485 Gannet Chicks Massacred, NatureScot’s Shameful Licence to Kill

485 fledglings were dragged from the cliffs and slaughtered.

It has happened. After three years of respite, the gannets of Sula Sgeir have once again felt the weight of tradition’s blunt instrument. NatureScot, the body charged with protecting Scotland’s wildlife, handed a licence to the Men of Ness to kill 500 gannet chicks. And according to the official count, 485 fledglings were dragged from the cliffs and slaughtered.

The numbers tell their own story, but the documents released to us through Freedom of Information requests tell an even darker one. They show an agency desperate to defend the indefensible, clinging to legal loopholes and bureaucratic language to excuse cruelty. NatureScot insists it has been “balanced and reasonable” in its decision. But what is balanced about permitting the brutal killing of seabird chicks that have never even flown? What is reasonable about hiding the very dates of the hunt under the guise of “public safety,” as if shielding killers from scrutiny is a higher priority than protecting wildlife?

This is what the FOIs lay bare: secrecy, evasion, and a staggering lack of moral courage. In their own words, officials admit they cannot even say how the killings were carried out this year. In earlier records, the method is described with chilling simplicity — “a swift blow to the head.” But for 2025, no details are recorded, no evidence of enforcement beyond a count of bodies once they were already dead. NatureScot has effectively washed its hands of the mechanics of cruelty, granting permission while looking away from what it actually entails.

And then there is the law itself — or rather, the grotesque distortion of it. The Wildlife and Countryside Act, the very legislation designed to protect wild birds, contains a carve-out: subsection 2(a) of section 16, which exempts Sula Sgeir’s guga hunt on the grounds of “providing food for human consumption.” That is the fig leaf NatureScot clings to. Not science, not conservation, not welfare, but a 40-year-old exemption born of politics, not principle. When challenged about European Birds Directive obligations, they wave the Act like a shield, claiming its existence is justification enough. In truth, it is nothing more than the state protecting its own tradition of cruelty.

Photo by Phil Botha on Unsplash

What makes this year’s slaughter especially grotesque is the context. Scotland’s gannets have been ravaged by avian flu, with populations crashing by over 20% in some colonies. NatureScot knows this — its own commissioned science has long warned that “harvesting” chicks suppresses growth on Sula Sgeir. Yet in 2025, with seabirds reeling from disease and seas warming around them, the agency still signed off 500 deaths. It insists this figure is “sustainable.” But sustainable for whom? Certainly not for the chicks whose lives were ended before they had even tested their wings. The word “sustainable” in this context is as hollow as it is insulting.

And so, after all the talk of balance and legality, what remains is this: 485 bodies, counted and confirmed, removed under licence from a colony already struggling for survival. This is conservation inverted — an agency meant to protect biodiversity reduced to issuing paperwork for its destruction.

NatureScot wants the public to believe that because the number killed was reduced from 2,000 to 500, it has acted responsibly. But this is not responsibility; it is tokenism. It is the same logic that would applaud cutting a tree down with a smaller axe, or shooting fewer stags in a cull. The fundamental wrong is not in the number. It is in the act itself — the state-sanctioned cruelty, the betrayal of a duty to protect, the moral failure of an institution that has chosen appeasement of tradition over the defence of life.

What the FOIs reveal above all is a mindset. An agency that sees its role not as protecting wildlife, but as managing its destruction. A bureaucracy more concerned with shielding those who kill seabirds from “harassment” than with ensuring the survival of the seabirds themselves. A public body that hides behind exemptions and redactions, as though secrecy can disguise the stench of hypocrisy.

Scotland should be leading the world in progressive conservation. Instead, on a remote island in the North Atlantic, it still permits the slaughter of chicks for taste, ritual, and so-called heritage. And NatureScot, the agency meant to embody our care for nature, is the enabler-in-chief.

The guga hunt should have ended long ago. It should have been consigned to the same dustbin of history as bear-baiting or cockfighting. Instead, it continues, protected by law, licensed by government, and dressed up in the language of culture and sustainability. The truth is far simpler: it is cruelty. Cruelty inflicted on defenceless animals, cruelty authorised by a public body, cruelty that shames us as a nation.

485 chicks are dead. That is the outcome of NatureScot’s “balance.” That is the cost of tradition. And until this licence is abolished once and for all, the cliffs of Sula Sgeir will remain a monument not to heritage, but to hypocrisy.

We’ve set up a petition to NatureScot to end this madness and to never allow this to happen again. We will not give up on this. Please sign the petition here and write/email/phone NatureScot too and ask why they think it is ok to allow the needless slaughter of these innocent birds.

NatureScot Contact Details

Head Office / Switchboard
Great Glen House, Leachkin Road, Inverness, IV3 8NW
Telephone (switchboard): 01463 725 000 / 01463 725 165
Email (general enquiries): enquiries@nature.scot

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