Bird shooting ends on huge Scottish estate after takeover by conservation company

Thanks to new ownership, bird shooting is now banned on a 15,000 acre estate in Scotland's Cairngorms National Park.

Bird killing in Britain is an incredibly normalised affair. This is evident in the fact that of all the issues Protect the Wild campaigns on, shooting appears to be the only one that the Labour government plans to do nothing about. Recently, however, blasting birds out of the sky became just that little bit less acceptable in the country. Thanks to new ownership, bird shooting is now banned on a 15,000 acre estate in Scotland's Cairngorms National Park.

Oxygen Conservation purchased the Dorback Estate in December of last year. The acquisition is the latest in a string of buys for the conservation-focused company, which has seen it amass a land portfolio of over 43,000 acres in the last three and a half years. Its landholdings span the whole of the UK, from Cornwall to the Cairngorms and the Welsh Coast to Norfolk.

As the company says on its website, it aims to "protect and restore natural processes" on the land it buys so as to help tackle both the climate crisis and biodiversity collapse. To find out more about Oxygen Conservation and what it is doing for Britain's beleaguered wildlife, Protect the Wild sat down with its founder and CEO, Rich Stockdale.

Out with bird shooting and muirburn

Shooting and hunting has been a core part of Dorback's offerings for years. Its website gushes about the estate's "unparalleled hunting experiences" and the "rich and varied" shooting options available. No more. Under Oxygen Conservation's ownership and management, birds like grouse will no longer be actively 'stocked' and people will not be able to journey to the location to shoot them for fun.

This is the case on all of the conservation company's land because as its website states, "we don't believe in killing living things for recreation." In total, the company has so far freed up just over 40,000 acres from bird shooting across its estates.

Stockdale says that when Oxygen Conservation buys an estate, it aims to keep on existing staff where possible as providing employment and other benefits to local communities is among the company's objectives. But it can be hard to predict how staff will respond to the end of land uses like shooting as the activities can "often be a part of their identity." At Dorback, however, the estate team is open to the new management style and will be staying on.

This new style of management includes eliminating another controversial practice associated with shooting: moorland burning – or muirburn as it is known in Scotland. Shooting estates ultimately do this to keep moorland in prime condition for killing grouse. But the practice is devastating to wildlife and terrible for the climate. Stockdale says moorland burning isn't allowed on the company's estates for precisely this reason. "We believe it causes a huge amount of damage," he says.

Letting the Land Heal: A Thoughtful Approach to Restoration

So, bloodsports and muirburn are now history at Dorback, thankfully. But what stays and what is introduced instead? On a landscape scale, the jury is somewhat out on this at present. Stockdale explains that "when we buy a property, we spend a year listening, learning, watching, understanding, and speaking to, as many [people's] views as we can." Then, once the company identifies a way forward that promises a positive conservation impact, it will act accordingly.

This means that what happens in each landholding is particular to the site. Nonetheless, Stockdale explains the company's general approach to us, which offers some idea of what to expect. The company doesn't aim to curate landscapes, he says, so it minimally intervenes where possible, "leaving the landscape to restore as much as it can and letting nature take its course."

"We want the environment to decide" what is best so the place can "become itself," adds Stockdale.

This is not to say that the company doesn't intervene. It does act when "nature needs a helping hand," such as to reverse damage from prior human interventions.

Stockdale provides some examples of what he means. On one of the company's estates in Wales, the company has removed fences from an area because they were constricting trees, but added them to a different area, to protect trees there from rabbits. Meanwhile, Oxygen Conservation cut down some trees on one estate recently because they posed a risk to people and property. On the other hand, it planted some 200,000 trees across its portfolio last year to help restore woodland on the estates.

Additionally, Stockdale says, "We will restore peatlands, we will restore river systems, we will re-meander the river channels and open up wetlands. All these things are examples of what we are doing or are about to do on estates we own."

No to hunting and badger culling

Oxygen Conservation takes a fairly hands-off approach to most wild animals who call its landholdings home too. Stockdale says the company does not use lethal force on foxes, nor does it use snares across any of its estates. He also stresses that trail hunting is not permitted on the company's estates either.

"We're a conservative organisation doing the right thing for people and wildlife. Fox hunting isn't the right thing," Stockdale adds.

The Oxygen Conservation founder further says that whenever he has been asked about badger culling taking place on the company's land, he has answered with a firm "absolutely not."

However, Stockdale says the company does lethally control deer on its estates. He describes this as a "point of hypocrisy" for the company, considering its general no-kill approach, but says it is necessary to control their numbers.

As the London Wildlife Trust's Mathew Frith told the i Paper in December, the feeding needs of deer can negatively impact vegetation and biodiversity when they at present in an area in large numbers, due to overgrazing. On the other hand, he pointed out that sustainable levels of deer grazing help to maintain healthy ecosystems.

The manner in which deer are killed at Dorback is changing under Oxygen Conservation's management, however. Under the prior ownership, deer stalking – i.e. trophy hunting – happened on the estate from Spring to Autumn. This is no longer the case. While Oxygen Conservation honours existing bookings for sport shooting on the estates it takes over, it does not accept new ones and lethal control of wildlife is principally carried out by professional cullers.

Deer stalking is big business in Scotland and sporting estates manage deer to ensure an abundance of good 'trophies'. The way these estates operate has "contributed massively to the proliferation of deer populations in the uplands and the spreading of these populations into the wider landscape," according to the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

Private funding

Unlike many conservation organisations, Stockdale's company is not a charity or funded by philanthropy. It is part of the Oxygen House Group, an impact investment firm. So, it is a commercial organisation financed through private capital and £20m in debt funding provided by Triodos Bank, a bank focused on sustainability.

Explaining why he chose this form of financing, Stockdale says, "so much capital flows in to do bad to the planet, we needed more capital to flow in to do good."

Stockdale points to numerous ways through which the company aims to derive revenue as a commercial entity and ensure that ultimately, Nature "pays for itself".

First, good stewarding of the purchased land will make it rise in value, Stockdale says:

"If you treat that land respectfully, if you take away the chemicals, the pesticides – the bad that people are doing – and you manage land organically for people and wildlife, we believe that will go up in value over time. So, that makes it an investment."

Additionally, where appropriate, the company considers having renewable energy generation and regenerative agriculture on its estates. In the latter case, Stockdale highlights rare breed cows being brought onto land for rotational grazing as an example.

On the other hand, Stockdale says the company has removed sheep farming from some of its estates because:

"We think it's not economically viable. We think it provides very little employment, very little positive benefit, and does a huge amount of environmental destruction."

Other income-generating streams include tourism and providing housing for people in the buildings on the company's estates, some of which are currently derelict or unused. The estates attracted almost 1000 visitors last year and around 50 people currently live on the company's land, according to Stockdale.

A dancing, singing wild return

Oxygen Conservation also intends to generate revenue through avenues such as carbon credits and biodiversity net gain units.

These are perhaps the most controversial of the company's planned revenue streams. The carbon market, whereby companies pay towards projects that increase the storage of carbon in landscapes as a way to offset their emissions, has been dogged by scandals. Oftentimes, the credits have been found to be worthless, meaning they have allowed companies to continue polluting without meaningfully balancing it out – i.e. offsetting – with increased carbon storage.

Similarly, biodiversity net gain is where developers can offset their destruction of existing wildlife habitat with an increase in nature spaces elsewhere. It too has proved inadequate in many instances. As the Environmental Law Foundation highlighted in 2023, there has been a trend among developers to undermine the flawed BNG system and not provide the required 'net gain' for biodiversity in practice.

Nonetheless, Oxygen Conservation promises to deliver "meaningful" carbon credits and benefits for biodiversity. Moreover, it states:

" Our projects focus on the restoration of the UK’s most precious habitats, with the finance raised from the sale of carbon credits being used to deliver high quality, impactful conservation projects at scale."

Stockdale says that the gains for wildlife are already apparent on some estates. In projects that are now a couple or so years' old, such as in Wales and Yorkshire, the landscapes have already changed from "silent monocultures of death" to "buzzing, moving, vibrant, singing, dancing" spaces.

Offering a specific example, Stockdale describes his recent visit to the company's land in Wales:

"We walked through this water-sodden field in Wales with Voles running in front of our eyes. They were never there before. When the estate manager arrives there at first light, there are always owls sweeping through for their breakfast. They weren't there before because they were frightened away by the previous shooting activities.

Every bird, every vole, every different animal that comes back is better as far as I'm concerned."

It seems that by eliminating shooting and other harmful practices from the estates it purchases, Oxygen Conservation is already reaping dividends for wild animals. With so much land in Britain still utilised for bloodsports, including in national parks like the Cairngorms, it is refreshing to see land and the wild lives who call it home being freed from these archaic, oppressive pursuits and the damage they do.

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