RSPB Calls for a Pause on the Guga Hunt
Tradition vs Survival: Why the Guga Hunt Must Stop
Protect the Wild has recently begun raising the alarm about the Guga hunt on Sula Sgeir: a licensed mass slaughter of gannet chicks carried out under the banner of “tradition.” Now, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has confirmed what the science has been saying for a long time: this hunt should not be happening without clear evidence the colony has recovered.
In correspondence with PTW, an RSPB spokesperson said they recognise the “strength of feeling” around the hunt and the worsening pressures on seabirds. They also stressed that RSPB is “science-led”, and that their position is based on conservation concern for gannets.
Most significantly, the RSPB has called on NatureScot to pause the granting of the licence, which enables the hunt to go ahead, on Sula Sgeir until two conditions are met:
Clear evidence that the gannet population has recovered to pre–avian flu (HPAI) levels.
The national avian flu risk level drops to “medium” or lower for wild birds, it is currently “very high”.
At the time of their statement, they added that they were still waiting for NatureScot to respond. This is an extraordinary position for one of the biggest bird conservation charities to take, and it should stop NatureScot licensing the Guga hunt in its tracks.
NatureScot has been licensing without full data for years
The RSPB’s stance doesn’t emerge randomly. For as far back as 2010 bird conservation organisations have been calling for the end of the Guga Hunt, most well known is the Scottish SPCA. This continued resistance to the Guga Hunt, PTW believes, points to one thing: NatureScot has been licensing the hunt without robust, up-to-date evidence about the colony’s health and the impact the hunt has on the birds welfare.
Sula Sgeir’s gannet population has still not recovered to its 2001 protected SPA citation level. In 2001, the site was cited at 10,400 Apparently Occupied Sites (AOS). The latest count in 2024 puts the colony at roughly 10,200 AOS, meaning it has fallen below the population level it is legally meant to be protected at.
And Sula Sgeir is not just declining, it is the only gannet colony in Scotland to have dropped beneath its baseline. Every other gannet SPA colony has increased since designation. Sula Sgeir stands alone in the wrong direction. To PTW, that pattern raises an unavoidable question:
Could years of licensing without full data be exactly why this colony has failed to recover?
Especially when we consider this: the hunt was suspended for three consecutive years (2022–2024) because of avian flu. Even after that breathing space, the colony remains below citation level. That doesn’t look like a resilient, recovering population. It looks like a colony already suppressed by long-term pressure, including the brutal slaughtering of chicks.
The RSPB’s drone-survey demand exposes how little is actually known
The RSPB didn’t just call for a pause. They also urged NatureScot to carry out annual drone monitoring of breeding gannets before any future licensing decisions.
“We reiterate our call for NatureScot to undertake annual drone monitoring of breeding Gannets at Sula Sgeir so that future decisions on licencing are based on the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding the health of the colony.”
That recommendation is damning in itself. Why?
Because it underlines that NatureScot has not been collecting reliable annual data on the colony, despite repeatedly licensing the clubbing to death of healthy gannet chicks. If a leading conservation NGO is still having to tell the statutory nature agency to monitor a protected colony properly, it shows how thin the evidence base really is.
PTW’s view is blunt:
NatureScot has been authorising killing first, and checking the population later, if at all.
Even 500 birds a year stops recovery, and NatureScot knows it
This year NatureScot issued a licence for a reduced harvest: 500 guga chicks. At first glance, that sounds cautious. But their own 2025 Population Viability Analysis (PVA) shows otherwise.
NatureScot’s interim modelling predicts:
Even a harvest of 500 chicks per year suppresses long-term population growth.
The colony will not recover to its 2013 size within 25 years, even at that reduced quota.
Crucially, NatureScot also admits the modelling is optimistic because it could not include real-world pressures like:
another avian flu outbreak,
food shortages,
offshore wind impacts,
weather-driven mortality,
or any other factor that increases chick deaths.
So the model assumes a best-case world where nothing else goes wrong, and even then, 500 chicks per year prevents full population recovery. PTW’s position is that licensing the hunt under these conditions is not precautionary management. It is a gamble with a protected colony already in decline and unjustifiable.
This is not conservation management. It’s cultural permission.
NatureScot has previously acknowledged that the Guga Hunt licence is not about conservation management or sustainable harvest science but about maintaining a cultural tradition. That matters. A lot. It means NatureScot is licensing the killing of a protected species not because the science supports it, but because tradition demands it. In effect, this is a cultural exemption to conservation law, and one that is now colliding with ecological reality.
PTW’s view: NatureScot should have stopped the hunt this year.
The RSPB has now made a clear call to suspend licensing until recovery is proven and disease risk falls. PTW agrees, and goes further.
We believe it is shocking that NatureScot allowed the hunt to continue this year:
without annual robust monitoring,
without evidence of recovery to pre-HPAI levels,
with modelling that admits major gaps,
and with science showing even 500 birds a year suppresses recovery.
If this were any other SPA colony, any other protected seabird, any other kind of licensed killing, NatureScot would be expected to apply the precautionary principle. But, because it’s a “tradition”, the rules bend, the evidence standard drops, and a declining colony has to carry the cost.
A protected colony cannot recover while it is still being killed
Sula Sgeir is below its citation level. Growth was already suppressed before avian flu. HPAI has added brutal pressure. And the leading bird conservation charity is now urging a pause until recovery is clear.
The science is stark. The conservation case is settled. The question is political.
How many more years of “tradition” will be licensed at the expense of a protected species?
Because a colony cannot recover while we keep taking its chicks, and NatureScot’s own modelling says exactly that. Even at the reduced quota of 500, recovery is suppressed for decades in a best-case scenario.
Protect the Wild will keep pushing until this hunt ends, not in ten years, not after another collapse, but now, while recovery is still possible. There is no scientific justification left for continuing the guga hunt. And in our view, there is no moral one either. This is not a survival practice. No one will starve without gannet chick meat. No one’s life depends on it.
But the gannets’ future does. If NatureScot continues licensing this killing under the cover of “tradition,” the cost will be borne by a protected colony already in decline. More chicks will be taken from a population that cannot afford to lose them, and more suffering will be imposed for an indulgence that simply does not need to happen.
Tradition cannot be allowed to become a licence for extinction. Tell Naturescot enough is enough. They must do their duty to safeguard gannets and stop the Guga hunt.
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I see no reason whatsoever that the Guga hunt should happen AT ALL.
It's about time the RSPB did something useful. How this is even a "thing" is beyond me.