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But do you believe that that framework is now robust enough to protect wild salmon?

Yes. To avoid the risk that every committee member sums up what we have heard over the past two years, we will draw that line of questioning to a conclusion.

I now turn to Edward Mountain.

The next item on the agenda is consideration of PE1490, lodged by the Scottish Crofting Federation, which calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to address the problems created by increasing populations of wild geese. The committee last considered the petition in May 2024 and agreed to await the publication of NatureScot’s delivery plan as part of its review of the national goose management framework before taking further evidence at that stage.

At today’s meeting, we will hear from officials who are involved in developing the plan and discuss how it will address the issues that are raised in the petition. I welcome to the meeting Donald Fraser, head of wildlife management at NatureScot, and Sam Turner, wildlife management team leader at the Scottish Government.

We have allocated around an hour to this agenda item. I will kick off and set the scene. Can you give us an update on the population status of the different goose species and whether there have been significant changes in recent years?

Greylag geese appear to have the largest population and are the geese that are most often focused on in relation to agricultural damage. Can you give us an idea of why there is a change in the numbers of those that are resident and those that migrate? Are weather conditions or climate change resulting in these birds staying rather than heading back to Iceland?

You touched on the potentially different management approach needed as a result of avian flu. Since the last update, have there been changes in national or international obligations that have affected how populations can be managed?

I think that the roof is going to stay on. For those tuning in, we have all been looking at the roof in a very worried way, because the wind is very strong.

We will move on to a question from Ariane Burgess.

That is far from ideal. You will, in effect, be treading water, because you will have no rural support plan in place, or no indications of what rural support is likely to be before 2030.

It is far from satisfactory if we are, effectively, treading water and if we are having to put in interim measures because of the Government’s failure to set out that rural support. We are going to have five years of less than adequate—or perhaps I should say less than perfect—solutions because of the lack of a rural support plan.

Okay. Thank you. As there are no more questions, I thank the witnesses very much for joining us.

We now move on to formal consideration of our next steps with regard to the petition, and I refer members to paragraph 10 of the clerk’s note, which invites us to consider closing the petition on the basis that, after hearing from officials, we are satisfied that the actions set out in NatureScot’s delivery plan and the national goose policy framework will sufficiently address the problems created by increasing populations of wild geese in crofting areas.

I propose that we include in our legacy paper for the committee next session, which will have responsibility for NatureScot, a reference to monitoring the issue and the implementation of the framework and delivery plan. I propose, therefore, that we close the petition but include those steps in the legacy paper.

Do members have any comments, or are we happy?

Thank you, cabinet secretary. We have allocated approximately two hours for this session. As expected, we have quite a few questions to get through, so succinct questions and answers would be helpful.

I will kick off by asking about mandatory mortality reporting, which is an issue that remains central not only to fish health and environmental protection, but, equally importantly, to confidence in the aquaculture sector and its long-term sustainability.

Back in January 2025, the committee set out clear and practical recommendations that were aimed at reducing persistently high mortality in Scottish salmon farms. One thing that we called for was stronger regulatory powers for the likes of the fish health inspectorate—more specifically, we called for the inspectorate to have the ability to limit or halt production at sites that experience consistently high mortality rates. The committee also recommended the establishment of agreed mortality thresholds that would trigger interventions such as improved environmental risk modelling and so on. We also looked at cleaner fish and freshwater losses.

There were significant concerns about transparency and how the lack of transparency impacted on public confidence. However, we were told that a requirement to be transparent would be a burden on the industry. Why do you consider avoiding an administrative burden to be more important than ensuring transparency and public confidence in the industry?