Is driving grouse legal?

Red Grouse (Lagopus lagopus scoticus) adult male calling – close-up portrait. Scotland.

There’s probably nothing in this thought, but it keeps coming back to me. Is driving a moorland legal?

We know that shooting a Red Grouse is legal, within the open season, but is it legal to get a line of people to walk across a moorland waving flags and blowing whistles and disturbing every living thing in order to push Red Grouse towards a line of guns?  It’s hardly selective is it?  All that wealth of wildlife, for which grouse moors are famous (within the heads of grouse shooters) must be disturbed by grouse drives. Can you do that? Is it legal?

I guess it is. But I wonder.

And I wonder what you would need to do to prevent it from being legal. Could bye-laws be changed, say within National Parks, to make such repeated, organised, indiscriminate disturbance illegal?

Does anyone know?

But if driving a moor is legal – would it be legal for a group of people to drive a moor on a different day, at a different time, and without shooting any Red Grouse?  Just for fun? I guess not, but I’m just wondering.

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24 Replies to “Is driving grouse legal?”

  1. Good point Mark. Common sense leads one to think that it is not legal, based on the fact that a number of protected species will be disturbed and probably injured by this grouse moor driving activity. However, of course, this Government in Westminster would alter the law to support their grouse moor cronies if any legal threat to driven grouse shooting became apparent. They say they want a fairer society and the majority of people would want to see an end to driven grouse shooting and all it’s privileges, but their fairer society clearly excludes any diminution of the rights and privileges of driven grouse moor owners. One can not feel rather cynical!!!

    1. Im at a loss as why you think any species would be ‘probably injured’ whilst getting ‘driven’?

      (And while I’m at it) given that heather burning can continue until mid-April and given that birds are already on territory and attempting to nest and no burners ever get prosecuted for disturbance (I have never worked out why) I would be very surprised (even if technically ‘illegal’) if anyone would be prosecuted for driving grouse.

      1. Think small – potential protected insects and plants could be injured through being walked on.
        I can’t speak for GB, but here in Ireland, there are good numbers of protected Marsh fritillary butterflies on our moorland. It is a common practice in Marsh frit habitat management to take grazing animals off the land in August/Sept, when the little caterpillars are in their communal webs on the ground, to prevent trampling. A line of people repeatedly disturbing the ground would cause havoc.

        1. Fair point, but if you ‘worked’ a heather Moorland in the shooting season its actually not that likely that feet would repeatedly tread on the same spot whilst beating. Burning is obviously far more problematic for the wee things. As for trampling closer to the butts, well that’s a different matter!

  2. It’s only legal on SPAs if it has been assessed and deemed not to be adversely impacting on the interest features of the site.

    1. And of course, Ian, the underlying management regime required to achieve very high densities of red grouse is of dubious legality. Notwithstanding BREXIT, Article 6(2) of the Habitats Directive still requires the UK government to ‘take appropriate steps to avoid disturbance or deterioration….’ of Natura 2000 sites, both SPAs and SACs, so really our government should be being hammered left right and centre for allowing those driven grouse moors that are also Natura 2000 sites to be intensively managed. The RSPB and Ban the Burn have pursued this in the European courts – I wonder if, say, the National Trust issues licenses for any illegal management on its designated land? Or any National Park authority? Must be grounds for a Judicial Review of any NPA allowing driven grouse moor management within Nature 2000 sites. And I wonder what the legal status of the NT is regarding these directives? Presumably their not ‘just a charity’ given the inalienable status if their land etc – quasi-competent-authority?

  3. Can only agree with Alans comment. The way that Mark Avery’s petition was toff beaten in the parliamentary debate showed a very selective blindness to what occurs on the grouse moors.

  4. Hunting with dogs… does this not allow them to drive towards the guns? But they don’t drive deer to the guns because that causes stress?
    I don’t think it is legal to burn lizards and adders but they do that all the time.

  5. Likewise, is burning off entire areas of moorland flora legal? Especially in an SPA or SAC? And is the smoke produced a “public nuisance” against which legal action is possible? But, as ever, “quis custodiet ipsos custodes”?

    1. Certainly smoke pollution from heather burning on publicly owned land on Ilkley Moor (Bradford Council) is a public nuisance. Drifts down into the valley to Ilkley and Burley in Wharfedale areas. Let’s hope the Council don’t renew the shooting lease in 2018.

      1. If the smoke is a nuisance then report it to the council as well as complaining on the internet. Local authorities have extensive powers to deal with these things, including the (relatively) new Community Protection Notice that can be used even if the smoke (or whatever) doesn’t amount to a statutory nuisance. Action to curb either environmental damage or nuisance behaviour is quite separate from the requirements of any lease that might exist and the decision makers at the council will probably be separate too.

        1. Thought about that, but the smoke wasn’t affecting me personally just residents of the aforementioned areas. I observed the pollution from a distance. So I doubt any notice would have been taken of my complaint. Most people can’t be bothered to complain in my experience – takes time and effort. Bradford Council allows the burning, so presumably doesn’t care about the air pollution. Plus, the Council has recently given permission for an incinerator in the valley to the south of the moor, which means Ilkley Moor, being downwind, will get more air pollution in future, I expect.

          1. Bradford Council have a statutory duty to care about air pollution. If nobody complains they can hardly be expected to do anything about it as there will be plenty of other things that people are complaining about that take up their time. It does take time and effort to make a fuss but so does a campaign to ban driven grouse shooting and all the other things people reading this blog are concerned about.

  6. Sadly, there is no provision for members of the general public to perform impromptu Grouse drives, on open access land , under the CROW act .

    1. Modern keepers could replace the beaters with one of those hand held lasers that they are marketing for deterring predators? They could run the drive from half a mile away making the shoot cheaper to run….

      I cant think of any tips to help keepers overcome the vulnerability of the monotonous heather monoculture they create at the expense of the natural ecosystems… its a fundamental weakness of their approach. Nature teaches us that monoculture s are always at risk from natural parasites/or disease which spread very quickly in these conditions. Thankfully nature always bounces back.

  7. Very good question, Mark. I think you need a clever environmental lawyer to have a proper think about this!

  8. If an moorland bird survey was undertaken, perhaps the day before a shoot, then surely the fact that Red Grouse moving around a bit would be purely incidental. Does it matter if they all end up on the wrong side of the butts? I’m not an expert.

  9. I have asked this of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority. Section 62(1) of the Environment Act 1995 amended the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 such that if there is a conflict of interest between the (socio)economics and nature conservation, then the latter prevails. In other words, it puts in to statute the Sandford Principle established in 1974.

    The YDNPA responded that this only applies to land in their ownership, which amounted to a tiny percentage (<1% if I remember correctly) and none of this was grouse moor.

    The text of the Act (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/25/section/62) makes no reference to ownership. I am not aware of any case law in this which may expand on this. So I am not particularly satisfied with this answer – I respectfully think they are wrong!

    This would be, in my opinion, a useful starting point if a lawyer with relevant experience were to take on Mark's question. If Section 61 is applied as I see it, to answer the question, is DGS is 'illegal', you would have to first prove/ demonstrate that there is a conflict of interest.

    Is there?

  10. Presuming it is public land then I would think it legal to walk around on it regardless of motive right? If private land without permission of the land owner or their appointed agent then it is trespass. Not a criminal offence at this point. If asked to leave and trespass interfers with land owner or agent engaging in their legal activity then it becomes a criminal offence. Would expect grouse moir owners to have the resources to pursue prosecutions.

    1. As far as I’m aware ALL grouse shooting land around me is ‘open access land’ and as the CROW act which designated it as such was in part designed to allow access to all un-enclosed land I reckon the vast majority if not all grouse shooting land is similar. Therefore, apart from days (usually outside the shooting season) when the landowner has applied for a temporary restriction (I don’t know why either) you can walk freely over such land.

      1. Then you don’t have to worry about any criminal convictions from accessing ghe land and interfering with tne land owners use of their land.

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