“It’s clearer than ever that grouse shooting is a problem that must be tackled” – guest blog by Max Wiszniewski

This is a guest blog by Max Wiszniewski, Campaign Manager for REVIVE, the coalition for grouse moor reform.

As another shooting season of Scotland’s most contentious and controversial blood sport begins it’s clearer than ever that grouse shooting is a problem that must be tackled. This will be a key test for the Scottish Government. Not just in how it plans to make the country more biodiverse and better for our wildlife but this will signal how serious it is with its ambitions for land reform, something the SNP and Green Party memberships support passionately.

In the leadup to this moment hundreds of thousands of foxes, stoats, weasels, crows and so-called non-target species like hedgehogs have died so that more grouse can be shot by a few people for sport.

Much of our land has been burnt (muirburn), threatening our vital peat reserves, to make the land more suitable for grouse and another year has gone by where vast areas of moorland have been denied their chance to become more biodiverse because of grouse moor monocultures.

Meanwhile, tens if not hundreds of thousands of grit stations, many filled with high strength toxic medication, litter the countryside to keep grouse numbers artificially high while lead shot is contaminating more of our uplands.

Since when did Scotland the Brave abandon reason for madness?

Driven grouse shooting became popular with elites during the Victorian era with the advent of the breech loaded shotgun and as railways increased access to landowners’ estates. But since the 1990s onwards, growingly popular techniques like filling medicated grit stations with Flubendazole, saw an immense increase in intensive grouse moor management. There’s a financial motivation for this. It’s estimated that for every ‘brace’ of grouse shot, £5,000 is added to the valuation of an estate.

The industry’s circle of destruction exists because the pressure to maximise grouse numbers is at the heart of the problems we see today. It was in the 1990s of course that Scotland’s first, First Minister Donald Dewar called the killing of our birds of prey a “national disgrace“. Grouse moor management’s association with raptor persecution is very well known and Scotland now looks like it’s (finally) going to do something about it.

Scotland’s Parliament is working on the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill which would require grouse moors to apply for a licence. If it was deemed that (illegal) wildlife persecution likely took place on a particular grouse moor, or if there was a pattern of bad behaviour, that licence could be revoked.

Also up for reform in this Bill is wildlife trapping legislation and muirburn licencing but if these serious issues are to be tackled properly then the Government needs to go further – in spite of pressure from shooting estate lobbyists, who quite frankly want to block all necessary reform.

For instance, it’s a good thing that traps on grouse moors and beyond are to require a licence to operate. But what are the reasons a land manager should be able to obtain a licence to use killing traps? Is increasing grouse numbers for sport shooting a good reason to get one?

REVIVE supports the licencing of muirburn, as the Government has proposed, to regulate it in order to protect (some) of our essential peatland. (Peat is essential of course because of the immense amount of carbon it can store in a good state while muirburn has helped to keep it in a dry and degraded state for decades.) But should a licence to burn be given for a purpose as cruel and frivolous as increasing grouse numbers for sport killing?

The SNP and Green Party see themselves as parties of land reform – it’s part of their DNA.

Grouse shooting is a metaphor for land reform issues in Scotland: huge swathes of the country, managed poorly for the benefit of very few people at the expense of our wildlife, the environment, greater biodiversity and better opportunities for our people. REVIVE genuinely believes that there is will from those in Government to change Scotland’s status as the nation with the most inequitable land ownership in the western world. Just 432 families own about half of Scotland.

The Scottish Government can and should be bold and brave in the face of large landowning lobbyists. Despite their protestations, Scotland (including rural Scotland) doesn’t support grouse shooting for sport.

If the Government and the Scottish Parliament are serious about land reform then they should start with grouse moors and signal to their members, to rural Scotland and to the nation as a whole, that they can change the face of Scotland for the better.

ENDS