepers.
Having gamekeepers on this estate
means that not only is it
employment for local people,
but the added a benefit to
the environment, to crafting,
to farming communities is massive.
I was born and raised and
brought up on a housing estate
in the middle of a town city.
So, I haven't got
that kind of background with
gamekeepers in the family,
but it's something that I've wanted to do.
I always wanted to have that feeling.
I needed to be out out on the hill.
And I've been doing it now
for just over 30 years
in a gamekeeper role.
I think the most difficult part
about being a wife to a gamekeeper
is understanding what
they're going through I think
because there's a lot of pressure.
Not just Scott, but other gamekeepers
may not want to tell their partners
because of worrying them.
So, there's always
- that.
- Bobbie.
There's always that sort of thought,
you know, "Is he all right?"
'Cause he spends a lot of
time on his own, you know?
He is out on the hill on his
own, doing the deer count,
doing the deer call, and
it must get quite lonely.
So, I do worry about that side of things.
It is really hard to live
as a gamekeeper's wife.
I'm warm.
I know.
I know that there are nights
when they don't come home
for long time.
I know that I'm bringing
up a family without them.
They don't go to the schools.
They don't get chance to go to the events
that as the children are growing up.
And so it is really, really hard.
At its core, this controversy
is a clash of ideologies.
A class warfare centered on
how we should manage the land.
On one side, there's a commitment
to wildlife conservation
for both financial gain
and cultural preservation.
On the other, the rewilding movement
advocates for letting
nature be truly wild,
free from human management.
The epicenter of this clash,
grouse moors and red deer.
Grouse moors often are misunderstood,
but they're a vital ecosystem
supporting endangered species.
Although historical evidence
challenges this claim,
red deer accused of causing deforestation,
has become a focal point.
It's a battle between
carefully woven tapestries
and the allure of leaving
nature's canvas untouched
by human hands.
For me, rewilding is anything
that counteracts more dewilding.
Anything that joins up
and enriches habitats
rather than further
fragment and degrade them.
Anything that results in more nature
and not less nature.
It is a fact that we
have lost certain species
from our country over decades, centuries.
It's also a fact that everything existed
before we were around
in a rather better way than it does now.
It's not our prerogative to say
whether trees will grow there or not.
We just want to create
the right environment
if the trees want to grow.
But when things start getting gritty,
and granular, and confused,
and we don't have a lot
of the data we need,
it's very easy just to
be overruled by the tree.
I mean, the trees look great.
We kind of have this sort
of innate association
that there should be trees
because we love trees,
because they're sort of
built into our understanding
of what nature and wildlife should be.
It's not as simple as just
the more trees we have,
the better we're gonna do,
the better things are gonna be for us.
People blame the introduction of sheep
for getting rid of the trees.
But the sheep weren't introduced
till during the Highland
Clearances after 1750.
And woodland was only
about 45% of the landscape
before sheep came along there.
There's a famous Scottish
geologist way back in 1866,
James Geikie.
And he concluded then that the woodlands
had died out naturally.
And all the evidence looking
at tree remains in peat.
And the
evidence shows that woodland
has been declining for the
last four to 5,000 years
or 7,000 years in some places.
The rewilding word is incredibly loaded
with lots of connotations,
whether justified or not.
But one of the connotations
might be that in some way
the rewilding word is anti-people,
anti-community, anti something.
We are more than capable of
looking after our natural assets
and having vibrant communities
living in amongst those areas.
Without this I idea
that it's one or other.
At the moment, it's one that,
it's a word that I find
unhelpful in terms of the debate
because it's polarized.
I would prefer we talk
about ecological restoration,
or nature restoration, or
even peatland recovery.
That's what I want to see.
I want to see our wetlands, our peatlands,
our forests, our rivers
restore to ecological health.
But if you choose to
label it rewilding, okay,
you immediately enter a
whole series of debates,
like was this wild at land
wild in the first place,
'cause you're implying it was, right?
And excuse me, my ancestors lived here.
You know, this is a degraded
environmentally habitat,
but it's also a depopulated environment.
Are you actually saying
we should all live in a nature reserve?
So, those were the kind
of responses to that.
And in my view, it's set
up a fairly unhelpful
and unproductive debate,
which needn't have been.
There's a big difference between trees
and a woodland ecosystem.
Our tree cover is something like 18%.
The average across Europe is about 37%.
So, trees plays a part in it,
but as does heather, blaeberry, wood ants,
badgers, otters, all of these species
are components in a system.
And it's the system, it's the
functionality of the system
that we as rewilders want to improve.
It's been known for a long
time that you get an ice age,
then you get the climate changes
warms up after an ice age,
and then plants colonize.
The soils are quite rich
from more than glacial mixing of the soil.
And woodland expands
and that's what's called
the mesocratic phase.
But in this part of all, it rains,
and it rains, and it rains.
And after 10,000 years of rain,
the nutrients get leached out of the soil.
It becomes too acidic for
earthworms, so you get podzols.
You often get an iron pan,
a solid layer of iron
precipitating out in the soil,
which is impenetrable.
So in fact, the soil deteriorates
and the climate may deteriorate
after the middle phase of an interglacial,
you get the mesocratic phase,
then the oligocratic phase.
And that means that the
woodland declines naturally
and you get more acid moorland
and heathland and peat bog.
So at this stage, we about
10,000 years after interglacial,
you expect woodland have declined
and moorland to become dominant.
And that for an open landscape
with woodland
is a natural feature you'd expect.
But every time you plant trees
on Scottish upland vegetation,
you're resulting a loss of biodiversity
'cause you're reducing the area
of natural habitat in Scotland.
So, you can't plant trees really,
or certain commercial trees
without losing biodiversity.
So, and also the landscape.
So not only damage in the
soils, dubious climate impact,
you also change a natural landscape
into an artificial landscape.
And windthrow is a huge problem.
A lot of the new native wooden
plantations been put up.
will just blow over.
A lot fo economic use for the trees.
And in 50 or 60 years time,
you end up with a huge lot
of wind blown plantations
and no use to anybody,
having destroyed a natural open landscape
in the process of creating them.
The trees are there just now.
All we're saying is just
like the trees grow.
So if you reduce the grazing pressure,
we don't need to plant trees.
This notion that the climate
is such that trees don't
want to grow in Scotland,
it's a construct that people
are working quite hard to create.
But the problem with the argument
is that, well, what happens
if the trees are there
and they just want to grow?
Nobody's planting them.
You're just reducing the
deer grazing pressure
and the trees are starting to grow.
What then?
And is it not slightly unusual
that Scotland is almost
unique across Europe
and it doesn't have a natural tree life?
That's not to do with
our climate or anything.
That's just to do the
fact it's been overgrazed.
Land reform is being debated
by the Scottish government.
The arguments come down
to who owns the land
and who has the right to
determine its best use.
We had hardly heard of land reform.
We had, but it seemed to be
something very, very distant,
promoted by a very, very small minority.
I would say their
motivation is neo-Marxist.
I mean, they want to see the breaking up
of large land holdings.
Scotland is a wild
country, a lot of mountain,
a lot of moorland, and
you need large areas
in order to be able to manage
them viably and efficiently.
Who pays to stop, or
prevent, or disincentivize
the farmer from ripping up a forest
or, you know, filling in
an a peat bog or whatever?
Those systems are benefiting
the whole of society
and therefore, the whole of
society has to contribute
to the maintenance of those systems
or the preservation of those systems.
And that includes the business sector.
And if we can get to a situation
where we have the private
sector fueling nature recovery,
but what gets spat out at the other end
is community benefit.
And that might be money.
It might be jobs.
It might be recreational opportunities.
It might be ecosystem services.
If we can get that conveyor
belt flowing more freely,
then I think we've gotta,
maybe not a perfect situation,
but a situation that's
moving towards rewilding
a nature recovery becoming an
economically viable land use.
We're not there yet, but that
is the direction of travel.
So, I think the problem with rewilding
is to put it in a nutshell,
it embraces a lot of concepts
which are problematic
and come into conflict with each other.
And some of the more
modern advocates of it
are people who are coming in,
buying a lot of land
and restoring forests.
But these people often
tend to be very wealthy
and they immediately bring
with them the baggage
associated with the whole
debate around land ownership,
because they're buying large
areas of land to rewild.
So again, that makes
this debate complicated
because people who don't want
foreigners, or wealthy people,
or people buying large areas of land,
find themselves critical of an endeavor,
which in other terms
were it to be done by other people maybe
if it were to be done by themselves maybe
would be regarded as quite positive.
Across the millennia,
the patterns of land use in Scotland
have sculpted the tapestry
of the rural highlands.
Today, a collective yearning exists
to enhance Scotland's biodiversity,
yet finding consensus on the precise goals
remains a formidable challenge.
It's a delicate dance
between preserving tradition
and forging a sustainable future.
You see an effort to
target heather moorland
and plant trees on it.
And then, we look
at marginal agricultural
lands at lower elevations,
where there's actual biodiversity loss.
Why doesn't the rewilding
movement target these lands?
Again, I don't think
rewilding is targeting,
as you put it, a given
habitat or a given land use.
I think there are some extremes.
You might argue that driven grouse moors
are one such extreme, where
the intensity of the management
in some cases is undoubtedly detrimental.
Maybe not to red grouse,
but to a whole range of other species.
And there's, you know, routine
calling of stokes, weasels,
foxes, corvids on those estates.
One of the challenges in Scotland
or in rural places really
across Europe is depopulation,
especially young people
leaving rural areas
to go and work in the city.
It's completely understandable.
We believe that rewilding
is not a silver bullet,
but if we get it right, it
brings benefits for nature,
it brings benefits for climate,
but crucially, it also
brings benefits for people.
If you have a look at the
biodiversity within these areas,
they're often far greater
than anywhere else.
And I dunno why people
don't seem to understand why that is.
And unfortunately, I think
it comes all the way down
to this emotional aspect that
people just want to believe
that yes, nature will just prevail.
We don't need to do
anything. That's not the case
On sporting estates
specializing in grouse shooting,
one of the critical
roles of the gamekeepers
to manage the land in a way that maximizes
the number of grouse available
each year for the hunt.
The Glorious Twelfth is the
first day of grouse season.
The sporting estates support
various rural businesses,
including Pam Blackhall,
who has run Wm Blackhall,
makers of fine kilts and
tailoring for three generations.
You are wanting a new suit
- or is it-
- Yes, please.
I just...
Just a pair of breaks.
A pair of breaks this year, please, Pam.
And I'm needing a new hat and I-
Would you like a cap,
- right?
- Yes, please.
Let
just take a note to that.
A lot of the tweets are
designed for camouflage.
So, there's historically they
were supposed to blend in
with the, you know,
the heather, the rocks.
The business has been
going for 101 years now,
and I've been doing it myself since 1992.
My father took over
from his father in 1966.
And my grandfather started
the business in 1921.
I probably have a pool
of about 35 to 40 different estates
that I work for.
And normally in a year,
I will do possibly up to about 28 states
outta that 35.
So, it's quite a lucrative
business to be honest,
as long as everybody keeps going.
So the day starts for me pretty early.
I think most head keepers
would be the same.
You don't get much sleep the night before.
Morning boys, how are you?
- Good.
- Yeah.
So, how's the game?
- Pete.
- Alex.
I look like him almost,
but yeah, how you doing?
It's all good.
Yeah, good, good. Baller.
Hi.
Hi.
What regiment are you boys?
Eh
Oh, a bit whole different.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Cool.
Done A bad being.
Nice.
Yeah.
Seasoned beaters like half.
Nice.
Good stuff, guys.
At Edinglassie estate,
organizing a driven grouse shoot
is no small feat.
Alex oversees 30 beaters
driving wild red grouse
toward eight guns or hunters
stations and butts or blinds.
The typical day involves six drives,
and on a larger estate,
birds may be pushed in two directions
during back-to-back drives.
22 and a half old, 90.
Okay,.
Alex and his beekeepers
meticulously sort the grouse
after a day's work.
The young birds find
their way to game dealers,
distributing them to
restaurants and markets
across the UK.
Each gun takes home a brace or two,
while beaters and support
staff depart with a brace
for their own tables.
The famed Glorious Twelfth
marks the start of grouse season
upholding a longstanding tradition
of featuring this quarry
in the finest restaurants
across Scotland.
The grouse to me is the holy grail.
It's the holy grail of what we do here.
It's heap in history.
It's something that we're
really proud to do here
in the restaurant.
Every year, we celebrate
it, the Glorious Twelfth.
People come from all over the world
to eat the grouse on the 12th,
but we don't take it
for granted, you know?
The work that goes into, you know,
keeping the grouse to shooting the grouse,
to protecting the grouse, to
keeping the traditional alive,
you know?
So someone like Andy going to pick it up
from the shoot, the goat, the gamekeepers
looking after the grouse
through the tough times
from when the exit hatched to now.
It's part of the journey
and it goes hand in hand
with what we do here and our
philosophy of nature to plate.
The young birds of
which are really tender.
This is what we're after.
This is the holy grail.
This is when you eat it, it's like butter.
It's tender. It's absolutely delicious.
Grouse moors on shooting estates
undergo intense management,
a crucial responsibility
of the gamekeeper,
sparking debates about the land's usage.
However, many argue that it's hard
to justify using this land this way,
but science tells us a different story.
Grouse moor management provides
the habitat for the grouse
and reduces the predation level
and the disease risk for grouse.
But that also means that other species
that enjoy the same
habitats, such as the waders,
like curlew, they're
having the same benefits.
Well, we're gonna do a grouse count
so that we can look at how many young
and how many old grouse
there are on this bit.
And it's a bit of ground
that we count every year.
I walk along the transact and
the dog quarters in front.
So, the dog will be hunting with the wind
looking for grouse.
And whenever any grouse flush,
we need to write down how
many old and how many young,
because all the data I collect
obviously goes straight
to the estates and they compare
it with previous counts.
But from our point of view
as the Game and Wildlife
Conservation Trust,
we're collecting this data,
so that we can look at long-term trends
and compare the kind of management
that's done on the grouse
with, you know, what impact
it is on the grouse themselves
and on other wildlife that
shares the same habitats.
If it's more about
less animals being shot,
would you have a problem with grouse mores
if they weren't so intensively managed?
I mean, the purpose is not
to shoot large bag limits.
So, I struggle still to get to
is that there's any biodiversity benefit
from grouse moors of any sort.
Large areas of land are being given award
for the management of a single species
for the very privileged few to benefit.
How do you justify
the loss of biodiversity
if we don't intensively
manage these hill sites?
I struggle to get my head around
even the basis of the argument.
It's what they're sort of saying
is that we have offshoot
benefits from managing for grouse
and we're gonna amplify those,
and then claim that somehow if
we didn't manage for grouse,
those species wouldn't exist.
And you think that's
difficult to understand
that argument actually.
If grouse shooting had never existed
and in 2023 in a climate emergency,
in a biodiversity emergency,
somebody suggested it as
a sustainable land use
for the future, it would be laughed at.
It would be completely dismissed.
And yet, here we have roughly 12, 15%
of Scotland's entire land area
devoted to driven grouse shooting.
Driven grouse shooting
was not really a big
environmental problem as such.
What it was a problem,
however, was in the extent
to which they killed anything
that predated on grouse and grouse chicks.
The issue of
predator control on grouse moors
is steeped in controversy.
Historically, gamekeepers
and crofters were notorious
for targeting various raptor species
that threatened grouse and lambs.
The killing of raptors was
outlawed in 1954 in Scotland
through the Protection of Birds Act.
However, the actions of a few
rogue keepers who defy the law
cast a shadow over the
reputation of all keepers.
Gamekeepers have come to symbolize
the injustice in land ownership
or the perceived injustice.
There's links as well that we
can't avoid of raptor crime.
And in the past, gamekeeping
models in the country
were responsible for killing a
lot of our predatory species,
but I really think that's very detached
from the model today.
And I think we need to get over that.
There's the historical vestige there
that is really challenging
for wildlife management.
We know from a major study
published five years ago
on satellite tagged eagles
was that applying an analysis
of the fate of these eagles,
these birds were disappearing.
That's all they were doing.
They were disappearing at
far, far higher intensities
on areas used for driven grouse moors.
And that is all proven by data.
And that proves that raptor persecution
is still happening on driven grouse moors.
It's just an nonsense.
I mean, we've had harriers
breed and draft on
in recent years.
We've got in numerous buzzard nests.
I mean, a lot of the
eagles that were taken
to repopulate Ireland, for example,
came from sporting estate.
This was 20 years ago.
We had enough surplus eagles to ship out
to reintroduction programs,
but they hunt on these moors for a reason.
You know, there's plenty of prey.
This is down to our management.
This is because we're
controlling the legal predators
that we can, like the fox, stokes, crows.
And that's why you see so
many raptors on grouse moors.
There's evidence on a regular
basis that is it going on.
Is it going on all estates? No.
Is it any more appropriate or moral
to shoot stout or to shoot a golden eagle?
Golden eagle is illegal to shoot
and society rightly recoils in horror,
but stouts are somehow dispensable.
Traditionally, you know, birds of prey
was seen as competition.
So particularly on grouse
moors back in Victorian times,
any predator there that was
competition for the grouse
was eliminated.
You know, we know that
that's part of the history.
A couple hundred years ago,
numbers were, you know, much reduced
due to mostly to human
influence persecution
across Scotland.
When legal protection came
in about 50, 60 years ago,
numbers have begun to increase
across most of Scotland,
but in the South we weren't
seeing that increase.
There was a very small
isolated residual population
of just three pairs, so six, seven birds
and they weren't producing
enough young for the population
to kind of increase on its own.
So, we decided to do a translocation
to bring chicks from nest in
the Highlands and islands down
into the south of Scotland,
just to kind of boost that population.
We take a chick from a nest of twins,
taking one, leaving one behind.
We actually work with a qualified vets,
who comes with us to every nest.
They'll do a health check on both birds
and make sure that we are taking
really strong healthy
chicks for translocation.
They remain completely wild.
We are feeding them from behind a screen.
So, we're giving them natural
food that they'd expect.
Things like rabbits and
bits and bobs like that.
And they stay in the Avery and they grow
until they're, you know,
would naturally fledge.
So, they're full adult size.
We have released 20
juvenile golden eagles.
Some of the older birds are
now four, five years old.
They are pairing up,
settling on territories.
So, we're now looking at
probably five new territories,
which is brilliant progress
in kinda five, six years that we've had.
Out of the 20 or so birds
that we've translocated,
I'd say 18 or 19 of
them have come from land
managed for shooting.
So typically, grouse moors and stalking.
We've not lost any birds to persecution.
If you look at the tag
data from our eagles,
they are spending a lot of time
in areas managed for shooting.
I think without those areas,
we wouldn't have the prey base.
We wouldn't have the available
habitat for golden eagle.
So I think it's really, really
kind of key important part
to having them there.
The issues that we have had
have been unrelated to persecution.
You know, we've even had tags fall off
and found them on grouse moors.
So, I think jumping to those conclusions
that it's automatically
persecution, I think, is unhelpful.
The keeper support is really important.
So yeah, they have that
incredible knowledge
of their ground.
They often know where
their eagles are nesting
and how they're doing.
And in terms of collection, you know,
we really couldn't do it without keepers.
They're helping to often take the team out
to the nest in ATVs or four by fours,
which helps us access very quickly
and get the chicks back
very quickly as well.
Much of the food we're
getting for our young eagles
is provided by keepers.
So, we're getting foxes,
rabbits, squirrels,
that kind of thing.
And nearly all of that
is coming from keepers
in the south of Scotland.
So, the support has been
absolutely fantastic.
And welcoming us, welcoming the eagles,
you know, sharing
sightings, things like that.
You know, shooting estates welcoming us
with, you know, with artificial areas,
like the one behind me,
I see that partnership
with shooting estates
as one of the real
successes of this project.
Taking the life of a raptor in Scotland
now carries severe consequences.
An automatic prison
sentence and unlimited fines
with both landowner and the
employee held accountable.
The risk is palatable, making
it a choice few, if any,
would consider.
For gamekeepers managing
ground predators is integral
to the success of wild
red grouse populations
and yields unintended positive effects
on ground nesting waders and raptors.
However, government efforts to license
and restrict specific
predator control methods
presents challenges for keepers
in executing their duties.
The control of foxes with
snares is deemed crucial.
In 2023, the Scottish government
proposed a complete ban
on their use, raising
concerns about how gamekeepers
will continue to fulfill their roles.
So, I'm targeting
targeting the fox here.
And so as the fox walk wanders down here,
it'll pick up and round the neck here
and it's just a restraining device.
It's not a killing device.
I have to check these every 24 hours,
well within a 24 hour period.
So every day.
So if it's a non-target
species, a hare for example,
I can just, I can let it go.
These are pretty heavily
legislated in Scotland these days.
They have to be set in a certain way,
designed in a certain way.
I have to have my own unique
snaring number attached to it,
so folk know that I've set these snares.
Everybody that undertakes
snaring in Scotland now
has to be trained and
we have to keep record.
The detriment is to those species
that are literally eliminated
to allow red grouse
to produce a harvest for the shooters.
If you're a crow, or a fox,
or a stout, or a weasel,
it's detrimental 'cause you
have your head blown off.
The studies we've
done have clearly shown
that wader breeding
success is much greater
when there's grouse moor management,
particularly the predator control aspect.
So, the birds of here
are at higher densities
when there's grouse moor management,
as well as breeding much better,
which means that populations
are likely to be robust enough
to continue and hopefully
even increase into the future.
Gamekeepers employ a strategic approach
to Heather moorland management
utilizing low intensity
burning in small patches,
typically less than half an acre.
This practice efficiently
clears old or overgrown heather,
fostering a mosaic pattern
of new growth buds.
From this rejuvenated growth,
young grouse find a
vital primary food source
ensuring a sustainable ecosystem.
Once the heather gets
old and degenerate,
it loses a lot of its feed value.
So, we look to rotationally
burn it on a cycle.
Now, that cycle's roughly
about 20 years up here
and we take the surface
of the vegetation off
only just the heather.
it leaves the understory
of the mosses, et cetera.
Removing that old vegetation
results in new growth.
One common
argument against muirburn
is its impact on peat,
crucial carbon storage
deep in the heather moorland.
However, my firsthand observation
challenges this notion.
The mirror burn I witnessed
moves swiftly across the land,
leaving a chocolate bar buried in the soil
beneath the heather untouched.
The candy remained as fresh
as the day it was made
demonstrating the keepers precision
and targeting specific vegetation
without compromising the
surrounding environment.
If you're trying to
conserve global biodiversity,
the full range of plants,
animals on the planet
need to conserve the
variety of natural habitats
across the world.
And that means heather moorland.
Heather moorland is an ancient landscape
between a thousands of years old
and burning doesn't stop it
being a heather moorland.
It just adds diversity of pattern to it.
Those landscapes is actually
what brings in huge amounts
of tourists to Scotland in particular
because of this unique
habitat that we have.
And I think we do value it as a nation.
And I think that's been forgotten
with this whole argument
of planting the trees and it's more money
and focusing on the carbon
sequestration side of things.
I'm in Kinrara,
an old grouse shooting
and stalking estate.
It has been purchased by
a Scottish beer company
that wishes to be the first beer company
to be carbon neutral.
Unfortunately, when you
talk to the scientist,
what you see behind me not
only destroys what the UN says
is an ecosystem of concern,
but also creates many other issues.
I mean, what we have at
the moment is this real rush
into the whole carbon market,
carbon trading market.
And that we will risk losing
altogether a range of species,
you know, in this sort
of carbon gold rush.
There's another debate,
which is that we want to offset carbon.
I've got a super tank of oil
on the way to New Zealand.
I want to decarbonize it. How do I do it?
Well, I plant some trees
in some other country
and I sell the carbon credits for it.
And then, I've decarbonized
and made money.
We can't just go short term
and say there's short term economic goals.
That we need to meet our political goals
that we're trying to get to and damage
our very natural assets
that we've only got once.
Once we've damaged them or destroyed them,
we don't get 'em back.
Peatland is the greatest
sequestration vessel for carbon.
And actually planting woodland
on peatland, deep peat,
is counterproductive.
It actually releases more
carbon than it sequesters.
The big corporates will enter the market.
They will buy their carbon
or create their carbon,
and then exit the market again
quite quickly thereafter.
And what they'll leave
us with is uncertain.
I think we should make it
illegal to sell carbon credits.
We should be restoring these ecosystems
because it's a good thing to do,
because it sequesters carbon,
because it helps cool the planet,
and we shouldn't be getting
messed up at offsetting schemes.
I was invited
by wildlife photographer Neil McIntyre
and his son-in-law Ed
Jaundrel, a gamekeeper,
to see carbon sequestration
schemes in action.
Neil's brother was a second
generation keeper on Kinrara,
but when the estate was
purchased by the brewery,
all the keepers were fired.
What they showed me on the
old estate blew my mind.
Well, it was a, I
would say more than that,
it was a very typical, we call
a typical highland estate.
Had a bit of everything.
Yeah, grouse very much so.
But a, you know, decent deer stocking,
a roll stocking, and it
just looks horrendous
to be honest with you.
It beats me how that's
conducive to conservation
or you know, it's just
mind boggling really
with the damage they've
done in that place.
You know, you used
to drive up this road,
these rocky knolls will
be full of kestrels.
Further out we go, we'd see eagles.
But if it's all been fenced off
and they're culling the deer
and let's say the hares,
there's no food source valley
for any of these predators now.
So, there's no real reason for
these birds to be back here.
The
sheer volume of trees
that are getting parked in,
you know, they're not for, you know,
they're for carbon capture.
So they're the forests
that are gonna be supposedly
there forevermore.
But what a missed opportunity as well
to actually to create nice forests,
you know, just a little bit of thought.
Have some open bits,
you know, just have it,
just, you know, you could
have the native trees in it,
You know,
there was always exposed peat
out in the hill,
but now there's more
exposed peat on this estate
than ever before.
And it's gonna take at least 10 years,
five years to 10 years to
get them trees established
and to get that heather
to grow back under it.
And it eventually it will die back
when it's all got a canvas of pain
and no light getting to all these,
you know, plants and everything.
And that's the end of that.
And if there was a fire
here sit by a barbecue
or anybody, it would
go up through the moor.
But when all that's one
big bunker for fuel load,
you'll never get this out ever.
The example you've mentioned
not too far from here,
I would argue is not a
particularly good example.
I think their motivations
are questionable,
but equally we work with corporate bodies
who have no agenda.
They don't want greenwash.
They just want to give back to nature
and in many cases, give back
to local communities as well.
So, we need to make sure
that the motivation of these
investors is well placed.
And it is true to say that in some cases
that's not the case.
It's been realized
there were a lot of plantations of trees
of non-native conifers,
biological part of this instance
in the peat bogs in the
north, very north of Scotland,
what's called the flow country.
And research shows there
that the water content
of the soil goes down,
it dries out the soil
and the peat oxidizes away.
That carbon's released into the air.
So, it's known for quite a long time now
that planting trees on deep
peat isn't good for the climate
'cause an order magnitude
more carbon stored in the peat
than the trees.
So, there's now a government
of not planting on deep peat,
but there's no policy by not
planting on shallow peat.
Peat is a dead plant remains
as the plants remains decay.
You know, the peat gets thicker
and thicker and thicker,
being a store of carbon
for 5,000 years or more.
Trees are cut down after 60 years.
They can't store more than
60 years worth of carbon.
So if you have a shallow
peat and plant trees on that,
you're stopping that,
going to be a huge
terrestrial store of carbon.
'Cause that much organic matter
covering the landscape
stores as much forest,
sorry, stores as much carbon
as a 60 year rotation spruce forest.
The Highlands of Scotland
and the sporting estates
play a crucial role
in sustaining the incomes
of rural communities,
Beyond direct staff employment,
these estates contribute
to the local economy
through various spinoff benefits.
Thanks to the businesses in the area
and the guests they attract.
However, rewilding advocates
argue that even more robust
job opportunities could arise
from the managing of restored ecosystems
and the resulting boost in tourism.
If you look at the land that we own
as a John Muir Trust or even
the those that are involved
in the environmental sector,
the employment base per
acre is higher than it is
in the sporting estates.
So, those are not jobs in
the sort of tourism sector.
Those are jobs in land management.
These are high quality jobs.
We've seen it on Skye
this whole kind of tourism boom,
where often many of these operators
are coming out with Skye,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen
coming here.
Those people are not
linked to that landscape.
They're not managing that landscape.
They're coming here now
in this supposedly devoid
landscape and they're enjoying it.
They are seeing deer.
They are seeing eagles.
They're seeing this wealth of wildlife.
They love to see the heather
in bloom on the grouse moors.
So, they're coming here now on mass
and there is a huge amount
of wealth there, agreed.
But direct jobs on the ground,
that's not the case just now.
You know what COVID showed us
and what broadband has shown us
is that people want to
live in these rural areas.
You can communicate with
the rest of your sector,
whatever that sector is.
It doesn't really matter through
broadband connections now.
And you can be living in some
of the most spectacular places
in the world.
The concept that we need to in some way
have extractive industries
based on our land
is kind of moved that part
a sort of an old paradigm
has been a big shift there.
The sporting estates in this area
is what's keeping it going.
Everything gets poured
back into the community
For jacket, waistcoat,
breaks, and a cap,
including the cloth, you are speaking
about 900 to a thousand pounds.
And we've been dependent on gamekeepers
for possibly 50 to 60% of the business.
I would fear that possibly
I couldn't stay open
without shooting, hunting, and fishing.
You know, the manufacturer of our guns
supports the community and the industry.
We obviously provide all
the shooting facility
that supports the local community.
That comes through in terms of supporting
the local estates with their
ammunition, with their guns.
And also, you know, the shooting
parties that come into us
are staying in the local community.
They're staying in Dunkeld.
They're eating in our restaurants.
They're drinking in our pubs.
They're bringing revenue into the economy,
into the locals pockets
at the end of the day.
To be blunt, it would
decimate the country.
It decimate the Highlands.
So, we got the fishing clients
and they tend to come in groups
of maybe between four, six, or eight.
And they'll typically
be up here for a week.
Then, you've got the stalking side.
They're gonna be in
smaller groups, you know.
We've got maybe two or four.
They're coming up here.
They're gonna spend a
lot of money on the hill
and they want comfort, and they want food,
and they wanna enjoy themselves.
They're getting away for a couple of days.
So, it's they spend good money.
If the government were to ban shooting,
it's gonna really make our
life a lot more difficult here.
But I feel like we are bringing back
that type of shooting lodge type place.
And to lose those sort of traditions
and to lose those places be a real shame.
But you're talking probably losing
30 to 40% of my revenue
within the next year.
You know, people wanna see the wildlife.
They wanna see the rich biodiversity,
but what they're not realizing
is the people on the ground,
They're the ones that are actually helping
the biodiversity here.
You know, these guys are the
important conservationists.
You know, they're the ones
that keep the wildlife
going here.
And you can drive along the roads
and the hillside, and lay-by,
are full of people in camper
vans, parking for free,
and camping right next
to the roadside for free.
You can replace it with
other forms of tourism,
but will they provide the jobs?
And that's the million dollar question.
The Isle of Muck is the
home to Gallanach Lodge,
a sporting estate born
when a laird's daughter
sought a means to remain
on her island home,
where the aristocratic model
favored her older brother's family.
Beyond summer tourism,
the sporting estate model
extended the tourism season
from September through January,
generating income for 10 families
and preserving a way
of life on the island.
All right folks, we're
gonna redraw this morning.
So, we're numbering eight, right to left.
With that look, I'll wait.
You gonna come back.
I'll come back to you.
I always get what's left.
Numbering right to left,
we'll move up two pins each drive please.
I'm gonna shoot three drives this morning.
The island economy is
largely based around farming,
tourism, and fishing.
And what we offer, I guess,
is a sort of sporting tourism
from red stag stocking,
Billy goat stocking
on the Isle of Rum behind us here.
We're spending somewhere in the region
of about 70 to 90,000 pounds
a year just on boat charters
to either bring people from
the mainland out to the island
or to bring people from
between Muck and Rum here.
We are also using a local boat
to extract the deer
off the island as well.
The number of guests we
bring onto the island
is obviously directly
related to the number of deer
we're shooting.
So the more deer we shoot,
the more people we bring onto the island,
which has a knock on
effect to Rums economy,
to the local economy there.
Without the hunting season, we
couldn't really survive here.
We need the hunting in the winter months
to get through the year.
So, we fish predominantly
lobster and langoustine
close into the shore,
around about the island,
and sell as much as we can locally.
Until we opening the lodge
and having guests all through the winter,
we now have a mark to have
local seafood and stuff
on the menu.
The thing what a lot
of people don't realize
it's not just the shooting.
It's all the other businesses
that are connected to that.
So, there's B&B's on the mainland.
There's the ferry transport.
It's kind of the wider impact
that people don't kind of see for here,
especially it seeing the
people getting pulled in
to help clean the lodge
and all the other things.
All those little things,
all those jobs were just,
and that would impact
probably 2,000 of the families
on the island.
I think out of something
like 1,200 applicants,
we were chosen to come
and run the tea room.
And this is now coming into
the end of our third year.
And also we get the shoot lunches here.
So, we have the tourist in the summer.
Come near September,
again, it slows right down.
And if the lodge weren't
doing shoot parties
through the winter up till January,
then we would probably close down.
When I was first here,
we had power in the morning
and then off all day.
And power at the nighttime
till about half past 11.
No internet apart from satellite internet.
So, it has made a heck
of a difference with Toby
setting up the hotel definitely.
They've turned it into
like a global phenomenon.
We were getting people from Sweden.
We're getting people from South Africa.
We're getting people from all over Europe
and further afield.
There's a lot of
management that's going on
to do with the shooting.
That we've seen lots of other birds coming
and you know, for the children
they're growing up interested in.
Even things like when they're
waiting to go beating,
you know, Hughes always
looking at the heather
and seeing what kind of
different grouses there are.
Do you know what I mean?
They're kind of, it's
another way of looking
at all the things around us, I suppose.
So, there's the financial impact,
but there's also all the
other management things
that are going on that
have a positive impact.
It's a different connection to
the environment around them.
So, they're already
connected through farming,
but this is a different angle.
So, all these stag heads
are ones that have called with the girls.
You know, I've got four daughters now
and they've all been kind
of involved and immersed
in the world that I'm in.
When we're out with the stags
and the hinds in each season,
I enjoy seeing them in between the trees.
So each bit of more of a challenge to spy
and glass across to them.
The reason why I want to be a gamekeeper
is I like being outside and
like amongst the environment.
Well, when I go to school,
they just say to me
and my sister, they go,
"Why does your dad shoot so many deer?"
And I do, I just put
them right and just say,
"My dad shoots them in season.
He doesn't shoot them outta season.
He has to color for each year."
And they go, "Oh, but that's so cruel.
Your dad just kills animals
for the sake of it."
And he doesn't, he has to manage them.
Yeah, I couldn't really
see him doing anything else.
I've been with him for 30 years
and it's all he's ever done
and it's all he wants to do.
He has returning guests
year after year after year
that come back.
It's not just always for the sport,
it can just be to spend a day in the hotel
or a couple of nights in the hotel
and you know, they'll
get in touch with Scott
'cause they've become friends.
The people that sort of,
they've got a place in
your heart, you know.
You're out all day on the hill
with them or maybe longer.
The girls have quite a
bit of stick at school
off certain people.
And it's hard really
sometimes to take it in
because these children at
school that take it out on them
have also got dads that are crofters
and dads that work the land themselves.
So, they'll have a go at the girls
and just say, you know,
"All your dad does is go out
and kill foxes," you know?
And it's hard for the girls
because they've been brought up with it.
They've seen it.
They go out with Scott onto the hill
and they'll be there with him, you know,
while Scott uses a firearm to, you know,
to call the beast.
So, they'll see it from
as soon as it's shot
to actually being cooked
and put on a plate in front
of them and they eat it.
They love it because they
know where it comes from.
There's so many kids at their
school that don't even know
where a piece of meat comes from.
They're just so used to seeing it
in a cellophane wrapper
at the supermarket.
A wee boy look.
We staggy.
Ah, clan, the Mackenzie's
intrinsically linked
to the red deer.
So, I've always thought it's nice for us
to say something like that
and it's not a done thing
in the Gaelic world.
There's never any, you know,
it's our little link
to our ancestors past.
The red deer or the red stag
is the most iconic symbol
of the Scottish Highlands.
But today, they're under the gun.
Red deer in Scotland
have become a dilemma.
Favorited for stalking by sportsmen
and sightings of the monarch of the glen
are desired by tourist.
Those within the rewilding effort
have put crosshairs on
this iconic species.
Red deer are woody browsers
during the winter months
and can cause significant damage
if they're concentrated onto an area
filled with young tree plantings.
No one really knows how
many deer exist on the land
nor can they agree on how many
or how few need to be culled
to allow for healthy ecosystems.
Each side has put up their battle lines,
but the government has
budgeted 30 million pounds
to hire contractors to kill
deer over the next year.
So, we have a situation
where the grazing pressure,
primarily through red deer and sheep,
is preventing the regeneration
of the woodland habitats.
And not only woodland,
but habitats in general.
And it's keeping them in a
suppressed, degraded situation.
I think it's often
portrayed that red deer
are naturally a woodland animal.
I think that helps push
this kind of narrative
of huge woodland expansion.
Deer are a woodland animal.
They're not meant to
live in the open hill.
And give them a wood,
they'll head into the wood.
That's where they wanna live.
So, the big challenge today
is to get numbers down
to more sustainable levels,
so that plant communities
and other wildlife
communities can flourish.
But also to get them back
into their native habitat,
which is woodland.
There's been no trees
over most of the highlands
for 2,000 years.
If the deer survive that,
you can't tell me they're woodland animals
because they're not living in woodlands.
But if you are in a wet,
cold, stormy climate and snowy
and you want shelter, where
the first place you go to
is trees.
They have a wide ecological altitude.
Like wolves, in fact, they can
be woodland or open ground.
And if they're eating more
nutritious vegetation,
they're bound to be
bigger and more robust,
especially if you've keep
the populations very low
by shooting or hunting.
So, deer management
is one of these things
where people view it as shooting deer.
For about six months of the year,
that is part and parcel of what we do.
It's not a matter of having
a kind of key number of deer
that we're aiming for the area.
It's we're looking at
impact that they're having
and making our management
choices based on that.
There are parts of the highlands
where, yeah, potentially
you've got too many deer.
There's also large parts of the highlands
where you don't have enough deer.
There's bits and pieces
of historic Gaelic culture
that were here, the original
sort of indigenous people
that were here.
Deer gave them food,
and clothing, and heat,
and like all sorts of valuable
between human beings and deer
going way back to the stone age.
The problem, if indeed you
perceive it to be a problem,
is the deer, the number of deer.
So, the way that the Scottish landscape
has been managed for
the last 150, 200 years,
generally speaking to paraphrase,
is to maximize the number of deer.
So if your objective is sport shooting,
then you may wish to have
higher numbers of deer.
If your objective is to
let nature have its freedom
and for lots of species to benefit,
rather than just a single species,
then the chances are you'll
want deer to lower density.
You know, the ideal density
for an area like this
to get the trees to grow
is probably two deer per square kilometer.
That's what you're gonna aim for.
To manage two deer per square kilometer,
you are hitting them
really hard all the time.
If deer stalking is part
of your income for the estate
and, you know, stags are of a big income
and support many jobs, then
you that you want to lessen
the winter mortality that you have.
So, those estates that feed
stags are feeding the stags
to help 'em see through the winter.
It could be argued that
we should just leave them
and what happens is what happens,
but it's a business like any other.
You want stags for next year,
you've got to look after 'em.
You've got to take care of your animals.
We're now in a phase
where we're seeing how we manage red deer,
not as just an environmental issue,
not just as a an issue
to do a quarry species,
but as a component of a wider ecosystem
and that's a positive development.
You put manure in your
garden or farmers did
because it's rich in nutrients.
Now if you think on the
wide landscape scale,
then all the deer and even the sheep
are actually breaking
down the plant material
excreting in that dung and
that's fertilizing the ground.
If you reduce deer numbers or
graze the animals generally,
you reduce fertility
of the whole landscape.
On lots of the property
that we have, it is red deer.
That's the problem.
It's not roe deer. It's not hares.
It's red deer.
There are areas in our ground
too where sheep of the problem
and unless we manage the sheep
and work well with the
crafters whose sheep they are,
then we're not, just
killing the deer by itself
isn't gonna solve the problem.
We're gotta manage the
sheep issue as well.
We know the deer are
really, really important.
I mean, look at them.
Every bottle of whiskey
that gets sold to America
each year's gotta stag on it.
Of course, like this
is our national brand.
This is what we're about.
It sets all kinds of
strange questions running
when we start to say,
"Actually, we hate deer now.
We don't want deer. These
spaces aren't for deer."
Deer are part of us and in
large part, we're part of them.
The intense management of red deer
has spurred entrepreneurs
to develop businesses
capitalizing on providing
sustainable healthy meat
to the broader public throughout the UK.
Animals being shot,
they go from being a deer to being venison
and of course, categorize
into variety of different specifications
and depending on the species.
So, we will supply
around two and a half thousand
stores nationwide daily
with specifications such as
burgers, sausages, steaks
ready for you to cook.
This is a wild animal.
This is a product that is as God intended
is out there for a reason.
And we are making it available to you
who is looking for an alternative,
but perhaps also looking for alternative
from a healthier point of view.
It is proven to be a healthier protein
than most other proteins
that we can get our hands on.
And that food product must be looked after
just as well, if not even better,
than a cow produced in the
field going through an abattoir.
The specter of
conflict looms in Scotland,
particularly on the Assynt Peninsula,
where the John Muir Trust
finds itself at odds
with neighbors to managing
the deer population.
Are humans across the globe predisposed
to manage our natural assets
in a way that's sustainable?
You know, sadly, I think
there's too many examples
of where we're not predisposed
to manage it sustainably.
So, the Assynt Peninsula
is about 18,000 hectares.
So, that's about 45,000 acres.
About 2,000 hectares of that is woodland
and most of that is native woodland.
And the majority of the landscape
is dominated by blanket
bogue, and wet heath,
and monte, and habitats.
And you know, it doesn't really
sustain very many animals.
One of the sources
of income for the trust
was stalking,
where people would come
in and pay to stalk stags.
That in turn, allowed people to come in
and spend money locally
for accommodation,
buying things from shops.
And it still remains very important
that we have a sufficiency of deer
to allow us to continue doing that.
As far as I understand,
there was a change in the
direction of the John Muir Trust
in relation to the number of deer
which they would tolerate on Quinag.
They pulled outta the
deer management group,
so I understand because
they didn't like the way
that the rest of the people
in the group were behaving.
For the last 15 years,
John Muir Trust have
seriously misrepresented
the state of the environment
here on the Assynt Peninsula.
The collaborative
approach wasn't working
and the deer numbers
were actually going up.
The group had agreed to reduce the numbers
and that was the target,
but the numbers weren't going down.
The numbers were going the other way.
It's not about deer per square kilometer.
So if you take in the
top of those mountains,
deer can't eat stone.
So, you have to exclude all that area
as part of your per
square kilometer figure.
And then, what you realize
is actually the deer density
is probably much higher.
They're trying to campaign
to change the way we
manage deer in Scotland.
And they do that by creating a noise.
And they think that at
the creating a noise,
then politicians will be on their side.
The concern
seems to be of red deer
eating young trees,
which may or may not exist
on the Quinag Estate.
But on the neighboring Ardvar
Estate, keeper Michael Ross
shows us how trees are coexisting
and flourishing with deer.
There's a good number of
deer on the Ardvar Estate
that live in here because of the shelter.
And now, we've got this,
but we've got this throughout the estate.
You can see how the woodland works here.
Once you get in the bogey grin,
it starts to peat right.
And you can see that in there
once it gets the boat
mill, ridge there too.
Yeah.
So, deer and forest can coexist?
At a loose hill, yeah.
They're a forest animal.
They have every right to be in here.
You mentioned something
though that some of the stags,
those royal stags that you'd
see year after year after year,
you haven't seen them anymore.
Well, stags are bad on Ardvar.
They didn't come back this year.
It's not something you
get many off up here.
We don't have many royals really.
So, there's a few of them,
was a few of them on Ardvar,
but we seem to be missing
them, not coming back,
after the rat in October.
They usually come back
to Ardvar for the winter
and they haven't returned.
So, they've obviously
been caught up in this.
So, you think they were taken out
by the John Muir Trust.
Caught, they would've
been caught up in the...
If you're missing one or two,
fair enough, that happens,
but not when you're missing
quite a few numbers.
Us for ourselves, you cull the
deer to look after the deer.
So, you're gonna take out the worst ones.
But it seems to be across the board,
they just shoot what's in front of them
and then, sickening.
After withdrawing from
the Deer Working Group,
the John Muir Trust filed for a permit
with Nature Scot to
conduct night shooting.
Amidst tensions with the neighbors,
Balharry expressed a drastic stance
stating he would kill every deer he could.
The John Muir Trust are not stalking.
They're not stalking the deer.
They're killing the deer.
Because as anyone who lives in
this part of the world knows,
it's very, very easy
to shoot deer at night.
They don't run when there are
bright lights shone on them.
Generally, they stand still.
What has made people very angry of late
is that there are reports of animals
being found outside of Quinag
having been shot but not killed.
In the dark, if you hit but don't kill,
it's very difficult to track an animal.
One of the two stalkers
who is doing the nighttime shooting
is the chief executive
officer of JMT himself,
Mr. Balharry.
Now, you would think
that the role of a chief executive officer
is quite an important one in a business
as big as the John Muir Trust,
but the fact that he can
spend hours off his life
driving from where he lives south of here,
a couple of hours in the middle of winter
to come up and shoot deer,
not stop deer, but shoot deer,
seems to me that there's a,
there may be a problem with him
as well as a problem with Nature Scot.
We are what we thought
the Scottish government
would like us to be.
In relation to deer in particular,
they seem, in a strange way,
hell bent on destroying us.
The sporting estates
roundabout are anxious.
We've gotta work that
situation with them to say,
"Look, you know, our
intent is to kill more deer
and we will," but we're
trying to work with them
to find a solution to the deer
that are crossing the road.
So, we're aiming to get down to a density
of about sort of two to four
deer per square kilometer
across the estate.
But what is the
total number of deer though?
Just now?
Before now,
I mean, you guys shot, you
know how many deer you shot.
I mean you have to report
that to the government.
Yeah, no, I do. So I'm saying-
So, how many
deer did you guys shoot?
Well, that's what I'm
saying it's about a hundred.
And so, we manage lots of estates.
I don't carry the exact
numbers round in my head.
I could get them for you in a second.
Less than 150,
but I mean the numbers is a,
it's to debate the numbers
is to miss the point entirely.
It's about getting the habitat
and getting the trees to grow.
So, whatever numbers of
deer need to be culled
to get the trees to grow,
that's what we'll do.
A hundred,
less than 150 were taken.
Did you take all the
deer off of the estate
or you know, 50%, 20%, 10%?
- Most of
- I'm just
trying to get some sort of idea
of what really was there.
What propagated you guys
to get these permits?
What was the motivation?
I know it's to get deer densities
down, I understand that,
but there had to be
something that triggers like,
"Hey, we're seeing X amount of
deer here we need to remove."
And how do you determine how many deer
you need to remove there at Quinag?
Um,
so you get the authorizations
for shooting deer outta season.
Come on the back of an argument that says,
"Is it necessary to prevent damage?"
Damage to what? Damage to
trees that are growing.
If you control deer in the
seasons, then that's fine.
You can prevent the damage in season,
but then the new growth
will simply get browsed off
in the wintertime, unless you
continue to shoot the deer.
So that's it, that's the logic
for getting an out season shooting.
It means that you are unable
to protect your habitats,
because there are deer on the ground
in the out of season period.
The deer
that you did harvest,
did you guys leave the
carcasses on the hill
or were they sold?
Majority of them were
taken off the hill.
Actually leaving carcasses on the hill
is quite a good thing to do.
Rather than them being
left as a result of death
by starvation, or malnutrition,
or just inability to access shelter.
These ones are humanely
shot and then left.
And, you know, other
animals can then benefit
from the carcasses.
Scottish law
allows for hostile buyouts
by the community of
neighboring landowners,
if the landowner in question
is running an estate
to the detriment of its neighbors.
It is possible to mount
what would be a hostile
buyout of that estate
simply in order to eliminate
the social problem,
which they're causing.
But I think that there
are enough local people
so enraged at what's been going on
that I don't think it
would be very difficult
to form such a community group.
David, the Assynt Crofters' Trust
regards the deer as an asset,
utilizing them for food, stalking jobs,
and promoting tourism as
the tourists need lodging
and meals on the peninsula.
The Assynt Crofters' Trust
is a kind of a peculiar model.
It was, as you say, one of the first ones,
but it's not exactly a
community ownership model.
It's a group of crofters
who own the landlord's
interest in their land.
And for them to exercise
or for that bit of
legislation to be exercised,
it would have to be the community.
And, you know, ideally if the community
were able to manage in
perpetuity that area of land
for its natural assets,
that would be a phenomenal
outcome to aim for.
I'm reading in the
paper, they're discussing
enacting the clause and the law.
So, how do you respond?
Well, so it's fine.
So the first thing we would sort of say
is, well, let's speak to the community
and let's see what their
land use objectives are.
What it boils down to
is that you've got one
group of private interests,
the landlord's interest
in a crofting estate,
wanting at the moment to buy the asset
of another private individual.
So, there's two property
rights that are at stake there
and neither of those property rights
represents a geographic community.
It can work if there's a
genuine community thing there
that shows it's detrimental,
but I think it can only work
if the owners wanted to sell.
It's not, you can't sort
of force the sale with it.
People assumed that
legislation would only be used
against private owners.
No one envisaged that that legislation
would be used against
an environmental group.
It's a nuclear option in lots of ways.
I'm in Strathglass in
the Scottish Highlands
and all around me is wildfire.
This wildfire burned over
the last seven or eight days
and it is the largest wildfire
to ever occur in the United Kingdom.
It started about three miles over there,
three and a half miles.
And it burned initially towards Cannich,
and then it kind of settled a wee bit
or at least it seemed that way.
And then, yeah, then it
started coming towards us
and the day it hit here
was the day it just,
it was tearing all over the place.
You know, the helicopter was on site,
the Forestry Commission,
RSPB, the Fire Service,
everyone was trying their absolute best,
but they couldn't shoot
water at it from in front.
It was coming too fast, too hot.
You know, it was along the top of this
or the side of this ridge here.
That was the time where
the gamekeepers turned up
and started lighting fires this way.
And the two fires sort of came together
and they completely turned it.
In fact, you can see the furthest west
and extent of the fire
over there on my ridge.
I mean they literally
made it do 90 degrees.
It was kind of like the
weirdest thing, you know.
Here we were firing water
at absolutely everything.
Another dude stand up
and set fire to stuff
and that's actually what saved it
from being an awful lot worse.
I'm not saying the helicopters
wouldn't have caught it,
but it was just the fire
could have just forked,
could have gone in all sorts
of different directions
and none of the people on the ground
could do anything about it.
They couldn't get near it.
Ultimately, the gamekeepers
just controlled.
They sort of corralled it
and just stopped it from spreading.
That skill, experience, knowledge,
specialist stuff, the gamekeepers
had a significant positive
impact on the outcome.
No question about it.
I mean, this fire happened
in large part on ground
that was vegetated heavily.
You know, we're a non-sporting estate.
We don't burn.
I mean the temptation,
I guess, from people
who are opposed to
conservation, rewilding,
whatever you wanna call it
is to say that we made
life worse for ourselves
by having all this ground cover.
There's no getting away from it.
We're increasing the fuel
burden on the ground.
There's no way to get away from that.
That is happening.
There is more to burn
on a rewild landscape
than there is on on the opposite.
I think it's a fact we're
gonna have more fires.
That's a fact. We are not prepared.
We are fundamentally
unprepared at the moment,
unless you're on a sporting
estate, for example,
which manages a mosaic of burnt habitat
for different purposes.
To me, it's bringing in an expert.
Somebody like the keepers who
are here fighting this fire,
bring them in and say,
"What can I do to limit my chances
of experiencing this again?"
Intensive grouse moor management
backed by scientific evidence
yields positive outcomes for nature.
However, running such
operations incurs annual costs
in the hundreds of thousands of pounds,
making ownership of
privilege for the wealthy.
Simply put, conservation requires funding.
Dee Ward of Rottal Estate
stands out as a landowner
who embraces common sense
solutions, managing the lands
to benefit nature while
permitting limited ground shooting
Come to my estate,
let's see how much wildlife we have.
Let's assess all these things.
Let's go to another place.
You pick a state of your
choice in the uplands
that does the same thing that I do.
It's upland. It's not a lowlander estate.
It's not full of trees.
It's upland.
And let's see what wildlife they have
and let's have a reason
debate about it because I bet,
and I'll say it now, I bet
that I will have more wildlife
than any other estate you could show me
that doesn't shoot grouse.
I think these things
should be based on facts,
not on emotion.
All these gullies
where the rivers or the the streams run,
the watercourse run, have
very few trees in them.
Down below, we've got trees
planted along the watercourse.
The aim is that they will
get big and shade the water.
And one of the aims is that
we improve the water quality
by keeping it cool and we
keep the river health high
'cause it doesn't really
affect the grouse,
but it does improve the water quality.
And to be honest, when I got here,
I didn't know that was a thing to do,
but you learn as you experience things.
We are trying to create this
balance between the uplands
and where that merges
into the lower ground,
where the rivers are at
the bottom of the valley.
You've got the bottom
where you have the pasture.
You have wetland.
You have good habitat for
waders, things like that.
We then have a sort of middle section,
which is native tree planting
and some natural regeneration.
And then the top is moorland,
heather, grasses, and so on.
And the peat is like a
big sponge basically.
So, what we're trying to do
is restore that peat with a view that,
one, it's good for
wildlife and biodiversity.
Two, it stops carbon
emitting into the atmosphere.
But three and most importantly to me
is it captures that water as a big sponge
and it sits there rather
than create flooding
'cause as soon as we create flooding,
we damage our ecosystem.
For Alex Jenkins and his family,
his dream job as the head
keeper at Edinglassie
has come to an end.
Let me give you a boozy.
There we go.
Thanks, Pam. Thank you.
It's been a pleasure, Alex.
I wish you all the best
in everything you do.
Yeah, thank you.
I'm going to cry.
I hate saying goodbye to people I know.
I worry about the
viability of the industry
if we keep getting attacked
the way we're being attacked.
It's the pressure of
constantly having to fight
for our survival that I
have found quite tiresome.
I've been quite politically involved
certainly for the last
10 years of my career.
And every turn, we're having
a fight for our way of life.
I just, I feel it's almost
like death by a thousand cuts.
I've two young children,
both are primary age.
As a job going to the hill every day
and working with of wildlife,
I mean it's so rewarding
and it's been a fantastic
place for my kids to grow up.
It impacts on my family life quite a lot.
You know, there's constant
political lobbying,
just fighting for our future.
And I think it's certainly a factor
in the decision that I've made
as while my kids are young,
I'd certainly like the opportunity
to spend more time with 'em
and not have that constant worry
of where we will be in 10 years time,
if I'm still gonna have a job.
Leaving Edinglassie is
gonna be really quite hard.
We've really loved our time here.
We haven't taken this decision lightly.
I mean this has been Alex's
whole working career,
has been based around gamekeeping.
The job has changed
for Alex over the years
in such a short time.
There's been so many changes
to the keeper in world
and it just gets tougher and tougher.
It takes a lot of time
away from the family
and we've realized over
the last year or two
that life's too short.
The countryside is what it is today
because of the keepers,
the way people enjoy taking
a tour over the hills,
enjoying, you know, the
heather and the patches.
And they won't see that
when the keepers are gone
'cause there's no one there
to maintain and manage it.
I think Alex has left industry
because like a lot of the rest of us,
we've been gradually getting worn down
by legislation, rules, regulations
just scrutinized every little thing we do.
It just becomes too much.
I mean, you're almost
demonized for being a keeper.
Unfortunately, we do have situations
where there are suicides.
There is more than one
a week in the country
who take their own lives in rural jobs,
more than one a week.
The straw that broke
the camel's back for me
would've been the way the ban
on shooting mountain hares
was pushed through as a Stage 3 amendment
through the parliament.
And I just thought to myself, you know,
there's them in a heartbeat.
And I mean, the whole thing
probably took 15 minutes
in parliament, but it just legislated
half of my sporting cult
for the year just vanished.
I mean, it was quite an
inconsequential decision to be MSPs
who made that decision,
but to us up here, it was massive.
And the way it went through, I thought,
"Well if they've done this once,
they've got a mechanism to do it again.
and there's some big fights to be fought."
All the votes in Scotland
are in the Central Belt.
I mean, it's a widely known fact.
Most of the voting population
is between Moscow and Edinburgh.
There's not enough of us
involved in this industry.
There's not enough of us living
in these remote clans to really matter.
But the Scottish government
just doesn't seem to care.
I mean, that's increasingly obvious
with every new bit of
legislation that comes through,
what disregard they have for
what happens in these hills.
Yeah.
Change is something that human beings
don't necessarily welcome easily.
We're not comfortable with
it, but change is inevitable.
And I think in some
cases, it's desirable too.
So, it is true to say
that what you might term
traditional land uses,
and by that I mean sheep farming,
grouse shooting, upland
deer stalking, et cetera,
they are under pressure.
They are under scrutiny.
And in some cases, they
are being phased out.
I don't believe
and I see absolutely no
evidence for this notion
that rewilding automatically
leads to de-peopling.
There's no evidence of that whatsoever.
So if you go, for
example, up to Glenfeshie,
which is just a few miles from here,
there are more people living
and working in that landscape
than there have been for
the last 20, 30 years.
Still the same dear
stalkers, land managers,
but you've also got fencing contractors.
You've got peatland restoration experts.
You've got scientists,
researchers, tourism operators,
hospitality providers.
All of these businesses
in one way or another
are a reflection of the landscape
that is in recovery or
rewilding, if you like.
I understand the fear,
but I don't think there's
any serious foundation in it.
I can somewhat relate to the sadness
and the anguish of how
those individuals may feel.
'cause my background is I'm from Zimbabwe
and my father was a farmer out there
and a lot of the white farmers
were removed from their land.
And it's not something that
I would want the people here
to ever experience
Currently where we are
and it's pretty much
agreed that we give nature
a foothold, a boost up.
And we allow nature to
kind of then kind of work
with what we're doing, because
we are part of the landscape.
There's no denying that we are part of it
from year to where we are now.
And it's our involvement
has gone up and down
over thousands of years
with the landscapes that we live in.
So yeah, we mustn't go down the road
of having another highland
clearance, if you like.
In the heart of Scotland,
a silent battle rages
and the very essence of the
highlands is under threat.
As rural guardians, keepers, gillies,
and stalkers are edged out
of their ancestral lands.
Conservation is wisdom in action.
Keepers of the unsung heroes,
custodians of the land,
but it's time for a new chapter
where their knowledge
protects not just the game
but entire ecosystems.
Rewilders and land stewards,
those keepers seek the same end,
a thriving, vibrant landscape,
yet history's weight drags them apart.
It's a struggle reminiscent
of the Highland Clearances,
a cultural genocide in slow motion.
What legacy will they
leave for the future?
It's a question echoing through the glens,
waiting for an answer.