This column appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

In some ways, the guga hunt is just the most visible expression of human impact on seabirds. We can see it in the way we can’t quite see the other impacts: the fishing bycatch, the growing threat of wind turbine collisions, the over-fishing of their food sources, the accelerating creep of climate change.

We can see it, ruthlessly and graphically played out, in a documentary which shows the ten Men of Ness clambering the precarious cliffs of Sula Sgeir with poles and killing gannet chicks – whereas the rest is less tangible, more vague.

It's partly because their killing of the birds is so quantifiable – 500 last year, 2,000 in many previous years – that these hunters have been caught in cultural cross hairs over the past year, and a petition against their annual harvest grew to over 1,000 signatures.

Last week the guga hunt licence was refused on scientific grounds by NatureScot.

What’s a ‘guga’ and why are some people still hunting them? 

Licence for annual guga hunt refused by Scotland’s nature agency

Guga hunt, 'cruelty, sanctioned by NatureScot', should be banned

These Ness hunters are reminders of how we struggle, here and globally, to square protection of indigenous rights against protection of nature, which is subject to multiple diffuse impacts by all of us – and how the issue of who decides can be so divisive.

Lately I’ve been reading Cal Flyn’s exploration of what we often call wilderness, The Savage Landscape, which includes a chapter on the tensions and power plays around hunting and conservation.

She describes how those in power have controlled hunting through preserves and the very........

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