Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity and Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands correspondence regarding rewilding: EIR release
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
Information requested
1. Any correspondence sent to Jim Fairlie or Mairi Gougeon on the topic of rewilding within the last year.
2. Any correspondence sent from Jim Fairlie or Mairi Gougeon on the topic of rewilding within the last year.
Response
As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the Purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.
This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.
I have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex B.
I also wish to highlight that for the purposes of your request we have conducted searches for information between the dates of 01 January 2025 and 15 January 2026 (the date we received your request).
On reviewing materials within the scope of your request, exceptions have been applied in line with the EIRs. These exceptions applied can be found in Annex A.
I have included documents in my response which fall under The Scottish Government’s definition of ‘rewilding’. The term ‘rewilding’ applies to many policy areas and therefore the documents included in this response cover a broad range of topics. A definition of the term ‘rewilding’ can be found here: Defining rewilding for Scotland's public sector.
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG