Sketch: Ariane Burgess is at one with the beaver

Ariane Burgess has had enough of hearing her colleagues talk. Instead, she would like to turn parliament into a performance art piece, with MSPs testing out some method acting to truly understand the plight of nature.

The Green MSP made the call in a members’ debate about the Nature Champions Initiative, which encourages all MSPs to adopt a threatened species to represent during their time in parliament. But Burgess believes it is time to go one further. MSPs must not just learn about and speak up for their chosen species. No, they must become one with them.

“Perhaps the next step is a debate in this chamber, not with us talking about our species, but with us all speaking from the perspective of our species,” she says. Burgess, MSP for the Eurasian beaver, must learn to act like the beaver. Channel the beaver. Be the beaver. It might be wise to keep her away from the walls of the chamber, given it is adorned with wood.

As for taking part in debates as a beaver, well, what noise does a beaver make, anyway? A quick google says they grunt and growl. So really, not all that different from the standard parliamentary debate.

We all know that Christine Grahame regularly grabs the seat behind the first minister each Thursday so as to be on TV

John Mason, MSP for kestrels and the reason this debate is happening, is concerned that some champions’ species like to eat other champions’ species, “such as Claire Baker’s puffins eating Willie Rennie’s sand eels”. If MSPs were to channel their species, this could make for some awkward exchanges.

But Mason wants to be serious for a moment. Over 100 MSPs are currently nature champions, but many – including himself – are retiring. He hopes that MSPs of the future will take on the mantle. And for them, he offers some advice.

Firstly, he recommends picking species you might actually see. He laments that he has seen very few kestrels. This is because they fly, he says, a fact that was perhaps unclear to him when he first chose them. “Maybe in retrospect I should have chosen something which was easier to find – like Colin Beattie with rivers or Emma Harper with ponds and small lochs. They do not move around quite as much as kestrels do,” he sombrely explains.

And secondly, he highlights that some species are more “popular” than others – and you might need sharp elbows to bag the one you want. “We all know that Christine Grahame regularly grabs the seat behind the first minister each Thursday so as to be on TV,” he says, “and she has also grabbed a very popular species in the golden eagle.”

Grahame, cheering from her seat, is unapologetic about her ruthlessness. Indeed, in her own contribution she reveals she has that trait in common with her beloved eagles. She recalls going to a “secret location” to see some chicks when a “huge” bird “briefly stared at me”. Her life flashed before her eyes as it gave her a “predatory look”. “What a privilege, what a thrill,” she insists.

“We joined hands and we hugged the ash tree”

But the plot thickens. Grahame was not the first MSP for golden eagles. Lorna Slater beat her to the punch. “When I was first elected to this chamber, I moved very quickly and I was lucky enough to be the species champion for the golden eagle,” Slater recalls. Unfortunately, months later she was elevated to government and exchanged the golden eagle for a golden goose. As biodiversity minister, “it was felt that I should support all endangered and threatened species.” After she was cast out of government, she was saddened to learn Grahame had moved into her territory. Now she represents the somewhat less majestic northern damselfly.

And if all of that wasn’t drama enough, Graham Simpson tells us his own harrowing story. He is the MSP for ash trees – but his record, he admits, “has been a bit mixed”.

He recalls a visit to Scotland’s rainforest with some colleagues, and was delighted to come across the biggest ash tree he’d ever seen. Entranced by its beauty, he, Monica Lennon and Mark Ruskell approached the great fraxinus. “We joined hands and we hugged the ash tree,” he recalls a little tearfully. “The ash tree has subsequently died.” Tree murderers! Planticide! But which of the three is to blame?

Nature minister Mairi Gougeon suggests all of them were at fault, in “one of the first examples of a cross-party killing”. “I hope he’s been able to make some reparations for the damage,” she adds with a warning stare.

Simpson goes on the highlight the ash tree on Glasgow’s Argyll Street is currently the UK tree of the year, which he recently went to visit. Thankfully, he resisted the urge to hug it. But no word yet on whether he embraces the other species for which he is champion, the bilberry bumblebee. But given his new bedfellows in Reform, perhaps he’s getting used to embracing things that come with a painful sting.