The geese that won't migrate - a Scottish island's battle to preserve its unique crop

It is one of Europe’s most rare habitats, found only on the exposed western facing shores of Scotland and Ireland.

The machair is home to a special crop of black oats, bere barley and corn, and supports wildflowers and rare species, including the red-listed corncrake and the Great Yellow Bumblebee, one of the rarest in the UK.

The dune pasture, with a high shell content, follows a unique process where crofters use seaweed as fertiliser for the crop. This is then harvested and used as animal feed; a practice that has been undertaken for generations.

A crofter on Benbecula harvesting seaweed to be used as fertiliser for crops | Katharine Hay

Vast areas of this habitat on the Western Isles, however, are facing an increasing threat from one species - the greylag goose.

The bird, according to some reports, gets its name because they are some of the last birds to migrate and therefore “lag” behind. Some flocks, however, don’t just lag behind. They simply don’t migrate.

The resident greylag population on islands, including the Uists and Benbecula, has grown exponentially in recent decades.

David Muir, of the Scottish Crofting Federation, said the issue with the Greylag Geese is only increasing despite previous efforts to reduce numbers |

At this time of year, the numbers are multiplied by flocks of Icelandic breeding greylags, who arrive to winter on the islands.

Crofters claim some of the migratory greylags have chosen to not take off at all over the years and stay year-round given the increasingly temperate conditions and steady food source.

It means thousands of these birds are grazing and defecating on the machair during all four seasons, spoiling the crop.

Scotland's machair is best developed on the Uists, Tiree and Barra, according to NatureScot

The issue has been a long-standing one for crofters in the Western Isles. Various government funds have been thrown at “goose groups” established to reduce numbers after they spent years of campaigning to remove the greylag’s former protected status.

But even with cull measures in place, the numbers continue to increase, said Uist-based crofter David Muir, of the Scottish Crofting Federation.

He said while the latest round of Scottish Government funding has allowed the recruitment of additional shooters, crofters continue to campaign for a more certain future funding plan to enable effective goose management long term.

“A few years ago, we had about 4,000 of the birds on the Uists, but the last count, which was last month, we counted about 9,000,” he said.

“The problem is if money is put in on an ad-hoc basis and there are times when there’s no incentive to shoot, the geese numbers grow exponentially. They’d be up to 20,000 before not too long.”

That’s a lot of beaks, webbed feet and round, feathered bellies snapping and crushing a small island’s crop.

Crofters are calling for a more certain future funding plan to help them keep on top of increasing greylag numbers

The ancestor of the Greylag has a complex history in Scotland.

The indigenous native breeding population was reduced to a relict population in the Western Isles that numbered only a few hundred pairs about 50 years ago, according to the Scottish Government-funded Farm Advisory Service (FSA).

The body confirmed the goose population had since increased dramatically, while at the same time, breeding populations of greylags that were reintroduced to other parts of Scotland for hunting have also increased.

The two populations have merged, which means there are more than 60,000 birds now thought to be resident year-round throughout the country, according to FSA, and an additional 65,000 birds from the separate Icelandic greylag breeding population who also visit Scotland in winter.

“We also have the barnacle geese that come in to winter from Greenland,” Mr Muir said. “A lot of them go to Islay, but some of them stop off in Berneray and North Uist.”

Scotland's machair is best developed on the Uists, Tiree and Barra, according to NatureScot, but it is also found on Orkney, Shetland, Lewis and Harris, which also have ongoing issues with rising geese numbers.

It is a distinct issue in the Outer Hebrides given the unique seeds, Mr Muir said.

“You can’t go and buy the seed for this crop elsewhere unless you buy it from another crofter on the island,” he said.

Crofters on the Uists have said were the local and cheap seed production cease due to geese predation, the economics of crofting agriculture would shift as importing seed would make the local fodder production considerably more expensive, if not completely unfeasible.

Sam MacDonald, a crofter on Baleshare, an island that lies to the south-west of North Uist, only managed to harvest about a third of his crop this year due to the damage caused by the birds.

“I normally take about 45 bales off, and managed to save the crop from the geese last year,” he said. “But this year they got in on just a couple of nights and I only managed to get 15 bales.

“From the end of July onwards, we go down about three times a day trying to chase them out. But it only takes one night if there’s enough of them altogether landing to flatten the crop. The cost of ploughing it, buying the seeds, adding the fertiliser, then all of that wasted in a night.”

A solution?

Earlier this year, goose groups on the Western Isles benefited from a significant rise in funding towards cull schemes. Reports showed the local management group in Uist and Barra was awarded £20,000 in January, up from £7,500 in 2022/23, to help them cull 2,735 birds.

An additional 1,200 greylags are also shot annually by gamekeepers employed by Storas Uibhist, the community landlord in South Uist. But the crofters said even with the financial support to shoot some 3,000 birds this year, the numbers are still a problem.

“It’s because the funding has been inconsistent over the years,” Mr MacDonald said. “Even with what they’ve managed to shoot in the last couple of years, the number are still going up. They could do with a bigger cull. 

“They had managed to get the number down to a reasonable level a few years ago, but then funding was cut again.”

A NatureScot spokeswoman said: “We are aware of the concerns around the damage caused by resident greylag geese in the Uists.” She said the Scottish Government provided £11,500 to support crofters who were being impacted on Uist alone this year.

The Government nature agency said it was unable to give an updated figure on the amount of geese on the Western Isles due to counts taking place as different times, but said it “continues to work closely with local goose management groups to develop tools and techniques to control resident greylag goose impacts.”