Meeting of the Parliament 31 October 2024
I thank Audrey Nicoll for bringing this important debate to the chamber. I also thank Audrey Baird and Fiona Baker, two of my constituents, who have been calling on the Scottish Government to deliver legislation to give Scotland’s remaining fragments of ancient native and semi-native woodlands full legal protection. Audrey and Fiona have been leading the campaign through the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee since 2020. They are nothing if not determined, and their hard work continues. I believe that their petition is still open, so I thank members of the committee for their support.
Our Scottish historic landscape, which I know that we all value, has been overrun by invasive non-native conifers. The tree of the year competition that is run by the Woodland Trust was won this year by a tree in Scotland, in Lochaber. It is an ancient oak that is—guess what?—surrounded by dark spruces.
It is concerning that the prevention and control of invasive non-native species in Scotland has for so long been so inconsistent. In 2022, the University of Stirling published a report that helps to illustrate the problem, and I commend it to the minister. It discovered that a colossal 56 per cent of all trees that were recorded at the highest altitudes in Scotland are American Sitka spruce—a non-native invasive species. That growth has taken place in just a few decades. That is how fast-moving the issue is.
The report also underlines the fact that past and current efforts have failed to tackle the problem. For too long, we have allowed conifers to self-seed out of plantations, creating new seed sources, which further encourages the takeover of our ancient woodlands.
The reality is that there is a disconnect between what the Scottish Government says it will do to save ancient woodlands and its actions to reverse their disappearance. As Scottish Environment LINK rightly pointed out in its briefing,
“Eradications are not always seen to completion; success is not always assessed at the right ecological scale and best practice is not always followed.”
Given that the spread of invasive non-native species has an estimated economic impact of almost £500 million per year, that failure is costly and unforgivable.
It is time to take that crisis in hand and adopt new measures that actually work, including the recommendations that are outlined in the LINK report. The Scottish Government should quickly agree to a target to reduce the rates of introduction and establishment of invasive non-native species by at least 50 per cent by 2030. It should also outline whether it has any plans to remove those non-native invasive species from sites across Scotland, similarly to work that is being undertaken in other countries such as New Zealand. I agree with Audrey Nicoll that the Scottish Government’s nature restoration fund is critical, which is why it is so concerning that funding has been cut.
I hope that the Scottish Government will commit to having a national strategy for Scotland, with targets that reflect the negative impact on our ecosystems of non-native invasive species. It is vital that we take the steps required for successful nature restoration in Scotland. Nature is, after all, our greatest asset, and we must look after our natural assets so that we can protect Scotland’s biodiversity for future generations.