This report was published a few days ago by Common Weal – a member of the Revive coalition (see here and here) that is looking to reform intensive grouse shooting in Scotland.
It’s interesting, although not stunningly so.
The report compares the economic gross value added (GVA) and jobs, both per hectare, of grouse shooting with other land uses. Grouse shooting comes at the bottom of the list on both measures!
GVA removes subsidies from the calculation but includes taxes from the activity – a better approach than that of the highly flawed PACEC report. But the main land uses considered include housing and horticulture which are unlikely to occupy much of the grouse moors of Scotland very soon (that’s my guess). But the figures are interesting.
For example, though this comes from my head not the report itself (though it come from the figures in the report), if we banned driven grouse shooting and lost all of its economic value, and built houses on 1% of the land previously under grouse moor management, then that would produce four times the annual economic value from the whole land previously used for grouse shooting and nearly as many jobs. And we could just have rewilded upland on the other 99% of the land. It’s worth thinking about…
Just for fun, if we apply the GVA value for Scottish grouse shooting to England (slightly dodgy, but this is just for fun), then the claimed 860,000 acres of English grouse moor (348,000 ha) have a GVA of £10.4m. Ten million quid per annum? Chicken, or grouse, feed! And a very different figure from the Moorland Association’s figure of £67.7m pa value to the economy. I can imagine that English grouse shooting has a higher GVA than Scottish grouse shooting, but it’s still chicken feed!
But for a proper economic analysis we would need a study which incorporates the externalities as economists say – one which takes into account the non-market impacts of a land use. These would include carbon storage, increased water treatment costs, lowered aquatic biodiversity, higher waders numbers, much lower or non-existent raptor numbers and increased flood risk from the management that is contingent on grouse shooting. I have a plan to get that study done (but it isn’t a very current plan so don’t hold tour breath!).
And any activity which is underpinned by wildlife crime does not deserve its place at the upland table – even if it were economically vlauable – though it is pretty clear that grouse hooting is economically trivial.
Love the notion of those grouse messing up the BTO’s tawny owl survey!
I get very frustrated that my phone or pad thinks it knows what I am wanting to say, or surprised that I obviously don’t say what most others would be saying!
On a more serious note I’m pleased to see the economic arguments starting to be unpicked now.
Keep up the great work.
In the meantime there is of course this petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/226109
For quite a number of estates of course it is not about the money in or out it is a tradition they enjoy. Not for me or I guess most of you but for them the economics are not part of the equation. We should call them what they are– pleasure killers.
I’d like to see Les Wallace petition at
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/226109
for ‘An independent study to find if driven grouse shooting is of economic benefit’ get a lot more signatures.
So would I!!! Thanks Alex!
As far as starting a conversation about what we could have instead of grouse moors – and of course thereby facilitate that change – the report has certainly worked. I just wish it had started from a slightly better place. No mention of eco – restoration with option of beaver reintroductions to alleviate flooding downstream from the uplands where most of it would take place. Bizarre and frustrating omission, hard to think of a better example of public benefit from ecosystem services. Within the five coalition members of Revive there’s quite a difference in perspective and I can see where this has perhaps meant this initial report wasn’t quite what it should have been. I am a member of the League Against Cruel Sports myself (for now) and Onekind are also a member of the coalition – but I really worry that going from the current situation where recreational shooting is the main land use to the point where virtually every other possible activity is seriously compromised to one where there is absolutely no huntin, fishin, shootin what so ever will actually slow down change and prolong animal suffering and environmental abuse. I suspect that if you plan for a step down field sports sector where you can still have some recreational shooting and genuine harvesting of a bit of wild protein, then more chance of getting rid of snares, stink pits, muir burn, illegal raptor persecution, mountain hare culls, bull dozed hill tracks and of course general slaughter of anything that might nobble a grouse. Hoping for an absolute end to field sports immediately would I think block the great progress that is possible. A stepped reduction wouldn’t compromise moral arguments to end field sports entirely if that’s the line people want to take (my sympathy’s lie there), but would mean there’s a hell of a lot less of it to deal with. Fishing would almost certainly improve if muir burn ended, saying that wouldn’t endorse it just underline the facts, awkward ones for the grouse moor proponents.
With quite a few land reform campaigners there’s this recurring argument that it’s people who have been the real victims and they are being neglected with all this attention given to wildlife. I think that’s a load of narcisstic pish myself, and since the descendants of those people who may have been unfairly booted off the land a long, long time ago are almost certainly living in far greater material comfort today than their ancestors did then I find this attitude that the glens need people and people need the glens a bit of posturing, a phony, contrived ‘deprivation’ when it’s the forests, soil and wildlife have been stripped bare. I’m certainly not interested in the land being hammered by the many rather than the few and with no recognition of how much our wildlife has been slaughtered and misplaced by Homo sapiens in its entirety. Lesley Riddoch made comments at the Revive launch that to me exemplified that type of attitude, and having seem how well off and pampered the crofters of Lewis are today I can’t say they have a greater need to return to the old crofts than the wildlife needs to get back to into the hills. Would be nice to see humanity worry about something other than its own interests for once. And a word of caution re housing, what you get round Stornoway is the worst example of suburban sprawl I’ve ever see, comprised of ‘crofts’ of course. I’m looking forward to this discussion developing and ideas being refined, helping to get rid of grouse moors by doing something apart from (rightly) hating them! Great stuff.