WES at the Scottish Game Fair 2019

Scottish Land & Estates (SLE), representing landowners from all across Scotland, held a reception for representatives of accredited Wildlife Estates in Scotland at the Scottish Game Fair, in the delightful grounds of Scone Palace near Perth. The occasion was also used to present four awards: three of them being re-accreditation awards following the expiry of the estates’ first five-year period of validity. These estates have successfully achieved the targets for biodiversity management set five years ago and have now declared and agreed programmes for further improvement.

A total of 57 estates in Scotland are now accredited with the WE label at Level 2. They cover 508,000 hectares, ranging in size from 109 hectares to almost 59,000 hectares. No fewer than 34 of these estates have interests focusing on driven grouse shooting. .

The estates re-accredited at Level 2 were:
• The Hopes (S.E. Scotland) where peatland management and ditch blocking has improved habitat and where input with Scottish Natural Heritage aims to recalculate the basis of managing land where a large population of rabbits exists;
• Allargue (Aberdeenshire) where the conservation of Black Grouse (Lyrurus tetrix) has been the main focus since Level 2 accreditation was first discussed in 2011;
• Threepwood (Borders) where the principal focus is on overwintering birds. There has, for example, been a 500% increase in overwintering Brambling (Fringilla montifringilla).

Level 2 accreditation was also awarded to Glenquaich (Perthshire), an estate of 2300 hectares where the principle focus is on flood mitigation, woodland restructuring, carbon capture and peatland management, and where 111 species of birds were recorded in 2017.

SLE has declared a target to expand the WES scheme to 1 million hectares by 2023.