Transforming Wildlife Protection and Animal Welfare in Scotland
AUTUMN 2025 TRANSFORMING WILDLIFE PROTECTION AND ANIMAL WELFARE IN SCOTLAND
INTRODUCTION
Scotland is known the world over for its beautiful habitats and wildlife, but sadly it is now a part of one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.
The State of Nature Scotland 2023 report found that one in nine species is threatened with national extinction and the average abundance of 407 closely monitored wildlife species declined by 15% since 1994, 43% of which have declined strongly in the last decade.1 Promisingly, at the end of 2024, the Scottish Government published its Biodiversity Strategy to 2045, setting out its ambition for Scotland to be Nature Positive by 2030, and to have restored and regenerated biodiversity across the country by 2045.
While there have been improvements to wildlife laws over recent years that place Scotland ahead of other UK nations, such as improving the regulation of hunting and the banning of snares, animal suffering and destruction continues on a massive scale. For example, it is estimated that 12-18% of the land in Scotland is primarily managed for grouse shooting, with other wild animals such as foxes and crows being routinely killed to maximise the number of birds that can be shot for pleasure.
It’s not just free-roaming wild animals that are at risk. Wild animals are also suffering in poorly regulated captive environments. For example, outdated legislation still allows primates and other exotic wild animals to be kept in inappropriate domestic settings and permits the exploitation of wild animals for public performances with little regulation.
The Scottish Government has a moral imperative to protect wildlife for future generations, and to reduce the negative impacts of human activities on wild species and the welfare of individual animals. Protecting biodiversity is also critical in order that we maintain and improve the ecosystem services it provides such as clean air, potable water, secure food provision and defence against flooding. Thriving wildlife and biodiversity also help limit global warming, mitigate risks to animal and human health by reducing the spread of pathogens, and provide vital benefits for our mental, physical and cultural well-being.
The need for real and effective legislation and policies that protect animal welfare, human wellbeing, biodiversity and the environment has never been more urgent.
Born Free is therefore calling on candidates for the upcoming Scottish parliamentary elections to recognise the importance of protecting and restoring wildlife and wild habitats, eliminating the negative impacts we have on the welfare of individual animals, and placing nature protection and animal welfare improvements front and centre of Scottish Government and parliamentary business.
We call on political parties and their candidates at the upcoming Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026 to commit to:
• Adopting clear, ambitious targets for nature’s protection and recovery designed to meet and exceed the UK’s international commitments, and introducing and implementing the policies and providing the resources necessary to ensure those targets are met.
• Adopting a precautionary approach favouring the protection of wild animals, plants, and the habitats on which they depend.
• Adopting an all-of-government and all-of-society approach to wildlife protection, ensuring that it is always given primary consideration throughout policy making.
• Applying One Health and One Welfare principles and approaches across legislation and policy relating to or affecting nature and wild animals.
• Identifying and eliminating perverse funding and other incentives that are harmful to nature and wildlife.
• Prioritising measures to tackle wildlife crime by working with enforcers and wider stakeholders to develop and implement a clear and ambitious wildlife crime policing strategy, strengthen associated prosecutorial and judicial processes, and establish truly deterrent punitive measures.
• Creating and implementing a wide-ranging and robust Animal Welfare Action Plan, to secure and improve the welfare of wild animals, both free living and captive, taking full account of their individual, social, behavioural and cultural requirements.
LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES
Undertake a thorough review of wildlife legislation
Born Free urges parties and candidates contesting the Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2026 to commit to a thorough review of wildlife protection legislation and associated penalties, in order to ensure that the legislation is fit for purpose, adopts a precautionary approach in favour of wildlife protection, and provides a sound basis to enable Scotland to achieve and exceed its international commitments to halt and reverse wildlife declines and meet the goals and targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Penalties should be sufficiently severe in order to act as a strong deterrent to potential perpetrators of wildlife crime, whether they be natural or legal persons.
Protect animals exploited for tourism and entertainment overseas
The UK considers itself to be a global leader in promoting high animal welfare standards. We were therefore pleased to see the passage of the Animals (Low Welfare Activities Abroad) Act in September 2023. However, the legislation only applies to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and awaits the establishment of secondary legislation to bring it into effect.
Born Free urges parties and candidates for the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026 to develop legislation that effectively prohibits the advertising and sale in Scotland of low welfare activities overseas involving animals.
Protect wild animals used in exhibition and performance
The Performing Animals (Regulation) Act 1925 is now 100 years old and is no longer suitable for regulating the use of wild animals in exhibition and performance. The low-welfare practice of keeping and training wild animals for exhibition and performance has serious negative impacts on the lives of many thousands of wild animals. The very same activities would be illegal in Scotland were they associated with a travelling circus, under the Wild Animals in Travelling Circuses (Scotland) Act 2018.
Born Free’s report ‘Exhibition or Exploitation’, released in November 2021, highlighted the sheer number of wild animals of many different species that are being used under licence across Britain, and emphasised that the legislation is failing to effectively protect the welfare of animals or the health and safety of people.
Born Free calls on parties and candidates for the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026 to commit to reviewing the regulations for Scotland with a view to introducing a prohibition on the use of wild animals for exhibition or performance, or at the very least to strengthen licensing requirements, inspection procedures and associated penalties by bringing such licensing under the scope of the existing Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (Scotland) Regulations 2021.
Protect animals from the exotic pet trade
Most wild animals or ‘exotic’ species imported or bred for the pet trade are not suited for a life in captivity. As highlighted by Born Free in collaboration with OneKind and the SSPCA in our 2025 joint report, ‘Don’t Pet Me’, it is impossible to provide wild animals in a domestic setting with a captive environment that meets their welfare needs, resulting in considerable animal suffering. The trade in and keeping of wild animals as pets also present significant risks to human, animal and environmental health and safety.
The true scale of exotic pet keeping in Scotland is unknown. While several countries in Europe and beyond have adopted or are in the process of developing legislation to regulate the trade in and keeping of exotic pets, Scotland remains among the more permissive countries. It is currently legal within Scotland for private individuals to keep almost any wild animal as a pet. A very small proportion of species are banned, and some additional species require a licence. Current legislation is reactionary, woefully out of date and unable to keep up with emerging animal welfare and conservation science; nor can it adequately mitigate the risk of human injury or infection, or wider environmental consequences.
The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission concluded in 2022, that the development of a permitted list of species, legally permitted to be kept as pets, was the most effective and enforceable way to tackle the extent of this problem. In a poll conducted by Opinion Matters in December 2022, 84% of Scottish residents agreed that the regulation of the trade in and keeping of ‘exotic pets’ should be tightened.
Born Free calls on parties and candidates for the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026 to commit to revising the legislation governing the trade in and keeping of wild animals as pets. Consideration should be given to a Permitted / Positive List system based on criteria designed to determine whether welfare needs can be met, whether there are any conservation concerns, and whether the trade presents a risk to humans, other species or the environment. Due consideration should be given to recognised best practice systems in place or in development in other countries. This should be accompanied by demand reduction strategies and public education campaigns in order to tackle misinformation and ease of access to wild animals as pets, and foster public understanding of the associated harms and risks.
Improve the regulation of zoos
The UK’s current zoo licensing and inspection system is failing to protect the welfare of zoo animals.
New Standards for Modern Zoo Practice have recently been published by the UK Government, however legislation to make compliance with those standards mandatory has failed to materialise as have proposed improvements to the conservation, education and research requirements of zoos.
Born Free encourages parties and candidates for the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026 to commit to reviewing and revising zoo licensing and inspection processes to ensure compliance with the revised Standards of Modern Zoo Practice 2027 becomes a licensing requirement in Scotland.
Eliminate the use of cruel traps
Born Free welcomed the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 which banned the use of snares, a cruel and indiscriminate method of killing wildlife used extensively by gamekeepers and others to ‘protect’ game animals.
However, the use of spring and cage traps across Scotland continues. These devices can cause immense suffering and can also be indiscriminate, resulting in the injury or death of non-target species. The injuries and deaths caused by these traps are currently unreported and vastly underestimated.
One example of traps that continue to be used under licence are Larsen traps, an inhumane method of trapping corvids by using a live bird as bait. This confinement in a small, wired cage inevitably causes stress and suffering for the trapped ‘decoy’ birds as well as the captured birds. Their use during breeding season also results in the starvation or predation of dependent chicks.
Born Free urges parties and candidates for the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026 to review the shooting of 'game' animals across Scotland, and the welfare issues caused by trapping and killing animals in the wild, in order to protect native Scottish wildlife and eliminate unnecessary animal suffering.
POLICY PRIORITIES
Appoint dedicated Commissioners for Nature and Animal Welfare at Cabinet level
One in nine Scottish species is threatened with national extinction and the average abundance of 407 closely monitored wildlife species declined by 15% since 1994, 43% of which have declined strongly. Scotland’s globally important seabirds declined by nearly half between 1986 and 2019, prior to the recent devastating impacts of Avian Flu.
Scotland’s landscape and wildlife habitats are increasingly threatened by climate change – as seen by the increasing incidents of wildfires, drought and flooding. Protecting and restoring wild spaces is our best option for protecting human lives and livelihoods from these extremes.
The abolition of EU-retained laws by the UK Government, including hundreds of environmental protections, and any additional deregulation of nature protection, infrastructure development and planning processes, risks further damaging Scotland’s natural environment.
Born Free urges parties and candidates for the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026 to support the appointment of dedicated Commissioners for Nature and Animal Welfare at Cabinet level, to coordinate work across all Scottish Government departments in order to ensure that decisions made by the Scottish Government embrace and prioritise Scotland’s agenda for nature and animal welfare, to hold ministers to account, and to report to government and the wider public.
Phase-out unsuitable species in zoos
Claims by zoos that they significantly contribute to species conservation and public education require careful scrutiny and cannot be taken at face value to justify the keeping and breeding of wild animals in captivity. The adoption of a ban on keeping cetaceans in captivity should be introduced, in line with a growing number of nations across the world. Additionally, the keeping of species which clearly do not thrive in zoos, including (but not limited to) elephants, giraffe, big cats, polar bears and great apes, should be phased out.
More than 20 years of scientific evidence has highlighted how elephant welfare is compromised in captivity. The recently published 10-year Elephant Welfare Group report to the UK Government failed to demonstrate a significant improvement in elephant welfare in UK zoos. Any attempts at improving their situation have been delivered at glacial pace and have not resulted in substantive improvements to their welfare. A 2025 YouGov poll found that less than half (41%) of Britons now feel it is acceptable to keep elephants in zoos.
A phase-out is the only humane solution, beginning with an immediate ban on the importation and breeding of further individuals in Scottish zoos, with remaining individuals being returned to the wild or near wild environments within their historic range, or where this is not possible, managed in sanctuaries, or consolidated at the most suitable captive facilities available for the remainder of their lives. With only one elephant remaining in Scotland, the next Scottish Government has the opportunity to lead the way in the UK and demonstrate its commitment to progressive and science-led animal welfare-related policy.
Improve Scotland’s response to wildlife crime
Wildlife crimes encompass a large range of illegal activities, including poaching, the persecution of badgers, hares and other animals for ‘sport’, the killing of predators and birds of prey to protect shooting interests, and the international trafficking of wild animals and wildlife products for profit. Such crimes can have devastating impacts on the welfare of individual animals and can severely disrupt and diminish wildlife populations and habitats, as well as presenting biosecurity risks. Perpetrators may be members of international criminal networks, are often involved in other criminal activities including theft, corruption, money laundering and violent crime, and may represent a national security risk. Wildlife crimes are increasing across the UK, and the UK is a significant destination for illegally traded wildlife products. Wildlife crimes need to be taken seriously, yet are often viewed as ‘victimless’ or low-grade crimes, resulting in a lack of prioritisation, poor conviction rates, and inadequate sentencing. The significant impacts of wildlife crime on individual people and rural communities are often overlooked.
A continued commitment to embed an appreciation of nature, through Learning for Sustainability, and a commitment to include learning about the importance of animal welfare throughout the Curriculum for Excellence
The Scottish curriculum aims to ensure that all children develop the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to flourish in life, learning and work, both now and in the future, and to appreciate their place in the world. An appreciation of nature and wildlife, and of the need to respect the welfare needs of wild animals, is key to achieving these aims.
Born Free urges parties and candidates for the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2026 to maintain their commitment to Target 2030 and Learning for Sustainability, and ensure that Scotland’s young people are provided with an appreciation of the need to protect wild animals, and their welfare, throughout their schooling.
Scotland should be rightly proud to be the home of the UK’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, and to be bucking the wider UK trend in that wildlife crime is reported to be reducing across Scotland. However, there is no room for complacency.
Police Scotland should be required to develop a wildlife crime policing strategy, with specialised wildlife crime officers trained to coordinate response. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service must be encouraged to further develop its network of specialist wildlife prosecutors and the support it provides to duty prosecutors. The Scottish Sentencing Council should also be encouraged to produce comprehensive sentencing guidance for wildlife crimes so as to better equip judges and magistrates to issue deterrent penalties.
The Scottish Government should also support the development and implementation of an international agreement to tackle wildlife trafficking, ideally through an additional protocol under the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime.
