LD 182. Keeping them out.....

The sad truth in parts of Scotland. - including Cowal - is that you cannot plant trees without also erecting deer fencing.   This adds greatly to the expense of commercial forestry but also to much more minor and non commercial ventures like growing a few apple and other fruit trees.

Cathleen’s small orchard was planted at the end of 2018 and produced a very small amount of fruit last summer.   We had expected more this year but the constant depredation from deer took its toll, particularly after fruiting even though there was some fencing in place.    So she has had to get this built which will protect the trees for next year .

Deer management in Scotland since the Second World War has - by comment consent -  been a huge public policy failure and the almost total cessation of  active management during the lockdown has just made things worse.   

The long term problem is that allowing private landowners to self police deer numbers simply hasn’t worked and I remain - as I have been for the past few years - convinced that there needs to be a statutory framework to start the process of containing  and then reducing the unsustainable over population of all deer species in Scotland which is not only bad in terms of commercial land use but is also bad for the deer themselves.