WILD DEER LEATHER: Transforming a waste product of regenerative land management
The topic of wild deer in Britain is complex, layered, emotional and unique. Over the last two millennia, humans eradicated all large predators from the British Isles, including the Eurasian Lynx, Brown Bears the Grey Wolf.
They also decimated the countryside by removing much of our natural habitats including more than 2/3 of ancient woodlands. The combination of no natural predators, a key natural driver of population control, and vastly reduced habitat has meant that deer densities in certain parts of the country have increased to levels out of balance with the carrying capacity of the ecosystem.
Having recognised the shocking impact that humans have had on the natural environment in Britain, including the loss of almost all our wildflower meadow and wetland habitats, regenerating our natural landscape has become an important topic across the country. Regenerative land management aims not only to stop the loss of important habitat and biodiversity, but to start to reverse this process by improving the condition of our natural environment. This includes the ‘rewilding’ or ‘wilding’ movement of which there are increasing examples around the country.
Human-led deer management via culling wild deer has become a critically important part of regenerative land management. Where deer densities are above a more balanced threshold, they suppress natural woodland regeneration and succession and out-compete other critical species for natural resources. Whilst deer management best practice is strongly focused on the harvesting of any wild deer that is culled as a source of sustainable wild venison, the skins are typically wasted. By salvaging, tanning and utilising the leather that can be produced from these skins, a waste product from regenerative land management can become something beautiful, durable and functional.
Britain’s Wild Deer Population Density
Despite a general narrative that ‘there’s too many deer,’ in Britain, the true number of deer is effectively impossible to know, although the use of thermal drones in deer surveys are offering a much more effective new way to get a much more accurate picture of deer populations within a certain area.
The absolute population number in itself is not an issue if there is sufficient area and resources to support these numbers, in balance with other species, however the density of wild populations in Britain can be at levels which mean that they consume a proportionally high amount of natural food resources, leaving too little for other key species and thus reducing the biodiversity of these areas.
above: the impact of extremely high deer pressure on woodlands
Although it can be presented as a problem that spans across the whole of the UK, this perspective lacks nuance. The reality is that deer densities vary across the country, with only some areas having population densities above the point at which natural regeneration and greater biodiversity will exist. In addition to the impact on biodiversity, high deer densities also impact the welfare of the deer populations themselves by increasing competition for food and also the spread of disease including Bovine Tuberculosis (Bovine TB).
Without natural predator control in Britain, humans have a responsibility to actively participate in the management of wild deer populations where the population density is at a level at which biodiversity is clearly affected. This should be carried out in a welfare driven, evidence led way.
Simultaneously, increasing our wild natural habitats such as woodland would support the reduction in deer population density, provided numbers are kept stable, although this is in competition with broader human interests such as building developments and agriculture.
There are also groups advocating for the reintroduction of wild predators that would provide natural population control. This prospect is a polarising one and would have impacts on many different human and non-human systems that represent potentially great benefits and great challenges alike. For example, the impact on agriculture alone could be the loss of some livestock (depending on species) to predation, but with reduced deer populations grazing pressure on crops could be reduced.
above: wild predators now extinct in the British Isles
Regardless of whether significant reintroductions do occur in the future, in the meantime our best tools to address increasing deer densities are human-led population control and habitat creation.
above: New woodland creation site where informed and humane deer management is critical in addition to the provision of tree guards to ensure the success of newly planted trees
Wild Deer Culling – Using the whole animal
Where culling is undertaken, it should be done in a welfare-driven, evidence led manner that is respectful of the weight of taking the life of an animal, no matter the broader ecological motivations to do so.
The primary product as a result of deer management is high quality wild venison, processed such as to enter the food chain. This provides a sustainable, ethical and highly nutritious food as a by-product of regenerative land management.
above: Wild British venison shanks
With the massive decline in the British leather industry over the past 40 years and the closure of most British tanneries, combined with wild deerskin being a niche and under-utilised resource within British tanning more broadly, these skins generally have no onward market within the UK and little export market. As such, the vast majority end up disposed of as commercial waste.
Those who have processed deer themselves will be familiar with the discomfort in simply throwing the skin away and my own experience of this motivated the creation of BAY TINE TANNERY to, in a small way, rescue some of these skins from the bin and redivert a waste product to be processed in a traditional way to produce vegetable tanned leather.
With ‘nose-to-tail’ and ‘whole animal’ processing being of renewed interest, using the skin which forms part of the ‘fifth quarter’ of the animal is one way to honour the deer that was harvested.
above: Salted red deer skins, preserved after skinning ready to be stored until they can be tanned
From Land to Leather – Harvesting and Honouring
Wild deer skins are unique in the leather industry as this raw material is the product of regenerative ecological interventions at a landscape scale. This means that the skins themselves are from processes that have a net positive impact on the environment and natural ecosystems from which they are harvested.
The choice to process wild deer skins into leather and finished leather goods is not only to utilise an otherwise wasted material, but to share the story of our wild British deer and the responsibility that humans have to maintain an ancient relationship with them. This relationship does involve the culling of deer, for the benefit of the welfare of the deer themselves and also the broader ecosystem. For me however, it also runs much deeper and involves a form of paradoxical inter-species kinship, where love, care and dedication for these beings sits alongside the hunting and harvesting of them.
above: Watching a herd of red deer on Dartmoor (photo credit Suzy Bennett)
This is the broader picture in which sits the tannery, as a small part of a much bigger and older story of people, deer and the land.
To see more of this process in action, transforming wild deer skins into acorn-tanned leather, I share imagery, footage and reflections from the tannery on my Instagram account:
https://www.instagram.com/baytinetannery/
This wild leather is carefully handcrafted into finished articles here in the South-West of England, now available in the shop: