Licensing of seal's on the River Dee: EIR release

Information requested

All information and full correspondence in the decision making for licensing of seal's on the River Dee for past years, including this year 2024/2025.

I wish to have an understanding especially to why a grey seal licence only has been granted for January 2025 to March 2025 and for following 2 years same periods, when our major problems have already started on the Dee with both common and grey seals, a 3 month delay? And also why only 1 grey seal on licence?

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I enclose some of the information requested. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because regulation 11(2) - personal information of a third party, of the EIRs apply to that information and some information has not been provided as it has been considered out of scope. Please see Annex A for further information with regard to regulation 11(2).

Additional information provided outwith the EIRs

Under regulation 9 of the EIRs (our duty to provide advice and assistance) we have responded to your following questions below :-

“I wish to have an understanding especially to why a grey seal licence only has been granted for January 2025 to March 2025 and for following 2 years same periods, when our major problems have already started on the Dee with both common and grey seals, a 3 month delay? And also why only 1 grey seal on licence?”

• As part of the seal licence determination process Marine Directorate – Licensing Operations Team (MD-LOT) consults the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU). The response from SMRU to your application was shared with you during the application process. SMRU provide information on grey and common (harbour) seal populations across Scotland, including providing a figure for Potential Biological Removal (PBR) in each Seal Management Area (SMA). The PBR provides scientific support for the seal licensing system by setting an upper limit for anthropogenic losses in each seal management area. MD-LOT uses the PBR to consider the appropriate number of seals of each species to grant in each of the management areas, while maintaining a suitable buffer for other anthropogenic impacts. As can be seen in the document, the PBR for common seals in the East Scotland (including River Dee) SMA is one. As PBR includes all anthropogenic impacts on seals, this figure is too low to allow any licensing for common seals.
• The reason the licensed window is 1 January to 31 March each year is because it coincides with the statutory conservations measures in place to protect the vulnerable spring run sub-stocks. This is in-line with advice received from NatureScot, which was also shared with you during the application process.
• The decision to allow one grey seal to be killed or taken per year is to ensure that the killing or taking of a seal is a last resort. It is possible to apply to MD LOT to vary a seal licence, however this would require the submission to MD-LOT of sufficient information and evidence to justify the consideration of a change.

Annex A

Regulation 11(2) – To the extent that environmental information requested includes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject and in relation to which either the first or second condition set out in paragraphs (3) and (4) is satisfied, a Scottish public authority shall not make the personal data available.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information of a third party) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202400434943 - Information released - Annex B

File type

113 page PDF

File size

7.8 MB