(tense foreboding music) (air whooshing)
Downloaded from YTS.MX
(crow cawing)
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
(gun clanking)
(crow cawing)
(helicopter blades whirring)
(deer bellowing)
(crow cawing)
- [Rory Kennedy] I've seen pretty unethical practices
about mass culling of deer
that I think would turn most people's stomachs,
not just sportsmen.
[Peter Fraser] 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.
- [Dr. James Fenton] So if we don't manage them,
their numbers will grow.
They'll track the habitat,
and then they'll die miserable deaths.
- [Peter Fraser] 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.
[Rory Kennedy] 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.
- [David Balharry] 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.
- [Peter Fraser] 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.
(dramatic music)
(birds chirping) (waves crashing)
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.
(lively music) (air whooshing)
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.
(dramatic music)
- [Tom Opre] 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.
(bright music)
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.
(bright music)
- 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.
(mysterious music)
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 (indistinct) 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 (indistinct) 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.
(lively music)
- 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.
(lively music)
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.
(mellow music) (water whooshing)
- 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
(gentle music)
- 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-
[Pam Blackhall] Would you like a cap,
- right? - Yes, please.
- [Pam Blackhall] 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.
(sewing machine wheezing)
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.
(upbeat music)
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.
(people chattering)
Morning boys, how are you?
- Good. - Yeah.
[Gamekeeper] So, how's the game?
- Pete. - Alex.
- I look like him almost, but yeah, how you doing?
[Gamekeeper] It's all good.
[Alex Jenkins] Yeah, good, good. Baller.
[Gamekeeper] Hi.
[Alex Jenkins] Hi.
What regiment are you boys?
Eh (faintly speaking)
Oh, a bit whole different.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Cool.
Done A bad being.
Nice.
Yeah.
Seasoned beaters like half.
[Gamekeeper] Nice.
[Alex Jenkins] 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 (indistinct).
Okay, (faintly speaking).
- 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.
(gentle music)
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.
(gentle music)
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.
- [Tom Opre] 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.
- [Tom Opre] 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.
(gentle music)
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.
(mellow music)
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.
(brooding music)
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.
- [Tom Opre] 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.
(suspenseful music)
- 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.
(suspenseful music)
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.
(deer bellowing)
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.
[Tom Opre] 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.
(suspenseful music)
- [Neil McIntyre] 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,
- [Ed Jaundrel] 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.
(birds chirping) (water roaring)
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.
(lively music)
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.
(mellow music)
- 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.
[Gamekeeper] 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.
(gun booming) (mellow music)
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.
(upbeat music)
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.
(speaking in Gaelic)
- 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.
(mellow music) (water guggling)
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.
(brooding music)
- [Tom Opre] 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.
- [Tom Opre] 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.
(brooding music)
- 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.
- [Tom Opre] But what is the total number of deer though?
Just now?
[Tome Opre] 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-
- [Tom Opre] 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.
- [Tom Opre] 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.
- [Tom Opre] 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.
(air whooshing) (birds chirping)
- [Tom Opre] 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.
(lively music)
- 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?"
(bright music)
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
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
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.
(birds chirping) (water guggling)
(dramatic music)
For Alex Jenkins and his family,
his dream job as the head keeper at Edinglassie
has come to an end.
(gentle music)
Let me give you a boozy.
(Alex Jenkins laughing)
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.
(Pam and Alex laughing)
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.
(solemn music)
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
(solemn music)
(bird chirping)
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.
(solemn music)
- 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.
(gentle solemn music)
(gentle solemn music continues)
(lively music)
(singing in foreign language)
(lively music)
(lively music continues)