Habitats in the Cairngorms National Park are being restored “one sausage at a time” through the sale of venison from culled deer.
The Cairngorms Connect partnership group is dedicated to the restoration of forests and biodiversity across a 600 square kilometre (231 square miles) region.
As part of its work to grow new forests, land managers for Cairngorms Connect control deer numbers in order to protect woodlands from the pressures of grazing.
The partnership is now selling official Cairngorms Connect Venison, using meat produced during its deer management.
Those behind the initiative hope that by selling the branded venison, it will help towards improving the organisation’s work in the Cairngorms, and provide people with low carbon footprint, sustainable food.
Lead-free, low food mile meat
Cairngorms Connect boasts that its venison comes with a lot of environmental credentials, as well as health benefits.
The partnership said it is lower in cholesterol than beef, and comes with more protein.
And by killing, butchering and selling the meat locally, it creates a smaller carbon footprint than meat shipped across the UK or from further afield.
The partnership also confirmed its venison is “100% lead free”.
Jack Ward, deer stalker with Cairngorms Connect, said: “As a 200-year project, Cairngorms Connect needs local people to be at the heat of the habitat restoration vision.
“At a time when people are becoming more conscious of their consumer habits, venison provides an exciting opportunity to involve new audiences in our habitat restoration vision.”
The Cairngorms Connect team hope that in the future, they will be able to re-invest any profits above running costs from the venison initiative into community work and engagement projects.
Right now however, the profits produced from selling the venison are used to fund the venison project itself — and demonstrate some of the economic values of habitat restoration work, according to those behind the scheme.
Venison ‘really popular’ with RSPB visitors
RSPB Scotland is one of the organisations that is part of the Cairngorms Connect partnership, alongside Forestry and Land Scotland, Nature Scot and Forestry and Wildland Ltd.
One of the places you can buy some of the venison is the shop at the RSPB Loch Garten Nature Centre, between Nethy Bridge and Boat of Garten.
Fergus Cumberland, visitor operations manager for RSPB Scotland, said: “We have been really excited to be able to tell the full story of habitat regeneration and be able to give visitors the chance to try local sustainable produce.
“The venison has been really popular with visitors to the RSPB Loch Garten Nature Centre.
“And what better way to restore a habitat than one sausage at a time?”
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- Calls for action to reduce ‘unsustainably high’ deer numbers in Cairngorms National Park
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