Scottish Environment LINK has today launched a new Nature Protection Scorecard to track the performance of the Scottish government and public bodies in protecting and restoring the natural environment.
The scorecard collates a range of data to judge how well the Scottish government is performing and the extent to which public bodies are using their enforcement powers. While not intended to be comprehensive, the scorecard shines a spotlight on the Scottish public bodies with most significant responsibility for environmental delivery, and focuses on action and resourcing.
The level of monitoring of Scotland’s most important sites for nature is among the metrics tracked in the scorecard. The figures show that just under 3% of Scotland’s protected sites underwent site condition monitoring by NatureScot in 2025. This was a fall from 2021, when 5.3% of protected sites were monitored.
The monitoring of rivers and lochs has increased slightly over the past 3 years. 25% of rivers were visited by Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) Ecology staff in 2025, a rise from 19% in 2023. Monitoring of lochs was significantly lower, with only 14 of Scotland’s 334 lochs (4%) visited in 2025.
The scorecard also reveals that 4 out of 10 planning departments in Scotland’s local authorities have no in-house ecological expertise, with many relying on external consultants or, in some cases, using no ecological advice at all. Local councils are responsible for deciding which developments can go ahead and which cannot.
On farming, the scorecard shows that the proportion of farm funding spent directly on environmental outcomes has fallen from 7.7% in 2017-18 to just 3.6%.
Scottish Environment LINK commissioned polling by Survation to include in the scorecard, which shows that a growing number of people in Scotland say the state of our natural environment is getting worse. 44% of those surveyed said that Scotland’s natural environment has worsened in their lifetime – a rise of 5% since 2022.
The same poll found that around half of people in Scotland (49%) said that the government is not doing enough to protect the environment, with only a third (32%) saying they’re doing the right amount.
Dan Paris, director of policy and engagement at Scottish Environment LINK, said: “We need concerted environmental action from the Scottish government over the next few years. The Natural Environment Act means that the government must soon introduce legal targets to restore nature. And the impacts of climate change and the imperative to tackle it are coming increasingly clear.
“Our scorecard shows that many of Scotland’s public bodies don’t have the capacity to what’s required of them. It’s absolutely vital that environmental agencies are given the resources and the people they need to stop the degradation of our natural environment and help it recover.”
Scottish Environment LINK will update the scorecard annually.