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SEPA allocated approximately £30.1m of its £88.6m spend in 2021/22 to managing river catchments. This funded work to protect and improve the water environment including permitting, regulating activities, monitoring water environment and producing River Basin Management Plans.

SEPA administered total grant values of £2.353m from the Water Environment Fund to third parties to deliver river restoration and fish barrier removal works. Approximately £0.75m was allocated to regulatory activities as part of SEPA’s diffuse pollution priority catchment work. These include SEPA’s overhead costs. They do not include SEPA work on flood warning and flood risk management.

The Scottish Government do not provide compensation to potato farmers who have been ordered by SASA to destroy their crops to prevent further growth.

Article 4 of The Plant Health (Potatoes) (Scotland) Order 2006 provides an explicit power to require that the grower of a potato crop (seed or ware) takes immediate action (within 72 hours of the service of a notice) to ensure the destruction of the haulm of a potato crop which has been determined by official inspection to present a clear plant health risk to other potato crops due to high levels of virus in the crop.

There is no single definition of a GMO for the agricultural context. Different definitions for GMOs exist in different regulatory regimes, including:

• in relation to deliberate release: section 106 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990,
• in relation to contained use: regulation 2 of the Genetically Modified Organisms (Contained Use) Regulations 2014,
• in relation to food and feed: article 2 of the retained EU Regulation (EC) 1829/2003.

While there is no legal definition of gene editing in Scotland, we recognise that gene editing is typically used to refer to a precise and targeted form of genetic modification. Gene edited organisms are legally considered GMOs.

NatureScot only hold details of beavers controlled under licence since they became European Protected Species in May 2019.

The data from 2019 and 2020 licence returns is available on the NatureScot website at

NatureScot are currently collating beaver licence returns for 2021 and plan to publish this information by May 2022.

Beavers have the potential to bring significant biodiversity benefits to Scotland. They may also have adverse impacts on some land uses. Our main policy focus at this point is to prevent and mitigate negative impacts of beavers before damage can occur.

NatureScot can issue protected species licences to control beavers for the purpose of preventing serious damage to agriculture.

NatureScot also support land and fisheries managers experiencing negative impacts through the Scottish Beaver Mitigation Scheme. The Scheme offers land managers advice and practical assistance with mitigating the impacts of beavers including taking pro-active measures to prevent impacts where appropriate. NatureScot will continue to work with stakeholders on the mitigation scheme looking to develop new and innovative approaches.

Increased use of translocation of beavers will also help prevent negative impacts and as set out in the answer to question S6W-04596 on 24 November 2021, we will also provide both financial and practical support to facilitate this translocation of beavers.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government has embraced the Community Wealth Building (CWB) approach to economic development as it is geared to helping local businesses and communities own a greater stake in how their local economy functions. The CWB model involves local authorities and their community planning partners ensuring that collective investment decisions focus on how local economies can be helped to grow and flourish. Practical benefits can include more local, good quality jobs; improved access to public contracts for local businesses; more land being placed in community ownership or developed for the benefit of the community; and support being offered to new businesses exploring employee ownership or other innovative models.

We are working with local authorities to help them frame strategic CWB action plans and have committed to introducing CWB legislation during this session of the Scottish Parliament. Our objective is to embed the CWB approach as a strategic economic development policy. Many actions taken across the policy spectrum will contribute to CWB and creation of a national economy striving for prosperity and societal wellbeing in equal measure. Community access to allotments can play a part in this collective effort.

Allotments and their provision are the responsibility of local authorities. That is set out in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. However, since 2012, the Scottish Government has allocated more than £1.4 million to directly support and increase the land that is available for community growing.

The decline in capercaillie numbers is of real concern, NatureScot recently published a

The report found, inter alia, that it is likely that “ reductions in the numbers of predators (foxes, pine martens, crows) would rapidly improve the breeding success of Capercaillie” . However the evidence is unclear as to whether reductions of fox populations alone would benefit capercaillie without management of other predator species due to the interactions between predator species.

NatureScot are working closely with the Cairngorms Capercaillie Project to support capercaillie conservation in Scotland, and have recently of the measures, beyond those which are already being undertaken, that are being considered to save capercaillie. These include:

• Carefully designed and monitored diversionary feeding of predators, currently being investigated, being expanded to provide alternative food during the breeding season.
• Additional predator control to remove crows, foxes and including pine martens. In the case of pine marten this would be non-lethal, through trap and release as part of reintroduction to other parts of the UK.
• Seasonal visitor management to create larger refuges from human disturbance in collaboration with communities.
• Extend deer fence marking and removal.

The Scottish Government takes the welfare of all farmed animals very seriously and has recently introduced measures to monitor fish welfare at slaughter. The UK Animal Welfare Committee is currently considering the welfare of farmed fish at slaughter and we will explore the need for any changes to current practice or legislation once the committee publishes its findings.

The Scottish Government, it’s partners and agencies have funded actions to support capercaillie conservation across Scotland through a range of schemes. Funding has been awarded to estates as well as eNGO’s and individuals and we expect this to continue.

Funding is awarded to projects that would benefit capercaillie conservation but are not specifically for this purpose. This could include supporting new pine wood planting in capercaillie areas, the management and improvement of existing habitat as well as it's extension through actions such as controlling deer numbers, fence marking or removal, and thinning to improve light levels.

NatureScot’s investment in Abernethy over the past 3 years has principally been support through the Peatland Action Fund that is delivering SG objectives to tackle the twin crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss. A further project supported a number of seasonal rangers, helping to ensure responsible use of the NNR. They have also provided support for RSPB staff posts for their work on Capercaillie.

The following tables below show the funding allocation from both NatureScot and the Forestry Grant Scheme to Abernethy National Nature Reserve, this funding may have been for a range of purposes, and funding may have been allocated indirectly via other partners so a complete breakdown is not available. It is important to note that the Capercaillie officer funding is mainly for the wider co-ordination of Capercaillie, and not specific to Abernethy.

NatureScot Abernethy Funding Allocation