The only seabirds in Britain it's legal to kill

Standing on the Bass Rock

I was standing on the Bass Rock surrounded by thousands of gannets when the NatureScot decision to refuse a licence for the 2026 guga hunt came through.  The Bass Rock is an iconic, steeply-cliffed island just off North Berwick, on the East Lothian coast. It is home to one of the world’s biggest gannet colonies. Until five years ago, it was the biggest.

My guide for the day was the admirable Maggie Sneddon from the Scottish Seabird Centre. Maggie has been guiding on the Bass Rock for more years than she cares to remember. She told me that the Rock is a fragile ecosystem that’s been under much pressure in recent years. Avian flu, sea temperature changes and threats like discarded fishing tackle all combine to threaten individual gannets and, as a result, the whole colony.

I was on the Bass Rock that day to learn more about the gannets and their chicks. The chicks are known as guga in Gaelic, and it’s a word that has become resonant with controversy in the past year or so.

A tradition, and a loophole

For centuries men from the district of Ness, on the Isle of Lewis, have made the forty-mile journey to Sula Sgeir, a remote rocky outcrop in the North Atlantic to “harvest” thousands of guga. Originally, the hunt provided a much-needed source of protein for the community.  As the centuries passed and food security increased the hunt became an ancient tradition that speaks to folk in Ness of their connection to the sea and their island. Over the years, instead of being an important food source, the guga became a delicacy.

Meanwhile, conservation legislation was catching up with the threats. The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 made it an offence to kill any seabird, anywhere in the UK.

Any seabird, that is, except one species, gannets, and anywhere except one tiny island, Sula Sgeir.

The guga hunt is an anomaly. It’s licensed by what is now NatureScot, who say the only ground on which they can refuse a licence application is conservation. Not welfare. How the birds are killed, and whatever anyone thinks of it, has never been a reason that a licence could be turned down. And so, year after year, around 2,000 gannet chicks were killed.

2020-2025

Avian flu had a terrible impact on many seabird populations, including gannets, and in 2020 Covid made the journey to Sula Sgeir impossible. Between 2020 and 2024, no licences were sought or issued, and no guga were killed.

In 2025, a new application was made, and NatureScot agreed a reduced quota of 500 birds.

By then, many of the ‘old hands’ had retired and the new group decided to ditch most of the traditional aspects of the hunt. Rather than staying communally on Sula Sgeir for two weeks they made what was described as a “raid” and spent a day on the island killing the quota of 500 birds and returning to Ness harbour to process and salt them there.

All hell broke loose. 

International media piled in. A parliamentary petition against the hunt was launched which now stands at way over 100,000 signatures. Separately, two men camped out on the roof of NatureScot's headquarters in protest with placards decrying the killing of “baby gannets”; NatureScot say the occupation caused over £100,000 of damage.

A lot of heat was directed at the hunt, but little light.

Heat, but little light

The way the birds are killed has changed very little in the last three hundred or so years.  Men clamber along the cliff edges with ten-foot poles, snatching up the birds and tossing them to waiting colleagues, who quickly stun and decapitate them. Their bodies are processed and salted in large circular mounds on the island. Until last year, the process took around two weeks, and the men lived communally in stone bothies, built hundreds of years ago. They then return to Ness and sell the birds in the harbour. Opinion is divided on the taste.

Animal welfare standards have changed in the past three hundred years.  Animals killed for food are now expected to be dispatched humanely in controlled conditions where little can go wrong.

A recent report written by OneKind, a Scottish animal welfare charity, in conjunction with the League Against Cruel Sports, agreed with the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission that there is no known humane way to kill gannets.

What needs to happen now

Despite the Government’s own animal welfare committee’s opposition to the hunt, NatureScot say that their primary reason for refusing a licence this year was the result of a new assessment of the conservation status of the gannets on Sula Sgeir.

In their statement accompanying the refusal of the licence, NatureScot said that they had considered whether the hunt contravened any animal welfare legislation. After receiving assurances from the hunters, they were satisfied that it did not. 

There has never been any independent monitoring of the killing method.

So there I was on the Bass Rock, a very similar rock to Sula Sgeir, surrounded by thousands of gannets and their chicks. I’d just heard that NatureScot had refused a licence for the 2026 hunt. I was pleased to hear it, but what about next year, or the one after? If NatureScot can’t refuse a licence when the Government’s own Animal Welfare Committee says the hunt is inhumane, what’s to be done?

The unique loophole in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 that allows gannets to be killed on Sula Sgeir needs to be removed. Only the Scottish Parliament can do that.

The League Against Cruel Sports and our friends at OneKind have written to the Minister, Jim Fairlie, asking to meet and agree a timetable.

If you also think a licence to kill 2,000 seabirds shouldn't rest on one organisation's annual assessment, please write to your MSP and say so.

From my time on the Bass Rock, getting up close to them and seeing their interactions, I learnt that gannets are beautiful birds that like to squabble. In the midst of their tightly packed colony, they defend their tiny territories and protect their chicks with a fierce tenacity and aggression towards even their immediate neighbours.

Gannets are a long-lived bird that mature slowly. The 25% of chicks that survive past fledging face struggles on multiple fronts. As Maggie said, they occupy a fragile ecosystem. They live on rocks in the middle of the sea, at the mercy of a warming ocean and a disease that has already torn through their colonies.

Scotland holds most of the world's northern gannets, that makes them our responsibility. The least we should do is stop inhumanely killing their chicks in the name of tradition.

If you agree, write to your MSP and ask them to close the loophole and ban the guga hunt for good.