RJ Hamster
Scotland’s Rarest Seabirds Are Being Put at Risk by…
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Scotland’s Rarest Seabirds Are Being Put at Risk by a Tradition Most People Have Never Heard Of
The Guga hunt is harming a red-listed species – and NatureScot is about to decide its future.
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Each year, on a remote Scottish island, hundreds of young Gannets are snatched from their nests and beaten to death in a ritual most people have never heard of. It’s called the Guga hunt, and it’s the UK’s last legal seabird hunt.
Scotland’s nature agency – NatureScot – continues to defend their licensing of the hunt by saying it doesn’t threaten the overall population – a misleading claim we have debunked.
But there’s more to this story.
Because the Guga hunt isn’t just about Gannets.
It is also disturbing one of Scotland’s rarest seabirds at the worst possible moment.
A species fighting to survive
Through a Freedom of Information request, we obtained internal NatureScot communications showing that the Guga hunt would cause unavoidable disturbance to several protected seabirds during the breeding season – their most critical and vulnerable life stage.
One of these species is the Leach’s Storm Petrel – now red-listed and vulnerable to global extinction. These small birds nest in the crevices and fragile ground of Sula Sgeir and are highly sensitive to human disturbance.
NatureScot’s own advice shows human presence in the colony can have lethal consequences for Petrels. The hunters and their equipment can block access to burrows, disrupt feeding and cause stress and disorientation.
Adults may fail to return to their nests. Chicks may go unfed. Entire breeding attempts can collapse.
This isn’t a possibility. It’s an accepted outcome.
What does red-listed mean?
In short: being red-listed means a species is at the highest level of conservation concern and needs urgent protection. Leach’s Storm Petrel is classified as red-listed on both the UK’s Birds of Conservation Concern (BoCC) and the global IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
In the UK, they breed only on the remote Northern isles of Scotland, meaning Sula Sgeir is one of the last places they can safely raise their young.
And yet Scotland’s nature agency is allowing them to be disrupted by human hunters. Even with mitigation measures in place, NatureScot concludes disturbance will still occur.
That should be the end of the conversation.
Instead, NatureScot’s focus remains fixed on whether the Guga hunt affects Gannet numbers “overall,” while the wider ecological damage is ignored in plain sight.
This is not conservation. It is a contradiction of the very purpose NatureScot exists to serve.
And the clock is ticking.
NatureScot’s board meets on May 14 – likely one of the final opportunities to stop another licence being granted.
There is still time to change course.
Please sign the petition today. Because protecting seabirds means protecting all of them – not just the ones that are convenient to count.LIKECOMMENTRESTACK
