FERGUS EWING: Badenoch and Strathspey has become world epicentre of guerilla re-wilding

With lynx and feral pigs illegally released here, we unwittingly and unwillingly find ourselves in the world epicentre of ‘guerilla re-wilding’.

Yet apart from mild ministerial rebukes, we have heard nothing much from the Scottish Government or the Cairngorms National Park Authority for that matter about how to rid ourselves of this unwanted accolade.

The illegal release of feral pigs resulted in them having to be re-captured and then slaughtered.

This followed the illegal release of lynx - which also had to be recaptured and tended by the Royal Zoological Society. One of them died in 24 hours.

The releases are, in each case, a horrible act of wanton cruelty.

They were rightly condemned by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association as guerilla re-wilding, caused huge concern amongst local farmers, land managers and crofters.

Their release posed a serious risk of carrying diseases such as Bovine TB or African swine fever which could have devastated pig and cattle populations and disrupted the food chain.

Feral pigs cause extensive damage to agricultural land, and their rooting behaviour disrupts pasture and key crops such as barley and oats with newly sown fields being particularly vulnerable .

The local Cairngorms Farmers and Crofters Community have now asked me to raise this in Holyrood - and I will do precisely that at the earliest opportunity.

It hardly helped, when in 2015 TV personality Chris Packham advocated that sheep in Cumbria be replaced by lynx, beaver and boar.

Though he condemned the illegal release of lynx here, he seemed to sympathise with the perpetrators saying he ‘understood the frustration many who want reintroduction feel’.

City dwellers seem the keenest about ‘guerilla rewilding’ although not quite so much about putting wolves, lynx and boar for example onto Arthurs Seat in Edinburgh or Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow!

Nor did a ‘fact finding trip’ to Switzerland, just last year by the Cairngorms National Park Authority’s chief executive Grant Moir and others and funded by Trees for Life and Scotland: The Big Picture - to consider reintroduction of the lynx - help to allay fears locally; in fact it was quite the opposite.

It tends not to be country folk who are so enthusiastic about this. City dwellers seem the keenest about ‘guerilla rewilding’ although not quite so much about putting wolves, lynx and boar for example onto Arthurs Seat in Edinburgh or Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow!

What are the Scottish Government going to do before this illegal and cruel activity causes real damage?

What action is being taken to identify the culprits and bring them to justice and what punishment would they then face?

Will they continue to bankroll, at our expense, the numerous NGOs which campaign ceaselessly for re-wilding?

When I was your farming minister I told the main NFUS annual public meeting my views about bringing in these new and additional threats to the countryside.

They were I said, departing somewhat from the script, summed up in just four words : “Over… my…. dead… body.”

How to boost vaccinnation levels… it is simple

Locals are entitled to know where the powers that now be stand and what exactly they will do. Strathy readers will be the first to know.

Along with four Highland GPs I have secured a meeting with Neil Gray later this month to argue that the vaccination service should be returned locally to them, and not, as the Highland Health Board now plan, have an expensive risky inefficient two tier service plan.

I shall report on that further after the meeting. Lower vaccination levels are a serious risk now and that has been caused by the enforced introduction of the centralised model in 2023.

It has failed and the powers that be should be big enough to recognise that.

Fergus Ewing (SNP) is MSP for Inverness and Nairn including Strathspey.

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