Gems from the written evidence 21 – more from upland areas

Naturalists and conservationists who know the uplands are unconvinced by the claims made by the shooting industry that driven Red Grouse moors are rich in wildlife. Here are some more excerpts:

Caz Walker:

• I live in rural Cumbria at 900 feet, not far from the Lakeland Fells, where you’d imagine there would be a lot of wildlife. But there isn’t. Here the fields are grazed down to the ground or allowed to grow in early summer then cut for silage before flowers can set seed or the ground-nesting curlews fledge. Often the road verges are the last vestige of biodiversity, thin strips of flowering plants which can provide food, shelter and nest sites for wildlife. This paucity of opportunity affects everything from insects upwards, ie the whole food chain.
• This sort of habitat used to be more widespread. This is the context for the importance of upland land management – when there’s lots of good habitat elsewhere a few denuded moors matter less. But between them, intensive agriculture and driven grouse moors (which became increasingly prevalent in the 1990s) have affected huge swathes of land, especially in upland and marginal areas. These habitats are tough for wildlife and once degraded can take decades to recover.
• Intensively managed grouse moors are dedicated to a sole purpose: getting artificially high numbers of red grouse. To this end all predators are killed, legally or, in some cases, illegally. Animals such as mountain hares and even deer are killed allegedly to protect the grouse from disease, to which they are more prone because they live at higher density. Grouse are frequently medicated with drugs which can enter the water table and the food chain. Burning of vegetation occurs to encourage heather shoots which grouse eat, but this affects the structure of the vegetation, reducing its usefulness as habitat, eg by destroying nest sites, as well as killing reptiles, invertebrates and soil-dwelling organisms.
• Elsewhere in Europe the walked-up model of grouse shooting is used. This is much kinder to the land and other wildlife as unnaturally high numbers of grouse are not needed. This could be the case in the UK where the current discredited model was introduced in the 19th century – hardly a rural tradition that’s been here since the dawn of time then.
• We usually holiday on the Isle of Lewis where, thankfully, there is no driven grouse shooting and little wildlife crime. We were there a month ago and saw 6 golden eagles together soaring over the hill opposite the house. This is what people will pay to see and what all upland management should be working towards. Here the Lake District recently lost to old age our long-resident golden eagle. The fact that he had been alone for over 10 years shows the scale of the problem – previous birds had wandered this way from Scotland but not in the last few years.  Please bear in mind that there are workable alternatives to the driven grouse industry which in the long run will benefit us all.

Halifax Science Society:

• Whilst farmed land could be said to be compromised by the need for the Nation’s food security, the huge areas of upland in England Wales and Scotland are basically just used as a playground for the pleasure of a small minority for private shooting. These uplands will hold a far greater diversity of predators and their prey (if it were not for the shooting fraternity.).  We need to see the full complement of predators. Only when this can be said to be the case will we know that the ecosystem is complete and working as it should be.  Walk-up shooting with strict controls and quotas of kills can be practiced instead of the driven shooting. Many more secure and regular jobs could be created in place of gamekeepers for wildlife/ tourism wardens.

Jeremy Chadd:

• I regularly do long hill walks in the northern Pennines in County Durham and south Northumberland. My personal observations over many years have been that management of moors for driven grouse shooting has tended to intensify, presumably in order to maximise grouse bags. The burning cycle leaves few areas of older higher heather in which raptors and other species might successfully nest, and burning is increasingly extended to stream gullies and other areas which were formerly left unburnt. The burning of blanket bog areas tends to convert them to dry heather monoculture, in place of the diverse bog flora.
• On my long walks in these areas, very few, if any, of the expected raptors for this kind of habitat are seen, compared to upland areas without driven grouse shooting. Evidence that this is linked to gamekeeping activities is necessarily largely circumstantial, as any illegal activity could be easily concealed in these vast expanses where keepers are constantly at work. But the absence of most of the upland raptors is very striking. For example, on the whole of the west Durham Pennine moors, with much suitable habitat, no Ravens, Peregrines or Hen Harriers have bred successfully for many years. Buzzards and Red Kites have struggled to become established in this area during their recent range expansions across the country, and when they do appear, they often disappear mysteriously again.
• Since driven grouse shooting depends on maximising Red Grouse numbers, to unnatural levels, the pressure on gamekeepers to cut corners and act illegally might continue under a licensing system, with no more prospect than at present of proving crime or catching offenders. This is why I feel that only a ban will be successful in counteracting these abuses of law and of the natural environment.

 

 

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