Scottish biodiversity strategy: report to Parliament 2020 to 2024

1. Outcome 1: Healthy Ecosystems

Scotland’s ecosystems are restored to good ecological health so that they provide robust ecosystem services and build our natural capital.

1.1 Encourage and support ecosystem restoration and management.

Landscape scale approaches are essential for tackling the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change as they enable land managers to take a holistic view to connecting and restoring habitats and ecosystem function.

Reversing ecosystem degradation, loss and fragmentation were key aims of the 2020 Challenge for Scotland’s Biodiversity, with restoration of some of Scotland’s most threatened habitats continuing since the last report in 2019. In particular, peatlands and rivers have seen focused efforts which help towards Scotland’s climate change targets. Rivers have seen continuous improvement in condition over the last 25 years.

Restoring and managing peatlands

Peatland ACTION is a national programme to restore peatlands across Scotland that is led and funded by Scottish Government and delivered in partnership with NatureScot, Cairngorms National Park Authority, Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park Authority, Scottish Water, and Forestry and Land Scotland. It aims to restore 250,000 hectares of peatland by 2030, with a budget of £250 million.

Since 2012 over 65,000 ha of degraded peatland are on the road to recovery. Peatland ACTION achieved a significant milestone of restoring over 10,000 ha in 2023/24 with a target of 10,300 ha for 2024/25. Several additional projects have been designed, with efforts continuing to lever in private finance to increase the levels of restoration that can be delivered.

The Agri-environment Climate Scheme (AECS) is part of the Scottish Rural Development Programme funded by the EU and Scottish Government. This competitive scheme provides support for the restoration and management of peatlands across Scotland. An estimated 232,640 ha of peatland were managed under AECS contracts in 2023, with £3.6M of capital committed to peatland restoration works such as ditch blocking and removal of scrub since 2015.

In 2025 peatland and wetland standards will be added to the GAEC 6 – payments for the maintenance of soil organic matter. These standards will prohibit a range of activities from being carried out on peatland and wetland areas and include ploughing, cultivations and reseeding.

Restoring habitats and species populations at landscape-scale

Several landscape-scale projects, for example run by the Knoydart Foundation, the Black Hills Regeneration Project, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, Caerlaverock Estate and NatureScot, and the Glencoe Habitat Recovery Project are restoring habitats and species populations at scale. Examples of using conservation translocations of keystone and multiple species to help restore ecosystem processes and functions are presented below in s8.1.

Cairngorms Connect is a partnership of neighbouring land managers, committed to a bold and ambitious 200-year vision to enhance habitats, species and ecological processes across a vast area within Cairngorms National Park, with funding from the Endangered Landscapes Programme.

The Borders Forest Trust Carrifran Wildwood project was the first ecological restoration project of its kind to harness voluntary efforts and donations to restore the ecology of one entire catchment in the Southern Uplands to approximately the state it would have been in before people began practicing settled agriculture, about six thousand years ago.

Support for landscape-scale restoration, including through collaboration between land managers, comes in part from the Agri-environment Climate Scheme (AECS), which promotes land management practices to protect, enhance and restore habitats and species, tackle diffuse pollution to improve water quality, manage flood risk, and mitigate and adapt to climate change. Collaboration between two or more land managers is incentivised within the AECS scoring system, as it is under the Forestry Grant Scheme.

Regional Land Use Partnerships

The 2020-21 Programme for Government reaffirmed the commitment by Scottish Government (SG) to support five Regional Land Use Partnership (RLUP) pilots from 2021 and the development of Regional Land Use Frameworks (RLUFs) by the pilots by 2023. The RLUPs evaluation report considers the lessons learned from the Year 1 pilot process in 2021 to 2022, which aimed to establish partnership structures able to deliver a collaborative approach to land use decision-making involving national and local government, landowners and managers, communities and other relevant stakeholders. The South of Scotland RLUP is one of the more advanced pilots, publishing their final draft Regional Land Use Framework in October 2023.

The Scottish Government has committed to rolling out the Regional Land Use Partnerships (RLUPs) as an initiative with coverage across Scotland by the end of the next Parliamentary term. This is beginning with the recruitment of up to three new areas over the next year (2024/25).

Public and NGO land clusters

During 2022 and 2023 NatureScot worked with Scottish Government and Forestry and Land Scotland to map and identify clusters of publicly owned land and land owned by the environmental NGOs. This led to the identification of 11 clusters where work is underway to stimulate greater collaboration at landscape scale.

Building on work to identify public / NGO land clusters, NatureScot created a new post in early 2024 to bring better coordination to landscape scale nature restoration projects across Scotland. A project is under development to map and analyse all the projects underway in Scotland, to assist targeting resources and action.

Planting and protecting native woodlands

New native woodlands have been planted with support through the Forestry Grant Scheme meeting the Route Map to 2020 target of 3-5,000ha per year.

Herbivore impacts, particularly from deer, have been highlighted as a serious issue in relation to native woodland condition, with the Forestry Grant Scheme requiring Deer Management Plans to be produced as a condition of grant. Upland Deer Management Plans are in place covering over 3,000,000ha through collaborative Deer Management Groups. These plans focus on managing deer numbers to deliver a range of public interest outcomes, including retaining existing native woodland cover and improving woodland condition. In general, new woodland is protected by fences rather than through deer management. However, success is patchy, and a lot of fences are permeable, meaning that many woodlands even within fences are damaged by herbivores. The Native Woodland Survey of Scotland (NWSS) identified that in 2013 only 46% of native woodlands were in good condition. In addition, the condition of woodland features on Protected Areas shows an overall decline.

There are several indicators of woodland condition used by different organisations, including the Native Woodland Survey of Scotland (2006-2013), NatureScot’s Site Condition Monitoring, and the Forest Research Woodland Ecological Condition. These different methodologies inevitably reach different conclusions, but they are consistent in showing that more than half of Scotland’s natural woodland is not in good (or favourable condition). This outcome is matched by expert judgement and information on deer impacts as the most significant driver of poor woodland condition.

The Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest

Scotland’s rainforest lies in a zone along the west coast; in total 18,500km2 or about 23% of Scotland’s land area. However, within this area, there remains only about 30,000 hectares in small fragments of core rainforest.

The Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest (ASR) is a voluntary partnership of more than 20 organisations that are committed to collaborative action for the benefit of the rainforest. It includes conservation NGOs, community bodies, land manager representative, and public sector organisations. The ASR is working in six focus areas to restore and expand rainforest: Knapdale Restoration Project, West Cowal Habitat Restoration Project, Loch Arkaig Landscape Restoration Partnership, Saving Morvern’s Rainforest, Regenerating Craignish rainforest, and the Glen Torridon Partnership Project.

The Argyll and the Isles Coast and Countryside Trust is leading a FIRNS project (see s3.2) on behalf of the ASR to establish a template for how private investment can be made more accessible to organisations and land managers working on habitat restoration.

Improving freshwater quality

Ongoing work to improve freshwater quality is detailed in the current river basin management plan (RBMP) for Scotland) 2021-2027. Action for improvement is brigaded around healthy resilient communities, water supply and wastewater, sustainable and resilient rural land use and management, and removing barriers to fish migration. Scotland’s water environment is classified according to agreed standards under the Water Framework Directive. The most recent annual report using 2022 data reports that of the 3,249 rivers, lochs, estuaries, coastal water bodies 67.1% were classified as either good or high status. Ground waters are assessed separately with 84.9% of the 403 water bodies being assessed as in good condition. These figures show a net gradual improvement in most aspects since the last update in 2019. Scottish Water, in partnership with government agencies, has developed a draft list of priority catchments for restoration.

MERLIN is a research and innovation action, funded under the European Commission’s H2020 programme, that aims to mainstream ecological restoration of freshwater ecosystems in a landscape context. In Scotland the project, which is due to complete in September 2025, will deliver approximately 500ha of restoration including 23km of river channel in the Forth catchment.

Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund has provided competitive finance across Scotland to support several river and wetland restoration projects. Scottish Government have let a contract for evaluation of the fund to be published in 2025. The Scottish Government Wild Salmon Strategy, published in January 2022 and supplemented with an Implementation Plan in 2023, aims to secure healthy, self-sustaining populations of wild Atlantic salmon through a range of interventions, including for example in-river barrier removal and riparian woodland creation. In 2023 NatureScot published a GIS analysis of riparian woodland which showed that Scotland needs riparian woodland along many thousands of kilometres of our rivers and streams. Recent enhancements for planting riparian woodlands in the Forestry Grant Scheme and through the Nature Restoration Fund may help, but fundamentally this restoration requires changes to grazing management, especially of deer.

Funding from the Agri-environment Climate Scheme (AECS) supports actions by farmers to tackle diffuse pollution through capital investment and land management changes, such as by installing slurry stores. The scheme supports capital works and changes in land management aimed at improving water quality and reducing flood risk, such as by converting ‘Arable at Risk of Erosion or Flooding’ to ‘Low-Input Grassland’, managing floodplains, removing coastal embankments, installing Rural Sustainable Drainage Systems, improving pesticide handling facilities, and lowering or removing river embankments and embankment engineering.

1.2 Use assessments of ecosystem health at a catchment level to determine what needs to be done.

Ecosystem Health and Protected Areas

The monitoring programme for protected nature sites is being reformed to strengthen its focus on delivering healthy ecosystems. Monitoring will be based on guiding principles, including understanding the threats and pressures in the wider landscape to ensure that we can identify and act upon them using the best available evidence at appropriate scales.

For freshwater and wetland initial scoping of the challenge has been undertaken and, working with SEPA and Scottish Government, support has been secured from CREW for a capacity-building project to review monitoring approaches to deliver healthy ecosystems for Scotland’s freshwaters and wetlands. This should report in 2025.

Land-Mapping and the Habitat Map of Scotland

The Habitat Map of Scotland holds data from national and site based habitat surveys reclassified to match the European Nature Information System (EUNIS). It incorporates around 800 National Vegetation Classification site surveys and national surveys of saltmarsh, coastal shingle, sand dune and native woodlands. The data are available to view on Scotland’s Environment Web and to download from the NatureScot Open Data Hub. New survey data are added to the map as they become available, and NatureScot is investigating how to increase the use of remote sensing to fill gaps and update the data. Nationwide high-resolution habitat mapping (classifying habitat types to EUNIS level 2) was completed for the years 2020 and 2022. This employed machine learning to utilise satellite data and on-the-ground survey to categorise habitats, and the data are publicly available. Having repeatable surveys like this aids the monitoring of change and informs actions on the ground.

1.3 Government and public bodies will work together towards a shared agenda for action to restore ecosystem health at a catchment-scale.

Collaborative approaches to restoring ecosystem health at a catchment scale are discussed above under ‘s1.1 Encourage and support ecosystem restoration and management’.

1.4 Establish plans and decisions about land-use based on an understanding of ecosystems. Take full account of land-use impacts on the ecosystem services that underpin social, economic and environmental health.

Actions to take account of ecosystem services in land use decisions are discussed above and under ‘Outcome 2 Natural Capital’.

1.5 Monitoring this Outcome