Once the people of the Highlands were cleared from the land to make way for sheep. Now the opposite is happening - the sheep are leaving the crofts.

New research has revealed that the number of sheep on crofting land in the Western Isles has fallen by a third since 2001 and it is predicted that it will have fallen by more than 50% by 2010.

Since the crofting system was established in the late 19th century to give security to those who were left, the bedraggled ewe sheltering from gale-force winds has become a symbol of the people who would not give up on the most marginal of land. Sheep production has been crofting's mainstay. Now, crofting is at a crossroads.

Last September ministers announced a committee of inquiry into crofting, after they had been forced to abandon controversial sections of their crofting reform bill.

There had been particular concern in the crofting community that the bill would legitimise a free market in croft tenancies, exactly what crofting was set up to avoid. There were predictions that the crofting way of life would end within a generation.

The man chosen to chair the committee was an internationally respected scholar of rural societies, Mark Shucksmith, professor of planning at Newcastle University and formerly professor of land economy at Aberdeen University.

Later this week he will address MSPs on the progress of his committee, which is four months into its year-long mission. He and his colleagues have travelled the length and breadth of the seven crofting counties from Shetland to Argyll. They have met almost 1000 people, and sent out 6000 questionnaires. In addition a survey of opinion has just been commissioned which will cover 600 crofters and 400 non-crofters in the Highlands and Islands.

Professor Shucksmith said there was one issue which had taken him aback.

"I had not appreciated the scale or the rate of the decline in sheep on the crofts. We were told they have fallen by one-third since 2001 in the Western Isles and they are predicted to fall to half by 2010. Or if the Less Favoured Area support scheme is finally completely decoupled from production, the numbers could fall to one-third of the 2001 figure by 2010."

He said there seemed to be a number of causes for the decrease, particularly the change in government support mechanisms. Under the reform of Europe's Common Agricultural Policy, support has been moving away from paying crofters for the number of sheep or lambs that they produce.

"Public support is virtually divorced from production now, so there is less and less inducement for crofters to continue doing what they have been doing for generations: keeping sheep," Prof Shucksmith said.

"But there are additional factors which help explain the dramatic drop in sheep numbers on our crofts.

"One is that in the past crofters may have had jobs which allowed them flexibility to take a few days off when it came to gather the sheep from the hill, to clip them or dose them or whatever.

"We were told many no longer enjoy that flexibility and we found some crofting communities actually struggling to get enough people to gather. In such circumstances it becomes well-nigh impossible to keep sheep on the common grazings, so numbers drop. While anticipating sheep numbers to fall following the change in government policy, I had not anticipated just how dramatic the impact on sheep numbers would be."

He said that there was no one activity replacing sheep.

"For most crofters, their income from keeping sheep was already small and most of their incomes come from off-croft employment.

"But we need to understand now what will be the consequences of the rapid decline in sheep numbers. If the common grazings are being abandoned, the character of the land will change. The internationally valued environment will change over time "The decline in communal working at sheep, meanwhile, will change the nature of the communities."

Professor Shucksmith said: "One burning issue is housing, firstly in the increased demand for housing and therefore for crofts.

"But there is also concern about the best land being used for new houses, the land around existing settlements rather than the poorer land of the common grazings. Of course it is more expensive to develop the latter."



In figures

  • There are just over 17,700 crofts in the crofting counties of Argyll, Caithness, Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Orkney and Shetland.
  • 2878 are owner-occupied.
  • There are between 12,000 and 13,000 crofters and around 30,000 live on crofts.