Emmerdale actor, Nick Miles, who is a Yorkshire Dales resident opposes heather burning and points out that birds of prey are killed illegally on grouse moors. Good for him!
The Moorland Association, whose members are responsible for most of the torching of the uplands, say that burning stuff can have a positive impact on carbon capture!! Not even the airlines say that getting on a plane helps keep oil in the ground!
But then, those in favour of driven grouse shooting, (the motivation for burning heather in the hills) differ from those opposing driven grouse shooting in being: much less likely to acknowledge that climate change is happening, that it is caused by our actions, that it is damaging or that we can do anything about it. They are also opposed to rewilding and are more likely to think that there are too many birds of prey in the country as well as being massively in favour of the Badger cull.
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Well done again The Daily Mirror. The shooters and this Westminster Government that supports them, are very much a pretty thick lot. One would have to be to blaze away with a gun at defenceless wild birds driven in one’s direction, and to mow them down and to enjoy doing this.
In the end there will be a Government (not this one) that takes “on board “ the fact that the environment and our wildlife are owned by everyone and that the shooters for fun have no right to grossly abuse them as they do. When this happens all this abuse will be stopped for good.
Nick Miles has often stuck his head above the parapet in the arguments against DGS, well done Nick! all the arguments about cool burns and necessary to remove fuel for wildfires, it improves biodiversity and increases carbon storage are all a bit like the arguments for homeopathy rubbish under examination. What these mmors need is rewetting, sometimes with some cutting to remove excess heather and lots of seeding with sphagnum and other mosses. Where it won’t rewet it probably grew trees so let them colonise, even plant a few, although I prefer natural regeneration. Yes the number of Lagopus lagopus scotica will fall but the number of species should increase. It might even be possible to replant some of the plant species that were lost due to their intolerance of burning—— Chickweed Wintergreen for one.
Lets get this message out there and the more we do the more the privileged few that shoot grouse look like antediluvian fools trying to stem the right and proper thing to be done for all our benefit, not just the few.