For the first time in four centuries, the annual guga hunt on the Hebridean island of Sula Sgeir has been cancelled. NatureScot, a public body that is part of the Scottish government, refused to grant a licence for the 2026 season, concluding that the hunt could pose a risk to gannet populations based on new scientific modelling. The board's decision, delivered on 3 August, followed a staff recommendation to refuse the application and aligns with the findings of a commissioned population viability analysis for the Sula Sgeir gannet colony NatureScot.

The refusal halts a practice that is enshrined in law. The guga hunt is formally recognised under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, and the decision does not prevent the hunters from applying for licences in future years. Each season, up to 2,000 gannet chicks are killed over a 10-day period on Sula Sgeir, an uninhabited island about 40 miles north of Lewis and Harris The Guardian.

The hunters, known as the Men of Ness, take gannet chicks from their nests on the Sula Sgeir nature reserve using a noose attached to a long pole and kill them with a blow to the head. The meat, known as guga, has served as a traditional subsistence and cultural resource for the community of Ness on Lewis.

At the heart of NatureScot's decision was a population viability analysis, a scientific tool that models how a wildlife population is likely to fare over time under different pressures. The board concluded that an adverse impact on the gannet population was possible both at the requested licence limit of 2,000 juvenile gannets and at a reduced limit of 500. That finding proved decisive. The scientific evidence is not fixed; NatureScot plans to continue refining its understanding of the colony's trajectory through new gannet population counts scheduled later in 2026 NatureScot.

BBC News also reported the refusal, confirming that the cancelled hunt would have seen hundreds of young seabirds killed on the uninhabited Hebridean island BBC News.

The licence refusal follows sustained public pressure and direct action. A petition to the Scottish government to end the guga hunt attracted more than 100,000 signatures. A separate petition from the charity Protect the Wild surpassed 250,000 signatures. The campaign also included acts of property damage and civil disobedience directed at NatureScot. Great Glen House, the body's headquarters in Inverness, was subject to graffiti and had windows smashed in separate incidents. In March, two men dressed in gannet costumes were arrested and charged after spending several days on the roof of the building The Guardian.

The broader context here is the tension between legally protected cultural practices and modern conservation goals. The guga hunt's statutory recognition under the Wildlife and Countryside Act gives it a legal standing distinct from unregulated activities, and NatureScot's refusal does not dismantle that legal basis. Instead, it sets a precedent where population viability analysis serves as the deciding factor in whether the statutory permission translates into an operational licence. The key variable is the precautionary principle, a concept in environmental policy meaning that if an activity might cause harm, decision-makers do not need to wait for certainty before acting. The modelling did not require proof of decline, only the possibility of adverse impact, to trigger a refusal.

For those working in environmental policy and wildlife management, the case illustrates how adaptive licensing frameworks function in practice. NatureScot's commitment to ongoing population counts in 2026 indicates an iterative approach, one in which the evidence-base will evolve and future licence applications from the Men of Ness will be evaluated against updated data rather than against the precedent of historical continuity alone. The decision sets a benchmark for how conservation bodies weigh modelling data against long-standing legal exemptions, particularly when population thresholds indicate stress even at substantially reduced extraction limits.