The start of the grouse shooting season in England has reignited the debate over the sport’s role in protecting the countryside.
As the industry yesterday marked the ‘Glorious Twelfth’ – the beginning of the red grouse season – moorland owners said they had restored peatland equivalent to the combined areas of Liverpool and Nottingham and wild birds are thriving on well-managed moors. But with numbers of hen harriers, which come into conflict with gamekeepers because they prey on red grouse chicks, falling to just three breeding pairs in England this year, the Royal Society for the protection of Birds (RSPB) is warning the industry must change its ways.
England’s uplands could support more than 200 breeding pairs of hen harriers, but the bird of prey’s numbers are being kept down by illegal persecution, a report by government conservation agency Natural England concluded.
The bird of prey’s numbers are being kept down by illegal persecution
The RSPB recently pulled out of the government’s hen harrier action plan because it felt the plan was not delivering the “urgent action and change in behaviour” needed to bring the bird of prey back from the brink of extinction in England. The wildlife charity also raised concerns about the “environmental damage” caused by practices it says are used by grouse moor managers, such as draining and burning habitat and killing mountain hares to reduce disease in grouse. It has called for the licensing of the industry, which it argues would drive up standards and ensure grouse moors complied with the law or risk losing their right to hold shoots.
The renewed debate comes as early hopes for a relatively good grouse shooting season, with better chick survival than the “calamitous conditions” last year, were undermined by adverse late weather during the nesting period.
Jeff Knott, the RSPB’s head of nature policy, said: “It is in the interests of those good, law-abiding estates to stand up and embrace licensing as a means for driving up standards, building public trust and removing the bad apples.”
He said the sport was coming under increasing scrutiny, with the problems for hen harriers raising questions over whether there was a sustainable future for driven grouse shooting.