The Revive campaign against driven Grouse Shooting is coming to Inverness on Thursday 26th of September at 7.00 pm at the Spectrum centre. Come along and find out more about the appauling damage this “sport” does to our wild places.

Book tickets here

 

 

SCOTLAND’S GROUSE MOORS: THE CASE FOR REFORM
A presentation by Revive Campaign Manager Max Wiszniewski exploring the different problems arising from current grouse moor management in Scotland and looking at the benefits of reform for wildlife, the environment and people. After Max’s presentation, there will be an informal workshop session to allow participants to discuss the issues raised in more detail.
Revive is a coalition of like-minded organisations working for significant reform of Scotland’s grouse moors. Huge swathes of Scotland are ‘managed’ to increase numbers of grouse for sport shooting for little benefit to society and at a huge cost to our wildlife and the environment.
At a time when land reform, use and ownership is being scrutinised, Revive is building a movement who want to change the face of Scotland for the better.
The Revive coalition is made up by Common Weal, Friends of the Earth Scotland, OneKind, League Against Cruel Sports and Raptor Persecution UK.
Admission free but donations welcome.

Recently I signed a petition against driven grouse shooting but the UK government has dismissed the concerns about driven grouse shooting, expressed by over 100,000 of its electorate, as if it were swatting away an irritating blue bottle. Chris Packham, Mark Avery and Ruth Tingay, who together organise the Wild Justice campaign put together a government petition with a very simple message.

Ban Driven Grouse shooting Wilful blindness is no longer an option

Me and over 100,000 other folk, who the government almost certainly considers to be left-wing, sandal wearing, bicycle riding, vegan, half-wits, signed this petition and waited to hear the government’s considered response. I will confess I did not expect the government to respond by throwing up its hands, poking Boris Johnson awake with a long stick and getting him to set his army of Tory droids marching across our grouse moor seeking to exterminate their owners. I did, naively, expect at least a coherent reply.

What fell through my virtual letterbox yesterday morning felt like being swatted with a rolled up Daily Mail. It looked like response cobbled together by a bored, hung over intern who was typing with one hand whilst scrolling through his Tinder account on his smart phone with the other.

I’ll pull out some of the more relevant phrases so you don’t have to waste time reading it.

The government response opens with the line:

Grouse shooting is a legitimate activity providing benefits for wildlife and habitat conservation and investment in remote areas.

Translation: Bugger off.

It goes on to explain:

Grouse shooting takes place in upland areas, which are important for delivering a range of valuable ecosystem services,

Translation: Tell them something they already know.

And then

Seventy per cent of the UK’s drinking water is provided from upland catchments.

Translation: Here’s a piece of irrelevant information to distract you for a minute.

And then

The Government is working with moor owners and stakeholders to improve management practices

Translation: We are pretending do something with other people who don’t want to do anything the outcome of which will be some paper which is meaningless and will be forgotten. Didn’t we tell you to bugger off?

Time and time again the government parrots the driven grouse communities erroneous assertions, otherwise known as lies, that driven grouse shooting promotes conservation. Driven grouse shooting effectively takes a flame thrower to the landscape by burning huge areas to promote new growth so that the grouse can feed on the shoots. Not only that but the necessity to produce a surplus of grouse on a driven grouse moor means that all competing predators, including birds of prey, have to be eliminated, illegally if necessary. I’m not going to go over the enormous evidence that points to the environmental damage caused by driven grouse shoot but you might like to read the RSPB report on Bird Crime in 2018 here.

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The amazing thing is that no one, including the government, actually knows the true extent of land involved in driven grouse shooting because there is no regulation of grouse moors. In Scotland, where I live, it’s thought that around 15 to 20% of the total land area is involved in driven grouse shooting so that’s a massive area. If you want to see for yourself the damage that driven grouse shooting causes take a walk through the Monadhliath mountains a few miles south of Inverness and you’ll find yourself in what is effectively a blood soaked desert about as far removed from a natural landscape as it’s possible to get.

Now ask yourself a question. Where does all the money come from to pay for driven grouse moors? I bet you’ve guessed already. Yes, you and me pay for it. These grouse moors, owned by the wealthiest men in the country, receive massive public subsidies. If you want to know more about this, or are seriously sleep deprived, you can check out the Common Agricultural Payments for 2018.

In Scotland alone for 2018 the total ‘agri-environment’ subsidies paid out to farmers, landowners and other interests was over £629 million. Trying to discover where this money goes is pretty tricky as much of it has vanished into a murky world where who owns what is impossible to decipher. What we can say for sure is that a fair proportion goes to the owners of grouse moors and it’s reasonable to assume some of it used to support this sport. For example two payments last year to Scottish sporting estates with grouse moor interests were Bucclech Estate Ltd. who bagged £648,769.60 and Culfargie Estates Ltd. with £590,605.05.

According to research by ‘Who Owns England’, in England in 2018, a total of 61 grouse moor estates netted a staggering £10 million  Read their report here  It’s very hard to see what we, Joe public, gets out of the payment of subsidies to grouse moors apart from damage to our environment and wildlife.

So why isn’t the government acting on concerns about driven grouse moors? Well they are owned by some of the richest most powerful people. Government officials, industrial leaders, lawyers etc. In short grouse moors are owned by the people who run the country. They are a concrete embodiment of the class system that can and does tell the likes of you and I where to go. I very much get the feeling that driven grouse shooting is a way of demonstrating who is really in control and keeping us peasants in our place.

Around 600 people pretty much own all of Scotland and can do with it very much as they please. There are some enlightened land owners who are actually working in sympathy with the environment but they are few and far between. As Andy Wightman argues, you don’t own land like you own a pair of trousers or a cracked lady Diana mug, you only have rights over it. Scotland’s landowners didn’t make the land they own, mostly it’s only in their possession because their ancestors turned up with sticks and duffed everyone up until there was no one around to argue that the land wasn’t theirs. Our land ownership system is based on what happened in medieval times. That so few folk have such enormous power over what happens in huge areas of our wild land is an abomination. It shouldn’t be up to a handful of folk to decide what happens to the land and wild like that is our natural heritage and fundamentally belongs to all of us. In two hundred years, if we haven’t all slipped beneath the sea, the people who follow us will look back in amazement at how we let ancient property rights persist.

So does all this mean the Wild Justice were wasting their time? I think not, I sense a change coming. A handful of years ago if you were to ask a group of hillwalkers sitting round a bothy fire about their views on driven grouse shooting and their eyes would glaze over. Most of them would only have a vague idea of what was involved now, however, it is increasingly becoming a hot potato amongst the outdoor community. The days of wealthy landowners being able to do exactly what they want with their land, sorry it’s actually our land, are coming to an end. It won’t happen tomorrow, it won’t happen next year but I am confident that driven grouse shooting will be consigned to history and that may be sooner than anyone thinks