PETITION: Give ancient goats protected status

Cull in the Scottish Borders based on some very suspect statistics

A petition (PE2151) submitted to the Scottish Parliament and driven by community outrage and organisations including The Wild Goat Conservation Trust (TWGCT), is demanding the Scottish Government grant protected status to ancient goat herds on the Blackburn and Hartsgarth estates near Langholm Moor in south Scotland.

The goats are under threat from Oxygen Conservation, an Exeter-based business that claims to be “scaling conservation across the UK” by acquiring land “to protect and restore natural processes”. Oxygen Conservation bought the farms for rewilding/carbon projects and have said that the goats are damaging woodland and other habitats, threatening the company’s plan for habitat restoration (including woodland and peatland regeneration). The business has also put forward plans for a 130MW windfarm.

Locals and wildlife-conservation groups have strongly objected, arguing that the goats are part of local heritage, help maintain a mosaic landscape beneficial for biodiversity, and are “ancient” in terms of how long they’ve roamed the moor. They are calling for legally protected status to prevent Oxygen Conservation from shooting them.

British Primitive Goats

According to Oxygen Conservation’s website, Blackburn and Hartsgarth “are two extensive upland farms in the Scottish Borders, totalling 11,366 acres, forming part of a spectacular landscape known as the Langholm Moor – an expansive moorland lying between the Eskdale and Liddesdale valleys, amongst some of South Scotland’s finest upland landscapes.”

The business (somewhat ironically) states on its site that “by taking a holistic approach, each of our projects not only benefit the environment but also contribute to local communities’ social and economic well-being.”

That is not how opponents to the killing of the goats see the situation, of course.

They are horrified by the killing of animals that are part of a long established herd, which have not been ‘kept’ for hundreds of years, and which have been assessed by the British Primitive Goat Research Group as conforming to “the hardy, primitive landrace type that developed from animals brought to the British Isles in the Stone Age by early nomadic herds’ people”. The Trust describes them as British Primitive Goats, animals that only exist in the wild and in a few zoos. Dr Shirley Goodyer of the research group, has commented that this particular herd is both biologically and culturally significant.

As TWGCT puts it, “they embody the true nature of life and resilience in our rural setting. Indeed, these harmless beings coexist peaceably with all creatures on the fell, inflicting harm upon no one.”

Suspect statistics

At the very least, decisions to kill wild animals (and we’re not fans of the euphemism ‘cull’ which tries to put a gloss on shooting dead wildlife like badgers and foxes because people want them killed) must be based on credible science. That does NOT appear to be the case here at all.

According to drone-survey data cited by Oxygen Conservation, the population of goats on their land has rapidly increased. What had been around 20 animals when the company bought the land in October 2023 had apparently rocketed to 138 by January 2025. Based on those figures, according to the business, the cull is “necessary” to reduce grazing pressure.

Oxygen Conservation has apparently suggested that up to 85% of the herd might be killed - a kill rate that would reduce numbers from the current 138 goats back down to the claimed twenty animals recorded when they took over.

But is Oxygen Conservation claiming a staggering growth in a resident population, or admitting that it has no idea where these animals are coming from or how long they will be on their site for?

Huge and sudden growth in a resident population seems impossible, as Gail Brown, the Secretary and Vice Chair of TWGCT told Protect the Wild:

“Between October 2023 and January 2025 there is just one wild goat birthing season ... February/March 2024. Being generous, we can assume that 60% of the original twenty goats were nannies old enough to be carrying young into that breeding season. That’s 12 animals. So to have achieved the population growth that Oxygen Conservation say they had observed, each nanny would have had to produce and reared an average of 9.8333 young as a minimum (and this does not account for any natural mortality in the population between the survey dates).

Even schoolchildren know that goats do not have litters of that size ... they can work out that goats only have two teats for a reason.

You simply cannot give any credibility to an organisation that can get the scientific facts this badly wrong and then on the strength of such bad science, set about a slaughter of wild goats in the middle of the 2025 breeding season.”

If the goats are actually part of larger herds that roam freely across the entire area and which regularly move through the two estates, the ‘population’ would never stabilise in the way Oxygen Conservation envisages no matter how many it kills. It could potentially just keep killing to ‘reduce grazing pressure’ for years to come.

Compiling the detailed data that decisions on killing animals should always be based on takes surveys over many years, not sending up a drone on one day in October to make a one-off count.

It’s an oddly data-deficient situation for Richard Stockdale, Oxygen Conservation’s CEO, who has a PhD in data science, to land himself in…and it really does make the business’s stated claim to “treat sites individually and respect their unique characteristics” sound a little hollow…

Feral or wild?

Much of the debate on the killing of these animals seems to centre around definitions of ‘feral’ and ‘wild’. Feral animals are not protected under the Wildlife & Countryside Act (WCA), allowing landowners like Oxygen Conservation to legally kill them with impunity.

However, TWGCT says that the goats are fully naturalised, and are sustaining a population in the wild independent of human intervention, meaning they should therefore properly be described as wild animals and protected. They correctly point to the fact that Feral Pigeons - descendants of domesticated Rock Doves which survive in the wild - are covered by the WCA, and that the Scottish government have stated that Soay sheep on the St Kilda islands (which like the goats on Langholm Moor have a unique history of adapting to life without management for many generations) are wild.

We understand why the arguments have been framed this way, but killing so many sentient animals is wrong regardless of their status. Surely the humane and sensible option would be to give these animals protection now and then find out exactly how many of them there are, and whether they are suppressing vegetation or creating mosaics of habitat that benefit biodiversity instead. Once that has been done - and IF it is necessary - calmer voices could work on preventative and non-lethal measures to prevent future damage to sensitive sites.

Sadly, legal protection would almost certainly not mean these animals are totally safe, though. NatureScot has an appalling record of giving out licences to landowners and business owners to kill ‘protected wildlife’ (the scandalous killing of young Gannets on Sula Sgeir is an obvious example). But it should at least mean that if ‘management’ was allowed in the future it would be under strict conditions, requiring specific methods, and with severe penalties for illegal acts. It would also emphasise welfare and habitat protection over ’population control’.

The petition

Petition PE2151 simply asks parliament to “Grant protected status to primitive goat species in the Scottish Borders” and is currently ‘under consideration’. It will close when the cross-parliamentary Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee (CPPPC) decide what action they will take, such as making a recommendation to the Scottish Government.

The CPPPC has had an initial meeting and agreed to ask for responses from JNCC, NatureScot, and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (which wrote in its submission in November 2025 that “goat grazing, whether by prescribed grazing or wild, can contribute towards active wildfire control through reducing fuel load, breaking up continuous fuel and decreasing fire intensity and is both a cost effective and eco-friendly option.”)

The Wild Goat Conservation Trust have not yet heard when the second meeting will be held. It expects that there may yet be a third and fourth hearing, and that it will be well into the new year before the CPPPC can confirm their actions and close the petition.

The petition is therefore still open. It has attracted just over 14000 signatures.

Killing animals based on data points gathered by a drone operator is no way for a business that claims to be ‘redefining conservation” to behave.

If you agree with us, please add your name. Thank you.

• You do not need to be a Scottish resident to sign.

• All images The Wild Goat Conservation Trust. For more information please go to their website or Facebook page.

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