A Protected Colony in Decline: Why the Guga Hunt Can No Longer Be Defended

For decades, the killing of gannet chicks, the “Guga hunt”, on Sula Sgeir has been defended as sustainable, harmless, and woven into cultural heritage. But the science emerging today tells a very different story. The idea that this colony is “stable” is no longer credible. Sula Sgeir’s gannet population is not stable, not growing, and not able to withstand even a reduced annual harvest. It is, in fact, the only gannet colony in Scotland to have fallen below the population level it is legally supposed to be protected at.

And yet the hunt is still being licensed.

Below is what the evidence now shows, why continuing the Guga hunt is indefensible, and why the law that enables this needs to change.

A population that has now fallen below its protected level

When Sula Sgeir was designated a Special Protection Area (SPA) in 2001, it held 10,400 Apparently Occupied Sites (AOS), essentially breeding pairs. That number became the official “citation level”: the population the site is legally meant to maintain or improve.

The most recent count (2024) records just 10,200 AOS.
For the first time, the colony has fallen below its protected baseline.

Let’s be clear about what this means: a colony that dips beneath its citation level is not stable. A stable population holds its line or increases under protection. This one is decreasing. That is exactly the opposite of what protection is supposed to deliver.

It is now the only gannet colony in Scotland to have dropped beneath its citation population. All other SPA colonies have grown since citation. This suggests that Sula Sgeir’s population growth has been suppressed, even before the avian flu outbreak, and now faces further pressure post-HPAI. This decline is not a blip, and not solely the result of avian flu.

Footage of Gannet chicks (guga’s) being cruelly snatched from their nests to be killed.

NatureScot’s own figures show the colony has not recovered, so the 2025 licence should have failed Test 3

NatureScot’s own numbers make the situation even starker. Their figures show that the Sula Sgeir colony has not rebounded from a steep recent crash, dropping from more than 12,000 birds in 2017 to 9,495 in 2023. Even in 2024, the colony remained below its 2001 citation level.

This matters because the hunt has effectively been paused for years. NatureScot suspended the harvest in 2020 due to COVID-19, and it did not take place in 2022, 2023 or 2024 due to avian flu. Despite that breathing space, the colony still has not recovered. A population that can’t rebound even when killing stops is not one that can safely tolerate killing restarting.

Yet in 2025 NatureScot issued a licence allowing the killing of 500 chicks.

That decision should have triggered the strictest legal test NatureScot must apply before licensing any activity that would otherwise be illegal: Test 3.

Licensing test 3 is the requirement that the licensed activity must not be detrimental to the maintenance of the species at favourable conservation status. In plain terms, the population must be stable, healthy, and capable of sustaining itself long-term. To meet Test 3, NatureScot must be confident that the licensed action will not push the species into decline, worsen an existing decline, or undermine the ecological integrity of a protected site like an SPA.

Crucially, Test 3 isn’t just about culling chicks for human consumption. It must account for all the pressures acting on the species, disease, environmental change, food availability, and cumulative threats. If there are data gaps, or uncertainty about resilience, the precautionary principle is supposed to apply and the licence should be refused.

NatureScot’s own population modelling does not account for wider pressures such as repeated avian flu outbreaks, food shortages, or extreme offshore wind events, all known to increase gannet mortality. Their own scientific papers acknowledge these gaps, meaning the true vulnerability of the colony is still uncertain.

Under these conditions, we believe Test 3 should have failed. The population is already down. Major risks are unaccounted for. The evidence base is incomplete. A precautionary regulator would have halted the 2025 hunt until robust ecological data proved recovery and resilience. By licensing anyway, NatureScot acted as if stability had been demonstrated, when their own figures show the opposite.

This is not a minor procedural slip. It is a legal and ecological failure, and it exposes how hollow “protected status” becomes when the licensing tests are treated as box-ticking exercises, proving the law must be changed to better protect species.

Footage of Gannet chicks (guga’s) being plucked and burnt.

Growth was already suppressed before avian flu, and the hunt is the glaring difference

Long before HPAI ripped through Scotland’s seabirds, Sula Sgeir was underperforming. Other gannet colonies grew by 44% to over 300% since their citation years. Sula Sgeir grew by just 18%, and now has collapsed back below its baseline.

This isn’t random variation. The slow growth and eventual decline align with the one thing that makes Sula Sgeir different from every other Scottish gannet colony:

It is the only one where thousands of chicks have been legally removed for human consumption.

For years, the annual take of 2,000 chicks was defended as sustainable. In reality, the colony was already showing signs of strain. The 2016 Trinder model, carried out when the population was healthier, warned that even the 2,000-chick quota could suppress the population. Now, after years of stunted growth and the shock of HPAI, the colony has far less resilience left.

HPAI delivered a brutal blow: mass mortality, weakened survivors, and a population pushed into sharper decline.

Yet even as the colony struggles to recover, the harvest continues, as if the colony were stable, when the evidence screams that it is not.

NatureScot openly admits: this is not conservation

One of the most astonishing aspects of the Guga hunt is NatureScot’s own justification for it.

NatureScot has explicitly stated that the Guga licence is not about wildlife management or sustainable harvesting. It exists solely to maintain a cultural tradition. In other words, this is not a conservation decision, it is a cultural exemption from conservation law.

Protected birds are being killed not for ecological reasons, but because a human tradition has historically demanded it.

This should alarm anyone who takes protected-area law seriously. When an agency admits the killing is not conservation-driven, it is acknowledging that the colony’s welfare is secondary. That is how you get a protected population slipping below its protected levels.

A law that allows culture to override conservation outcomes is a law that has failed wildlife, and that is why it needs to be changed.

Even the “reduced” quota stops the colony recovering

NatureScot’s new Population Viability Analysis (PVA), published in 2025, should have been a wake-up call.

The modelling shows:

• Even taking 500 chicks a year, one quarter of the historic quota,
  prevents long-term population recovery.

• The colony will not return to its 2013 size within the next 25 years at that level.

• And these results are optimistic, because the modelling could not account for real-world threats like future avian flu outbreaks, food shortages, climate pressures, or offshore wind impacts.

In other words:
The species cannot fully recover while killing continues.

Yet NatureScot licensed the Guga hunt anyway, even though the science is incomplete, the risks are unquantified, and the case for continuing the hunt is perilously thin.

Footage of Gannet chicks (guga’s) turned in to nothing more than slabs of meat.

A contradiction at the heart of NatureScot’s role

Here is the contradiction that can no longer be ignored:

• NatureScot’s own science shows the colony is not stable.

• NatureScot’s own modelling shows even the smallest proposed quota suppresses recovery, without the added pressures of avian flu or off shore winds.

• NatureScot’s own statements admit the licence is not about conservation but upholding a law that needs changing.s

• NatureScot still licenses the killing of a protected species that has fallen below its citation quota.

This is not conservation management. It is sanctioned exploitation of a species already in trouble.

Where does this leave us?

Sula Sgeir’s gannets are at a crossroads. Every scientific indicator now points in one direction: the Guga Hunt is harming the colony’s ability to recover. The population is more vulnerable than ever, and yet the licence continues.

A protected species cannot recover while it is still being slaughtered.

It is time for NatureScot to decide whether it exists to protect wildlife or to defend cultural exemptions that place species at risk. It is time for a law change that puts conservation over culture because the science is clear, the warnings are clear and the population numbers could not be clearer.

Sula Sgeir’s gannets need protection, not a licence to be killed.