Geoscience Reference
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says, are 'very limited'. So it commissioned a survey to discover how
many people are employed in the management and running of the
deer business on these estates.
It took as its case study the county of Sutherland, a wide territory
in the far north of Scotland, covering 5,200 square kilometres. Of
this, the report reveals, 4,000 square kilometres are in the hands of
estates, which number just eighty-one. In other words, three-quarters
of one of the largest counties in Britain is owned by eighty-one fami-
lies, or by their secretive trusts in tax havens. Across the ten it sampled,
covering 780 square kilometres, it found 112 people in full-time
equivalent employment. 25 That means that just one person is employed
by the dominant industry for every seven square kilometres, an area
five times the size of Hyde Park. The association's figures suggest to
me that the absentee owners and their monocultures of deer prevent
not only the ecological regeneration of the region but also the eco-
nomic regeneration.
The report also revealed that the income generated by stalking on
the estates throughout Sutherland is £1.6 million. This is a tiny sum
when spread across 4,000 square kilometres. Their expenditure on
deer management is £4.7 million. In other words, stalking can be sus-
tained there only because the bankers or oil sheikhs or mining
magnates who own the land burn money on their expensive pastime.
Even the tiny numbers of people employed by deer stalking are reliant
on the irrational spending of absentee landlords, which could be ter-
minated at any time.
Compare these figures with a study from the Isle of Mull, which
discovered that colonization by white-tailed sea eagles has brought
£5 million a year into its economy and supports 110 full-time jobs. 26
Thousands of people now travel to the island to watch the chicks
hatching and fledging from the eagle hide at Glen Seilisdeir or to take
an eagle cruise on Loch Shiel. 27 The eagles now account for half the
enquiries at the visitor desk of the island's main ferry terminal. 28 A
study commissioned by the Scottish government calculates that wild-
life tourism in Scotland is already worth £276 million a year. 29
Rewilding and the reintroduction of other missing species could
greatly enhance this figure, generating many more jobs than
deer- stalking does today.
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