Windfarm plans revealed for Goat Cull Estate

Oxygen Conservation have been shooting the ancient herd of wild goats on their recently acquired 11,300 acre upland estate between Langholm and Newcastleton in the South of Scotland.

Recently unveiled plans by their associate company Low Carbon, reveal that they intend to erect 18 wind turbines and create a 130MW windfarm on a part of the estate that borders Newcastleton.

If you read the Oxygen Conservation blurb, they say that they are wanting to save the planet and are focussing on protecting native habitats and removing incorrect land management practices. "This doesn`t mean planting trees everywhere and anywhere. We must treat sites individually and respect their unique characteristics." they state.

Yet they are shooting an ancient herd of wild goats that form a rare and genetically distinct population, and proposing to erect a windfarm. 

Is this really saving the planet or is it generating huge profits from the tax payer and electricity consumers? 

When you look at this in detail it boils down to taxpayers funding a goat cull and a windfarm that they don`t want to see.

OXYGEN CONSERVATION: THE WILD GOAT FACTS UNPACKED

The goat facts are that Oxygen Conservation have stated that they are going to reduce goat numbers on their land to 20 (unspecified age/sex ratios). This is the number they counted using a professionally contracted thermal imaging drone survey in October 2023, shortly after acquiring the land.

In January 2025, their in-house drone operator counted 138 goats.

Using a considerable lack of any common sense, Oxygen Conservation calculated that this represent a 690% increase in the population of wild goats and was demonstrative of the unsustainable growth in the goat population.

What knowledge their biologist must posses to produce this kind of population modelling.

LET`s UNPACK THE OXYGEN CONSERVATION DRIVEL 

Between October 2023 and January 2025 there is just one wild goat birthing season ... February/March 2024. So let`s be generous and say that 60% of the original number [20] were nannies old enough to be carrying young into that breeding season. That's 12 animals. So to have achieved the population growth that Oxygen Conservation say they had observed, each nanny would have had to produce and have reared an average of 9.8333 young as a minimum (as this does not account for any natural mortality in the population between the survey dates). Even schoolchildren know that goats do not have litters of that size ... they can work out that goats only have two teats for a reason.

You simply cannot give any credibility to an organisation that can get the scientific facts this badly wrong and then on the strength of this bad science, set about a slaughter of wild goats in the middle of the 2025 breeding season.  

There is absolutely no wonder that people are getting boiling mad about this nonsense. Well over 13,000 people have already signed the Scottish parliament petition calling for the goats to be protected from this onslaught. And more people are signing every day given that the revelations about the windfarm have laid bare Oxygen Conservation rhetoric about treating sites individually and respecting their unique characteristics.

Yet the narrow-minded Scottish government remains stubbornly intractable in the face of this calling and is still saying it will not protect these defenceless goats. 

It is time that this government woke up and smelt the coffee as continuing with this myopia will have the people of Scotland bring it to account.

You can still help the goats by signing the very important Scottish parliament petition calling for their protection by using the safe link on this website.