Sustainable Deer Management A Case Study Report for the Deer ...

The participants were chosen to include views from
all over Scotland, ranging from the traditional open
hill deer forest of the highlands, grouse moors and
forests to the lowlands near cities (see fig.1).
2. Key Findings
Evaluating Sustainable Deer
management
To fully understand what sustainable deer
management is and what it looks like, a range of
criteria were developed and identified for participants
to consider. These ranged across the 3 pillars of
sustainability – environmental criteria, economic
criteria and social criteria and also included some
cross cutting themes considered essential for delivery
(refer to annex on p.12 for list of criteria used).
Participants were asked to consider those criteria
which best described what they considered to be
the key deer management objectives needed to make
their land management sustainable and describe how
they measure if these are being achieved or not.
The results have been analysed, ranked and
evaluated at the local and national scale. The results
demonstrate a range of relative importance of the
criteria identified for each Case Study area which
helps illustrate the way deer are regarded for a given
locality. Comparisons of the relative importance
of criteria between sites allows consideration and
evaluation of what SDM could look like on both a
local and national scale.
For instance, the forestry sector in case study no.1
is very focused on a few key economic, technical and
environmental criteria to achieve SDM and attaches
less importance to the social elements.
To consider the key elements of SDM on a national
scale, there were five criteria which consistently
came top of the list across all the case studies. (see
fig.2.)
♦ ♦ Safeguard Welfare of all deer species.
Welfare issues ranged from deer health
through to minimising suffering associated
with road traffic accidents (RTAs), poaching
etc. and the relative importance of each varied
depending on locale
♦♦
Conserve/Enhance Biodiversity. The
importance of conserving biodiversity was a
given, particularly within the semi-natural and
more extensively managed landscapes.
♦♦
Maintain balanced integration between
agriculture, forestry & natural heritage.
Deer management was always considered
in the context of the main land uses of the
landholding with the aim of achieving maximum
net benefit across all the different parts.
♦♦
Minimise costs associated with Wild Deer.
Costs were associated with damage to crops/
habitat, employing professional deer managers,
developing/maintaining infrastructure
♦♦
Deer management is proactive and to
an industry recognised standard (Best
Practice).
However, in analysing a limited number of case
studies in this way, we may fail to pick up on
nationally important criteria which are site specific
e.g Securing favourable condition of designated sites
was always deemed essential if an SSSI or similar was
on a landholding but otherwise was considered less
important.
Private and Public Benefit
Associated with Sustainable Deer
management
The Case Studies enabled comparison of SDM in
differing local contexts and circumstances which
allowed comparisons between areas where deer
management is considered the main land use
as opposed to areas where deer are managed
to minimise negative impacts on other land use
objectives.
3 Sustainable Deer Management • 24.06.10 © DCS 2010 • www.dcs.gov.uk