Our award-winning work has demonstrably started to break the deadlock of conflict that has troubled the upland deer management sector for decades. Using civic mediation techniques, we have been bringing together stakeholders across the upland deer management sector to build relationships and discuss challenging issues. Many of those individuals, and others, are now actively involved in activities to find ways to resolve them.
Our aim is to continue building on this work for the next 3-5 years, after which we believe the momentum our work is creating will become self-sustaining.
Here are our achievements to date:
- The CGF won the Nature of Scotland Award for Innovation in November 2024
- A growing forum of 150 individuals from across the deer management sector – including private landowners and managers, deer stalkers, the Scottish Government and statutory agencies, public landowners, environmental NGOs, the agricultural sector, foresters and community trusts.
- 43 organisations signed up to Our Common Ground Accord – which sets out the principles for respectful and constructive dialogue.
- A Founding Document, setting out the CGF’s vision, aim and objectives, along with a working plan of activities to work towards achieving these.
- Three successful events for deer stalkers, attended by over 160 stalkers to discuss the future of deer management in a changing world. Further events are in planning.
- A pilot study in North Ross Deer Management Group, led by Edinburgh University and Centre for Good Relations (CfGR), using methods from mediation and social science to enable DMGs to negotiate different perspectives in a more productive way.
- A protocol for how chairs of DMGs deal with conflict agreed by Association of Deer Management Groups (ADMG) and the government agency, Forestry and Land Scotland.
- An event to support DMG chairs with guidance on conflict resolution by Centre for Good Relations.
- A new ADMG/Scottish Environment LINK Deer Task Force liaison group, which is already conducting joint advocacy with other parties, and have established a link with the Strategic Deer Board.
- Joint advocacy by ADMG, ScotLINK and Scottish Venison has resulted in the introduction of three venison subsidy pilots by the Scottish Government.
- A Conflict Support Service to confidentially explore ways to work through tensions or difficult relationships that people in the deer sector are experiencing.
- A 2-day “Changemaker Training Workshop” on understanding group dynamics and conflict. A further 2-day course is planned. The training supports confidence-building of stakeholders (in particular deer managers/stalkers) to address and work with conflicts as they arise.
- An online discussion about the government consultation on Managing Deer for Nature and Climate to identify areas of common ground.
- A parliamentary meeting to improve the awareness of politicians and civil servants of the role of land managers and rural skills in tackling the twin climate and biodiversity crises. This was followed up with a parliamentary motion, which has been supported by 19 cross-party MSPs.
- An event for Accord signatories to explore how the Accord can be embedded more widely in the way Forum members present differing views on contentious and challenging issues.
- A meeting between Stalkers and the Scottish Government to connect people working on the ground with policy-makers to explore key issues on upcoming legislation raised during the stalkers events, in greater depth and detail. This meeting has led to a series of commitments and actions for ongoing engagement between the Scottish Government and stalkers.