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WILD SCOTLAND AGM and ANNUAL CONFERENCE 27/11/08

The morning session (AGM): standard stuff - directors gave updates, stood down were re-elected. Caroline Warburton gave a potted history of Wild Scotland and its current and possible future activities.

In the afternoon Gwen Raez from VisitScotland spoke about their campaigns. Scotland had 15 million visitors last year and the percentage of visitors was split into quarters by month. 29% of visitors were here July to September, 24% April to June and October to December and 23% January to March. We can't question this but wonder who actually does 23% of their business in January, February and March?!

Gwen presented their adverts and told delegates to go out there and get the business. My personal feeling was that wildlife and, specifically, the boat charters sector was not really addressed.

Next up, Andrew Thin, newly appointed Chair of SNH told of his vision for the future. Their biggest problems are peoples' perception of SNH and trying to change the ingrained attitude of SNH itself. Reminding SNH employees they are public servants and answerable to the wishes of the public is a slow process. The need to win over Scotland's public is a major task, needing to get the public outdoors and forming opinions which can then be lobbied to MPs etc is seen as the best way forward for SNH to be accountable to the public. I found his approach refreshing.

Last presentation was by Harold Goodwin from the International Centre for Responsible Tourism. Harold asked if Scotland would ever be the "No 1 World Wildlife Destination." He figured probably not, however, there are advantages for Scotland over many locations because of the ease of access to wildlife and this should be our line of approach - get to Edinburgh or Glasgow and it's then really easy to get out and see a good range of wildlife nearby. E.g. it's not a three day trek to get somewhere rewarding. This was deemed to be the biggest advantage and therefore Harold felt Scotland should be up there amongst the world's top destinations. We need to develop and emphasise the "wildlife watching" and not necessarily the "wildlife species" head count.

We were all encouraged to keep our advertising budgets going. It was accepted we could have a few lean years ahead of us. More details on Wild Scotland's website below.

Tony Hill

See Wild Scotland's website here.