Stop The Guga Hunt Campaign
Scottish Parliament Petition PE2202 · Founded by Rachel Bigsby
A public-interest campaign calling for permanent legislative protection for Northern Gannets on Sula Sgeir.
Official petition: parliament.scot/PE2202
Campaign website: rachelbigsby.com
Stop The Guga Hunt Campaign
Scottish Parliament Petition PE2202 · Founded by Rachel Bigsby
For centuries, Northern Gannet chicks have been taken from their nests by hook and pole, and killed by manual blunt force trauma during the annual Guga Hunt on Sula Sgeir, a remote and internationally important seabird island off the west coast of Scotland.
On 4 November 2025, seabird photographer and conservation advocate Rachel Bigsby launched the official Scottish Parliament Petition PE2202, calling for an end to the legal exemption that permits this practice.
With more than 122,000 signatures, growing international attention and renewed scientific and animal-welfare scrutiny, the campaign reached a significant milestone in August 2026 when NatureScot refused the year's hunting licence.
But the law remains unchanged.
Until the statutory exemption is removed, future hunts may still be authorised. Rachel’s campaign continues to seek permanent protection for the Gannets of Sula Sgeir.
THE CAMPAIGN
From parliamentary petition to the refusal of the 2026 hunting licence.
3 NOVEMBER 2025:
The Scottish Parliament formally receives petition PE2202 from Rachel calling for the removal of the statutory licensing exemption.
21 JANUARY 2026
First parliamentary consideration. MSPs examine the petition and agree to continue its consideration allowing evidence to be gathered.
11 MARCH 2026
Petition is retained for the next parliamentary session.
The committee agrees to keep PE2202 open, recognising its substantial public support.JUNE–JULY 2026
New scientific and welfare scrutiny. Updated population modelling, animal-welfare advice and additional evidence inform the examination of the proposed 2026 hunt.
3 AUGUST 2026
NatureScot refuses the 2026 licence. The application is refused because of an adverse effect on the protected Gannet population.
10 SEPTEMBER 2026
Parliamentary scrutiny continues. The committee considers the licensing refusal, hears differing perspectives and keeps the petition open for further evidence in 2027.
NOVEMBER 2026
The campaign continues. More than 122,000 signatures have been recorded, but the legal power to authorise hunts remains in place.
A Timeline of Change
One Photographer,
One Petition, One Purpose
Rachel Bigsby’s official Scottish Parliamentary petition PE2202 to Stop The Guga Hunt was born from more than a decade spent documenting the extraordinary lives of seabirds, particularly Northern Gannets, and witnessing the increasingly precarious circumstances in which they survive.
For Rachel, whose work with Gannets has been recognised by Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Bird Photographer of the Year, the motivation was profoundly personal. Her years observing Gannets had revealed birds of remarkable social complexity, enduring pair bonds and extraordinary parental devotion. Her subsequent documentation of the devastation caused by Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) brought the vulnerability of these colonies into even sharper focus.
Against a growing backdrop of disease, climate change, diminishing prey availability, plastic pollution, fisheries interactions and mounting human pressures, Rachel questioned why Scotland continued to authorise the deliberate killing of young Gannets at one of its internationally important breeding sites. Her petition seeks not merely to challenge an annual licensing decision, but to address the legislation that made the hunt possible.
Following its publication, PE2202 attracted rapidly growing public support, becoming the most-signed petition on the Scottish Parliament's online petitions platform in the past decade, and third most in the history of Scottish Parliament.
By October 2026, it had received more than 122,000 signatures.
Rachel Bigsby’s campaign has also attracted extensive international media attention, bringing the Guga Hunt to audiences far beyond Scotland and generating an estimated reach of more than two million people.
Behind the public campaign, Rachel undertakes sustained engagement with parliamentarians, government agencies, scientists, conservation organisations, animal-welfare specialists and journalists. She has submitted evidence, pursued Freedom of Information disclosures, challenged the adequacy of existing regulatory safeguards and sought to ensure that decisions concerning the hunt reflect the latest conservation science. Her petition also encourages wider contributions from individuals and organisations, including independent animal-welfare charities and scientific specialists.
Although NatureScot has been explicit that its licensing decision for 2026 was determined by the applicable legislation and scientific evidence, not public campaigning, the period following the petition's launch saw an important expansion of the evidence and scrutiny surrounding the hunt, replacing evidence over a decade out of date.
The significance of PE2202 therefore extends beyond its signature count.
It is bringing a previously specialised licensing issue into sustained public and parliamentary consideration.
© The Guga Hunters of Ness
What Is The Guga Hunt?
The Guga Hunt is a centuries-old tradition practised by a group of men from Ness, on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. Each year, the hunters travel approximately 40 miles across the North Atlantic to Sula Sgeir, a remote, uninhabited island and important breeding site for Northern Gannets, to kill up to 2000 Gannet chicks.
The Gannet chicks, known locally as guga, are taken from their nests before they are capable of flight. The chicks are caught using long poles fitted with hooks, killed by blunt force trauma, plucked and burned for human consumption.
Historically, seabirds provided an important food source for communities living in remote environments. The practice consequently became entwined with local identity, inherited knowledge and island heritage. The modern hunt, however, has become increasingly contentious since survival and food security is no longer at stake.
The activity is only made possible by a legal loophole within Section 16 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. While all Gannets are protected against killing or taking elsewhere in the UK, this loophole permits NatureScot to authorise the hunt.
Sula Sgeir also forms part of the North Rona and Sula Sgeir Special Protection Area, designated for its internationally important seabird populations.
It is this contradiction between the conservation obligations attached to a protected species and breeding colony, and the continued existence of a specific licensing exemption that lies at the heart of PE2202.
The Urgency of Avian Influenza
The urgency behind Rachel's petition was inseparable from the catastrophic impact of avian influenza on Scotland's seabirds.
The H5N1 outbreak caused extensive mortality across Northern Gannet colonies during 2022, including some of the most significant breeding populations in the North Atlantic. NatureScot has since confirmed that Scotland's Gannet population declined by approximately 22%, while the estimated decline at Sula Sgeir was between 23% and 41%.
As Rachel explains, the consequences extend far beyond the immediate mortality:
“Gannets take five years to reach breeding age, meaning the full demographic consequences of the outbreak, including the loss of younger birds that would otherwise have entered the breeding population, cannot yet be fully understood”.
NatureScot has since acknowledged that the effects of chick mortality during the 2022 outbreak will only begin to become apparent in the breeding population from 2027.
For a species that invests considerable time and energy in raising a single chick each summer, the loss of breeding adults and future recruits presents a serious challenge to recovery. Rachel's central argument is that any additional human-caused mortality should be considered within this wider ecological context, rather than assessed in isolation.
New Scientific Evidence Changes Conservation
One of the most consequential developments as a result of Rachel Bigsby’s petition was NatureScot's reassessment of the potential effects of the hunt on the Sula Sgeir Gannet population; the first population viability analysis in a decade.
In 2025, NatureScot had concluded that the previously requested quota of 2,000 birds was no longer sustainable following avian influenza, but authorised a reduced take of 500 chicks using the evidence and modelling available at that time.
That assessment had important limitations.
The modelling approach prior to PE2202 could not adequately incorporate exceptional mortality events such as HPAI alongside other human-related pressures, including fisheries, bycatch and offshore wind development.
NatureScot subsequently commissioned an updated population model, completed in 2026, capable of examining these pressures cumulatively. The findings, as a result of the public pressure supporting Rachel’s petition, fundamentally altered the licensing assessment.
The new model identified avian influenza as the largest individual influence on the colony's predicted long-term recovery among the impacts examined. When the combined pressures of disease, offshore wind, bycatch and the hunt were considered, NatureScot could no longer exclude the possibility of an adverse effect on the protected Gannet population. Crucially, this concern applied not only to the requested quota of 2,000 chicks, but also to a substantially reduced quota of 500.
The updated assessment demonstrated why conservation decisions must account for cumulative environmental pressures and uncertainty, particularly when dealing with populations recovering from exceptional mortality events.
Rachel’s petition has also generated a renewed examination of the welfare implications of the Guga Hunt.
In June 2026, the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission provided advice to the Scottish Government concerning the methods used to capture and kill young Gannets. The Commission examined the welfare implications of removing wild birds from their breeding environment, capturing them using poles and nooses, and dispatching them through blunt-force trauma. Its findings raised serious concerns about the ability to achieve a consistently humane death under the practical conditions prevailing on Sula Sgeir.
The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission stated that it was “unaware of a feasible humane method of dispatch under those conditions”.
The assessment also considered welfare impacts extending beyond the chicks taken for consumption, including fear and stress among other birds, disruption to parental behaviour and the potential consequences of disturbance within an occupied breeding colony. These findings added an important independent dimension to the debate.
For Rachel, they reinforce her argument that the legality of an established practice does not, in itself, establish its compatibility with contemporary animal-welfare expectations.
Animal Welfare Under Independent Scrutiny
Lethal Impacts to
Non-Target Species
Further concerns have emerged regarding the consequences of the hunting activity for other seabirds breeding on Sula Sgeir.
Information obtained through Freedom of Information requests and NatureScot's assessments highlighted the sensitivity of species including amber-listed Northern Fulmars, amber-listed European Storm-petrels and red-listed Leach's Storm-petrels.
These birds share the island with breeding Gannets, occupying vulnerable nesting sites and burrows.
NatureScot's assessments recognised that human activity and equipment will disturb these red and amber listed seabirds by obstructing access to their nest sites, interrupting chick provisioning, contribute to nest abandonment and subsequent chick mortality through starvation.
Significantly, disturbance was anticipated even where mitigation measures were applied.
This evidence widened the conservation discussion beyond the number of Gannet chicks directly harvested.
It raised questions about the ecological consequences of introducing people and equipment into a sensitive, internationally important seabird breeding environment.
Monitoring, Compliance and Accountability Concerns
Alongside the scientific and welfare concerns, PE2202 examines the practical enforcement of licence conditions.
Freedom of Information disclosures raised questions about compliance monitoring, the absence of independent observers during the hunt and the extent to which regulators could verify adherence to conditions intended to protect birds from unnecessary suffering and disturbance.
The footage (below) shows three men participating in a sack race through the occupied Gannet colony, using the same sacks employed to transport soon to be killed chicks. At least one additional individual was involved in filming.
In this distressing footage, young, flightless Gannets can be seen moving away as the men approach.
Rachel submitted the footage to NatureScot on 24 July and requested that it be considered before the 2026 licensing decision. She also sought to have it entered into the parliamentary evidence record.
The video evidence raises serious questions about avoidable disturbance and the effectiveness of a licensing regime in which compliance cannot be continuously and independently observed. The recorded conduct constituted a licence breach, and illustrates the importance of transparency, independent verification and accountability within protected wildlife sites.
Scotland's Seabird Crisis Reinforces the Need for Protection
On August 13th, just ten days after Nature Scot’s Guga Hunt licensing refusal, NatureScot published further evidence illustrating the precarious condition of Scotland's seabirds.
Its Scottish Biodiversity Indicator found that average seabird abundance had fallen to approximately half its level in the 1980s.
Almost all assessed species showed long-term declines, reflecting the combined effects of environmental change, food shortages, disease and other pressures.
NatureScot identified safeguarding food supplies, restoring habitats and maximising seabird survival as central priorities for conservation.
Although this national indicator encompasses a range of seabird species and should not be interpreted as a direct measure of Sula Sgeir's Gannets, its findings reinforce the broader context in which the future of the Guga hunt must be considered.
Culture, Conservation and the Possibility of Change
Throughout the campaign, Rachel has maintained that opposition to the killing of Gannets need not amount to hostility towards the people or cultural heritage of Ness.
She acknowledges the historical reliance of remote island communities upon seabirds and the significance of inherited traditions in sustaining community identity. Her position is that cultural heritage could be preserved without requiring the continuation of lethal practices. Among the alternatives she has publicly proposed is a professionally produced documentary exploring the history of the Guga Hunt, allowing the Men of Ness to explain their relationship with Sula Sgeir in their own words while scientists and conservationists examine the changing circumstances facing the island's wildlife. Rachel has discussed the non-lethal approaches to preserving the tradition during her engagements with NatureScot.
The subsequent emergence of the colony footage did, however, profoundly challenge her confidence in the conduct of those shown, but did not diminish the underlying principle that island heritage deserves to be understood rather than collectively vilified. The question, she argued, was not whether history should be remembered, but whether its continuation must depend upon the killing of protected seabirds.
One Voice, A Wider Movement
Reflecting on the campaign, Rachel Bigsby has spoken about the considerable personal commitment required to bring the issue before the public and Parliament. What began as an independent initiative involved extensive correspondence, research, evidence gathering and engagement with institutions, before industry and organisational support had emerged.
As the petition gained momentum, it attracted wider participation from scientists, welfare specialists, charities, journalists and members of the public. The experience also revealed a broader lesson about the relationship between individual advocacy and institutional change.
"Institutions don't always lead change. Sometimes they follow it. Sometimes it takes one person asking an uncomfortable question before everyone else feels able to engage."
The campaign's achievements belong to the many individuals who contributed their expertise, signatures and support.
Its origins, however, remain clear: PE2202 was conceived and launched by Rachel Bigsby, whose personal commitment to the conservation of Gannets helped bring a centuries-old practice into renewed public and parliamentary scrutiny.
What began with one person refusing to remain silent has become a movement supported by more than 122,000 voices.
And while the Gannets of Sula Sgeir were spared the licensed hunt in 2026, the campaign for lasting legal protection continues.
Support PE2202:
Stop the Guga Hunt
The Scottish Parliament continues to consider Rachel Bigsby's petition to remove the legal exemption permitting the licensed taking of Gannets on Sula Sgeir.
Members of the public can read the petition, add their signatures and follow its parliamentary progress.
“What first began as a personal appeal to protect my favourite birds soon developed into an international conservation campaign, prompting fresh examination of the science, welfare considerations and regulatory framework surrounding a practice that had endured for centuries”
- Rachel Bigsby
FAQs
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No. NatureScot refused the 2026 licence application, but the legal provision allowing future applications remains in force.
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Section 16 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 contains a specific provision allowing the taking of Gannets on Sula Sgeir to be licensed for human consumption.
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The campaign challenges the continued killing of protected seabirds, while recognising the historical importance of seabirds to remote island communities.
Rachel has publicly advocated non-lethal ways of preserving this heritage.
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Northern Gannets have suffered substantial losses from avian influenza. They mature slowly and usually produce only one chick per breeding season, making recovery from major mortality events a long-term process.
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Visit the official Scottish Parliament petition, add your signature if eligible, share the petition and follow its parliamentary progress.
Further Reading &
Official Sources