Survey shows Scottish support for Guga Hunt Ban

A survey commissioned by Protect the Wild with FindOutNow, the first of it’s kind, shows exactly what Scotland thinks, not what a tiny handful of defenders say Scotland thinks.

Every year, on the isolated rock of Sula Sgeir, juvenile gannets, babies, just weeks away from their first flight, are hung by the neck, clubbed to death with sticks and stripped of everything that made them a living, breathing being. Their bodies are salted and brought back as food. A small group carries out the hunt, and every year the same argument is rolled out like a shield:

“It’s tradition. It’s culture. It’s heritage.”

But we’re in 2025. “Culture” isn’t something you get to weaponise against empathy, against conservation, and against public consent.

An first of its kind survey, commissioned by Protect the Wild with FindOutNow, shows exactly what Scotland thinks.

The cultural importance claim has collapsed

We asked nearly a thousand people a simple question:

Do you feel the Guga hunt is of cultural importance?

After the ‘Don’t know’ answers were taken out, here’s what Scotland said:

• No: 72%

• Yes: 28%

Read that again. Only one in four people think the guga hunt is culturally important – meaning three in four do not.

That isn’t “national heritage.” That’s a niche practice desperately clinging to a grand story that most of the country simply does not share. If something is truly culturally important to Scotland, if it’s genuinely woven into national identity, people know it. They feel it in their bones.

This result is crystal clear: The Guga hunt is not of cultural importance to the vast majority of Scotland.

And Scotland wants it banned

Then we asked the next obvious question:

Do you think the Guga hunt should be banned?

• Yes: 69%

• No: 31%

Of those with a view, around seven in ten people believe the guga hunt should be banned, while only three in ten think it should continue.

So what does that tell us? Scotland is already leaning toward ending this. That’s not a divided nation. And the cultural-importance numbers already show the emotional baseline in Scotland is not one of reverence. It’s distance. Indifference.

Tradition is not a moral loophole

Let me say this as plainly as I can: “We’ve always done it” is not a justification for doing it forever. Lots of things are traditional. Not all of them deserve to survive.

Some traditions are beautiful because they bring people together without harming anyone. Some traditions are meaningful because they nourish communities without destroying wildlife.

But if the only reason a practice continues is because it is old, even though it causes suffering, even though it clashes with modern values, even though most people don’t want it, then it’s not culture.

What the polling shows

• Most Scots with an opinion do not see the Guga hunt as culturally important.

• Support for keeping it is a minority position.

• Support for banning it is already huge, and will likely rise with awareness.

The future should belong to living seabirds, not dead traditions

Scotland is a country that loves wildlife. They are proud of their seas, their cliffs, their birds, their wildness. Scotland tells the world that these places matter, that nature is part of what Scotland can offer. So it cannot keep excusing the killing of juvenile gannets because a few people insist “tradition” gives them the right to do it.

The Guga hunt isn’t Scotland’s culture.
It’s time Scotland’s laws caught up with Scotland’s values.