Dear Mr Eustice, how long are you going to delay making the right decision on heather burning on peatlands? You are making this government look foolish and evasive by not acting on this matter, particularly when scores of Conservative MPs in England are telling their constituents that the government will act.
Let’s have a quick recap. Burning of heather is almost exclusively carried out on intensively managed driven grouse moors so as to provide patches of young heather to increase the densities of Red Grouse for shooting. It’s essentially a form of intensive farming ditrected at producing unnaturally high densities of one species, so that more of them can be shot for fun (and profit).
Such burning is good for grouse moor managers but bad for practically everyone else. This form of burning increases flood risk down stream as it allows the water to rush off the hills quicker, it increase water treatment costs too, it increases greenhouse gas emissions and endangers carbon stores in peatland soils, it creates a nuisance of smoke for people living near grouse moors (and not so near, ask the residents of west Sheffield) and it harms many of the species living in such areas (reptiles, insects and plants) and it harms the very blanket bog habitat that many upland areas comprise. It’s a bad thing. Your job as Secretary of State is to stop bad things happening and yet you stand idle on this matter.
Heather burning on blanket bogs has got the UK into trouble with the Eu because of the damage to this important habitat. If we hadn’t left the EU the UK would now be facing massive fines for failing to implement proper protection of blanket bogs. We are still signed up to those commitments and you are failing to protect those blanket bogs still. As a long-term and principled Brexiteer yourself, you have always promised that the UK would not let environmental standards slip once we left the EU, in fact you have said that we will do even better once free from the shackles of Brussells. But you haven’t acted; you’re making those promises look hollow.
And it’s not as though your fellow Conservatives aren’t in favour of you acting on this matter.
One of your predecessors as Environment Secretary, now Lord Deben, then John Gummer, who chairs the Climate Change Committee has called for a ban on burning on peatland to be brought in this year. And yet you fail to act.
Your minister, Zac Goldsmith, said almost a year ago that the government would act on this matter and end burning of peatlands. Why are you making him look like a liar? When will DEFRA move on this subject?
And over the last few weeks scores of Conservative MPs in England (maybe even hundreds of them) have told their constituents in a standard letter sent to thousands of constuituents (voters) that;
Ministers have always been clear of the need to phase out rotational burning of protected blanket bog to conserve these vulnerable habitats.
The Prime Minister himself has sent this message to his constituents and your fellow minister in DEFRA, Rebecca Pow has said the same to her constituents (see here). Are these going to be empty promises or are you going to act?
Moving on this subject simply requires your signature on a statutory instrument – a piece of paper that is metaphorically and for all I know literally sitting in your in-tray today. You can have made these promises into reality by the end of today if you really want to. Every day you delay makes your colleagues look like liars. You can make their words true.
Over 80,000 people across the UK have asked their politicians to act on driven grouse shooting. The biggest wildlife issues involved are illegal killing of protected species and damage to protected blanket bog habitats. The biggest legal problems associated with driven grouse moors are crimes against wildlife and damage to blanket bogs. The biggest environmental issues associated with driven grouse shooting are greenhouse gas emissions, increased flood risk and water quality issues all associated with heather burning. It’s inexplicable really, but the Conservative governments since 2010 have showed wilful blindness to wildlife crime on grouse moors and many of us are looking to the SNP in Scotland to make the first move on this subject but you must act on heather burning on peatlands.
Please Mr Eustice get your pen out and sign that statutory instrment today. You’ll have to do it soon, why not do it now, today?
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Really excellent letter Mark, right to the point.
I do really hope Defra wastes no more time stopping the burning of our moorlands. However I am not confident of this as Defra, when taken together with Natural England, is simply not fit for purpose. The whole organisation is a disgrace. It is desperately trying, on behalf of this Government as a whole, to delay any measures that might upset their friends and alliances in the shooting industry.
I don’t believe they really care a jot about the criminality associated with driven grouse shooting and the obscene cruelty, killings and environmental destruction that goes with it. All they really care about is helping themselves and their friends shoot more and more defenceless wild grouse for fun.
Some conservation organisations burn (on a much smaller scale than burning on grouse moors) to manage species or habitats, for example; to improve the seed bed for tree regeneration, promoting woodland expansion; to improve the field layer for rare birds, such as black grouse and capercaillie; or, to maintain open habitats of conservation value.
I understand efforts are made to avoid deep peat, though I imagine that often the locations burned have complex soil patterns that include hard to detect shallow peat.
What do you and commenters in this blog think about this? Should the conservation organisations that burn stop this or is burning ok on a smaller scale when targetted to enhance a conservation feature and when carried out carefully and responsibly?
Personally I think they should lead the way by stopping burning and finding alternatives (e.g cutting or grazing) where practical and by changing objectives where no practical alternative exists.
I’m with you on this Palustre. It’s an absolute ‘no-brainer’ for the burning. We should not be burning heather moorland anywhere – for all the reasons Mark expounds on above. Some of which we’ve known for years and others which we’ve all only recently woken up to (C loss, impact on soil arthropods etc. – and people’s health even if it’s relatively few people in relatively remote areas. We subjugated peasants have rights too!). And I’m increasingly against killing for conservation purposes also. I was quite shocked to find that SNH kills Mt Hares in some places (to prevent overgrazing) – while of course others are legally and illegally killing their natural predators in the same locations. In Scotland we should really only be having to cull Red Deer because there are no natural predators and we have let numbers get so out of hand that they are destructive on a wide scale. (And maybe a few predators like rats and stoats on islands where they are non-native and decimate ground-nesting birds and other fauna). Apart from that, shouldn’t we all be managing with an understanding that natural cycles and ‘crashes’ (including Mt Hares and Red Grouse that aren’t intensively farmed) are a natural part of ecological processes and healthy ecosystems – and finding better ways to manage particular species or habitats in need of special protection? As Wild Justice are so effectively pointing out, many of the legal killing licences are ‘not fit for purpose’, (targeted, proportionate or effective etc.) and increasingly we seem to see inhumane and excessive killing (beavers??). I think in this day and age when we have so many better technologies and monitoring methods (or simple ones we’ve just abandoned or forgotten) – for protecting vulnerable sites and species – we should all be far more intelligent and ecological about this. And so often the counter-argument is that it is expensive or ‘time-consuming’. But the other side of that coin is often job creation (or should be) – green, healthy jobs in the environment, planting trees, building and maintaining fencing or other deterrents, habitat restoration, wardening and rangers etc. etc. It would also be a much more effective counter-argument to the shooting fraternity claims that they are doing things for ‘conservation’ or using ‘conservation best practice’ or for ‘the species’ own good’ etc. – if ‘we’ (the conservation community) can demonstrate real best practice on all fronts.
“Principled Brexiteer”. Nice one sir.