Scottish seabird hunt cancelled for first time in 400 years

NatureScot refuses licence for hunt on Hebridean island of Sula Sgeir in which up to 2,000 gannet chicks are killed

A controversial Scottish seabird hunt will not go ahead for the first time in 400 years, in what campaigners have called a “victory for common sense”.

In the annual guga hunt, up to 2,000 gannet chicks are killed over a 10-day period on the uninhabited Hebridean island of Sula Sgeir, 40 miles north of Lewis and Harris.

NatureScot, which is responsible for licensing, refused to allow this year’s hunt to go ahead, citing a potential “adverse impact” on gannet populations according to new modelling.

Wildlife and animal rights organisations have long protested against the killing of the birds, which is part of a tradition that some say goes back to the Vikings, when the birds were hunted for food.

The hunters, known as the Men of Ness, take the chicks from their nests in the nature reserve of Sula Sgeir with a noose on a long pole and kill them with a blow to the head.

The birds are then gutted and salted on the island and eaten as a delicacy in the Western Isles – though the taste has been described as “absolutely revolting” , “between rotten leather and fishy beef” and “without doubt the most disgusting thing”.

In a statement, NatureScot said: “After assessing the application against the legislation and using the most recent scientific evidence, our board’s decision is to refuse a licence.

“We have used the latest information available and commissioned an updated population model to help predict the effect of the guga hunt on the gannet population. As a result, we have concluded an adverse impact is possible, both at the applicants’ requested application limit of 2,000 juvenile gannets, and at a reduced limit of 500.”

However, the organisation, which is part of the Scottish government, criticised some anti-hunt activists, saying the police had been called over the “aggression and intimidation tactics of some anti-guga hunt protesters [which] comes at significant personal cost to our expert and dedicated staff as they try to do their day-to-day jobs”.

Two men dressed in gannet costumes were arrested and charged in March after spending several days on the roof of Great Glen House, NatureScot’s Inverness headquarters. In separate incidents, the building was tagged with graffiti and had windows smashed. In May, a candidate stood for the Holyrood seat of Edinburgh Central in protest against the hunt.

People from Ness, in the north of Lewis, accused the activists of a campaign of bullying. Ahead of NatureScot’s board meeting, Murdo MacRitchie, of the Save Our Guga Harvest group, said: “People in Ness will understandably feel that this recommendation risks rewarding a campaign in which members of a small island community have been bullied and abused and publicly owned property has been vandalised.”

A petition to the Scottish government to end the practice attracted more than 100,000 signatures, while a separate petition from the anti-hunting charity Protect the Wild surpassed 250,000.

Devon Docherty, the Scottish campaigns manager at Protect the Wild, said the decision was a “victory for compassion, for science and for common sense”. She said: “Thousands of young seabirds have been spared from a brutal death because NatureScot chose to follow the evidence rather than simply rubber-stamp another licence to kill.”

The decision does not prevent the Men of Ness from getting a licence in future years for the hunt, which is recognised in law under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.