The Scottish Government’s Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill has been introduced to Parliament with the aim of improving biodiversity and regenerating Scotland’s natural environment. We are broadly supportive of the Bill, in particular the proposed changes to deer legislation and venison licences. This is, however, an enabling Bill covering the broad themes for nature targets and enhanced powers – the targets and powers themselves will be developed in secondary legislation. It is therefore crucial that the Government keeps up this momentum and continues to prioritise nature and biodiversity outcomes as the Bill progresses through Parliament. The biggest challenge, as ever with the nature crisis and climate emergency, is ensuring pace and urgency, not just good intentions.

The Bill, introduced on 19 February 2025, establishes a framework for statutory targets for nature restoration and follows from the Government’s Scottish Biodiversity Strategy to 2045, which was released in November 2024. The Strategy sets out Scotland’s ambition to halt biodiversity loss and be nature positive by 2030, and to restore and regenerate biodiversity by 2045. Along with the Delivery Plan 2024-2030, and a yet-to-be-published Investment Strategy, these documents collectively represent Scotland’s overarching Biodiversity Framework. You can read more about the Trust’s reflections on the Biodiversity Strategy on our website.

 

 

The Bill:

• Places a duty on Scottish Ministers to set statutory targets for nature restoration
• Creates a power to allow for future amendments to Environmental Impact Assessment legislation and the 1994 Habitats Regulations
• Modernises the aims and powers of National Park Authorities
• Reforms deer management legislation

 

We are pleased to see amendments to Scotland’s deer management legislation in line with what was proposed in last year’s Managing deer for climate and nature consultation (see our response here). Specifically, the Bill introduces amendments which allows NatureScot to use existing powers (e.g. control agreements and control schemes) to intervene where insufficient deer management is impeding projects or natural processes which serve to improve, or restore, the natural environment.  

We are very supportive of the introduction of nature restoration as grounds for intervention. However, we feel that the Bill could go further in its recognition of overgrazing by deer being a key limiting factor to Scotland achieving net zero and reversing nature loss by 2045. We believe that it should be possible for NatureScot to move straight to a compulsory control scheme where nature restoration is the objective, otherwise face potentially long delays in the required deer management measures being carried out.

These amendments offer a great opportunity to make real progress on tackling the twin climate and nature crises, and as such we hope that NatureScot will use their powers to intervene much more actively than they have previously.

 

 

Another welcome change to the deer legislation is the removal of the need for a licence to deal venison. We believe that this will help to stimulate the small-scale local venison market and hopefully make local venison more affordable and accessible to local people.

We have long called for reform to the deer management processes in Scotland, and for the use of statutory powers by NatureScot to enforce deer management for the purposes of nature restoration. On our reserves, we strive to keep deer at ecologically sustainable levels where possible and are in favour of collaborative community involvement. To read more about our views on the landscape-scale, ecosystem-based approach to deer management that we believe is needed to bring deer densities down to ecologically sustainable levels across Scotland, please see our recent policy on wild deer.

A huge effort is needed across the whole of society if we are to realistically tackle the climate and nature emergencies. Action to restore nature will deliver multiple wider benefits to the people of Scotland, making our environment, economies, and communities more resilient over the long-term, improving our natural flood defences, storing more carbon, delivering green jobs, and improving people’s health and wellbeing. As the Bill progresses through the Scottish Parliament, we urge MSPs to consider the urgency of nature loss and the very real potential this Bill has to make a meaningful impact in our efforts to meet Scotland’s 2030 and 2045 goals – if the associated secondary legislation is developed at pace.

 

Kirsty Richard, Policy Manager (Terrestrial)

Hazel Forrest, Policy Advisor (Species)