By Bob Elliot, Director of OneKind, part of the Revive Coalition
LAND ownership in Scotland has always been a thorny issue with the majority of our land controversially owned by a small minority of individuals or organisations. Add to this the fact that almost one-fifth of Scotland is a grouse moor, many of which are intensively managed to create a habitat suitable for just one wild species, and we have a very good starting point for a debate around ownership, reform and reclaiming huge swathes of Scotland for the benefit of our environment, our communities, our economy and our wildlife.
A common misconception concerning grouse moors is that they are natural. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Over many years the land has been managed to best suit red grouse and ensure estates yield birds in abundance for commercial shooting.
I have first-hand experience of what an intensively managed grouse moor can be like. Around 13 years ago I started working for the RSPB as an Investigations Officer and one of the first calls I received was from a member of the public who described seeing two large birds of prey lying dead on a grouse moor in northern Scotland. What a grim day that turned out to be and, accompanied by a police officer, I ended up retrieving the bodies of a dead white-tailed eagle and a golden eagle from that sporting estate.
The white-tailed eagle had to be dug out of a peat bog where it had been stamped into the ground, only the bird’s magnificent long primary wing feathers sticking out of the peat giving the location of the body away. Later toxicology reports confirmed both eagles had been illegally poisoned by a banned and highly toxic pesticide. As is usual with these types of cases, no one was prosecuted.
Serious as it is, the illegal killing of birds of prey is not the only issue associated with the intensive management of Scotland’s grouse moors. The red grouse is a wild bird, so gamekeepers must heavily manage the habitat to have enough grouse for visiting clients to shoot. The heather is rotationally burnt in strips and threats from natural predators to the grouse are removed, foxes, stoats and weasels and other aerial predators such as crows and ravens are routinely killed.
Shooting, trapping and snaring are all methods used by the gamekeeper to eradicate any threats to the grouse and there is no statutory requirement for anyone to report the number of animals killed. The annual toll on predators must number in the hundreds of thousands, at the very least. Incredibly, gamekeepers also provide veterinary medicines to the grouse via medicated grit in trays on the moor and sometimes also by the direct dosing of the birds themselves.
Even our emblematic animal the mountain hare is not spared, an average of 26,000 are killed every year on shooting estates for a variety of reasons, but overwhelmingly on driven grouse moors to seek to control a tick-borne viral disease Louping-ill, in red grouse.
Public anger has been growing about how our grouse moors are being managed. Many now agree that reform of Scotland’s grouse moors is badly needed and well overdue, hence the creation of Revive.
Revive is a radical new coalition, bringing together several charities across social, environmental and animal welfare sectors, working together to reform Scotland’s grouse moors. This is the first-time organisations have come together in this way driven by the shared goal of taking back ownership of Scotland’s uplands and making the vision of reform a reality.
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