DURRELL will ban the killing of deer for sport at its Dalnacardoch Estate in Scotland at the end of the current hunting season in 2026, the JEP has learned.
Asked this week when the decision had been made to end hunting – which it refers to as “paid deer management experiences” – at its Scottish estate, Chris Ransom, director of field programmes, said: “It has always been our intention to phase [it] out. We’ve never strayed from that.
“We came in and we needed to be sensitive to the traditional culture and way of life. We inherited a staff whose jobs for 40 years [had been hunting] and we didn’t feel it was our place to turn up on day one and just say: ‘Your way is not how things should be done.’
“There is a lot of cultural heritage wrapped up in the way they do deer management in this part of the world, and rather than throw that out immediately, we wanted to make sure that we worked with this team and this community here to transition towards something that’s more aligned with [our] objectives.”
Durrell revealed its plans for what it called a “major rewilding project” in the Cairngorms National Park, halfway between Blair Atholl and Dalwhinnie, in 2023. The organisation said that it had a “longterm vision” to revive the estate, with a “scientific approach that combines hands-on species management with habit restoration while working alongside local communities and training conservationists”.
At the time, the charity added that Durrell’s intention was “to have a managed transition away from Dalnacardoch as a sporting estate”.
In March, Paul Masterson, a former director of Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, told the BBC that by continuing with deer stalking at Dalnacardoch, the trust had “travelled so far from its roots and values”.
He said he was not talking about culling, but about “trophy hunting and blood sport, where people pay a licence fee [to] stalk and kill animals”.
William Hawes, a Scotland-based programme director at Durrell, added that deer culling – which is backed by the Scottish government to keep deer populations under control – on the estate would still go ahead.
The annual deer cull across all species – red, roe, fallow and sika – is estimated to be around 100,000 to 200,000 in Scotland.
“Deer densities need to be reduced in Scotland for them to be able to achieve the twin goals of nature restoration and climate mitigation, so we will have to contribute to that,” he said.
Mr Hawes added that Durrell’s deer manager would kill all the necessary animals himself rather than allowing private hunters to pay to do so.
He said that the number of deer the estate would need to kill each year would depend on the animals’ movements as well as guidelines issued by the Scottish government.
