The Trust’s 2026 Scottish Manifesto: for A Wilder Scotland

The John Muir Trust publishes three key manifesto asks for the upcoming Scottish parliamentary elections.

In May 2026, voters in Scotland will head to the polls for the last time before we hit the critical 2030 deadline for nature and climate action. The next cohort of parliamentarians and the Government will have the monumental task of  delivering a nationwide effort to restore nature by 2030.

Wild places are absolutely critical to the success of this national mission. Without proper protection for wild places, nature will not be able to rebound.

With so little time left, the Trust has decided to focus its advocacy efforts on three key asks.

The Trust calls on Scottish political parties to:

1. Fund a National Deer Management Plan to bring deer numbers down to sustainable levels
2. Introduce a CELT (Carbon Emissions Land Tax) Bill to encourage large landowners to manage land for nature, climate and communities
3. Legislate for a new Nature Restoration designation, and review the planning system

Fund a National Deer Management Plan

To reach the Scottish Government’s nature restoration targets, we need a significant reduction in  Scotland’s deer population. For this to happen at scale, it also needs happen at pace. The National Deer Management Plan financially rewards landowners and land workers who are being proactive and enabling nature restoration by carrying out sustainable deer management.

We are asking political parties to commit to:

• The principle of a National Deer Management Plan
• Funding that plan by redirecting existing subsidies to total £59 million over the first four years of its  implementation 
• Increasing the annual deer cull from 180,000 to 250,000

Such actions will help triple Scotland’s total woodland creation target while saving £900 million in taxpayers’ money. They will enable natural regeneration and colonisation at scale – creating an additional 350,000ha of native woodland. And they will put an end to peatland degradation caused by overgrazing and trampling.

This policy is supported by all major landowning environmental charities alongside Scottish Environment LINK, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, the Scottish Rewilding Alliance, Community Land Scotland and the Scottish Tenant Farmers Association. It is being co-developed with the Association of Deer Management Groups as part of a pilot scheme for 2025-26 announced by the Scottish Government in its last Programme for Government. 

Read more about the National Deer Management Plan here.

Introduce a CELT (Carbon Emissions Land Tax) Bill

The Carbon Emissions Land Tax is a great example of a tax that enacts the key principles of Polluters Pay and Just Transition. It is a grown-up, transparent behavioural-change tax that rewards nature and climate conscious landowners and penalises those who are unwilling to manage land in the public interest. 

The tax will help local communities build wealth and resilience in the face of the climate and nature crises. The tax would be implemented on a local authority level, and the proceeds would therefore also go back to the local community. Earmarked for climate and nature initiatives, this revenue would empower local councils to fuel a growing environmental sector, providing livelihoods in rural areas.   

Here, we are asking political parties to commit to:

• Introducing a CELT Bill by May 2026
• Ensuring that the CELT Bill follows the principles of behavioural change taxes by creating an escalating system for tax rates over time
• Ensuring that the CELT Bill applies to all large landowners in Scotland, defined as owning over 1,000ha.

Doing all of the above will result in three essential outcomes. It will remove 6m tonnes of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere annually by 2040. It will enable nature restoration at an unprecedented scale by positively impacting more than 60% of Scotland’s land, owned by the approximately 800 largest landowners. And it puts the Polluter Pays and Just Transition principles into action by disincentivising harmful environmental practices, while ensuring revenue from the tax is reinvested in the communities most affected by polluters. 

Our Carbon Emissions Land Tax proposal is supported by over 50 organisations, community groups, trade unions, churches and businesses representing over a million people in Scotland. It is also backed by a 4-to-1 majority of Scots according to a YouGov poll.

You can find more details about the tax mechanism and answers to common questions here. 

Legislate for a new Nature Restoration designation and review the planning system

In difficult times, we must make choosing nature easier. The Nature Restoration designation does just that by giving communities, private and charitable landowners the choice and autonomy to protect wild places now and into the future.  

This new designation focuses on reducing the threats and pressures to nature and biodiversity, as opposed to current designations which focus on protecting the little that is left, condemning the country to work from a degraded baseline.  

Rather than protecting specific characteristics, the new Nature Restoration designation focuses on combating a variety of threats, from INNS to pollution, helping us empower nature to do what it does best: grow, diversify, thrive. This is a nature designation for the 21^st century that allows nimbleness in the face of changes brought on by the climate and nature crises.  

In challenging times, we must make it easier to choose nature. The new Nature Restoration designation empowers communities, private landowners, and charities to protect wild places - now and for generations to come.

Unlike existing designations that focus on preserving what little remains, this forward-looking approach tackles the root causes of biodiversity loss. It shifts us away from a degraded baseline and toward a thriving future.

Rather than protecting isolated features, the Nature Restoration designation addresses a wide range of threats - from invasive species to pollution - giving nature the space and support it needs to grow, diversify, and flourish.

This is a designation built for the 21st century: adaptive, ambitious, and responsive to the twin crises of climate and biodiversity. It’s a bold step toward restoring Scotland’s natural legacy.

In this case, we are asking political parties to commit to:

• Creating a new statutory designation aimed at setting 
  aside land as areas where natural processes take the lead
• Ensuring that the new designation protects land from industrial developments
• Designating 10% of Scotland’s land as nature restoration areas.

Doing this will once again bring three essential outcomes. It will institutionalise the land management concepts that underpin nature restoration. It will protect 
areas of land of low biodiversity value from development long into the future. 

And it will popularise the concept of nature restoration among the wider public, prompting people to see landscapes through a rewilding lens.

As we get closer to election day, the John Muir Trust’s policy team will be busy lobbying behind the scenes to get these commitments on party manifestos. To be successful, we will need strong public support.