Journalist Rod Liddle has taken another swipe at grouse shooting with the following article in The Sunday Times yesterday:
It’s not the first time – last year his criticism of grouse shooting prompted furious responses from the Countryside Alliance and GWCT, although BASC bizarrely used it as an opportunity to hurl abuse at Megan McCubbin (you can read their full-on attack here).
Liddle doesn’t appear to be a fan of the Countryside Alliance in general, writing an article for the Guardian in 2002 about the London march to save fox hunting, which ultimately led to his resignation from the BBC after a backlash accusing him of not being impartial (see here and here).
Hmm, given this trophy scalp perhaps it explains why the nasty brigade keeps urging the BBC to sack Chris Packham. ‘If they got rid of Liddle, why not Packham?’, is what they’ll be telling themselves.
Here’s the text of Liddle’s latest piece published in The Sunday Times yesterday:
RED KITES ARE GLORIOUS. MURDERING THEM IN AID OF A SHOOT-‘EM-UP FOR SPIVS IS GROTESQUE
Rod Liddle
A red kite was found hanging from a tree a couple of hundred yards from where I live in the north Pennine. Its death was at first a mystery and I wondered if, hideously depressed by the government’s failure to lower taxes or get a grip of the migrant issue, it had killed itself. Kites are notoriously right wing. But the bird’s carcass was sent off to a lab and all became very clear. The creature had been poisoned with carbofuran and bendiocarb – two illegal pesticides still used, surreptitiously, by gamekeepers. It had also been shot. So they had tried to kill this rather lovely bird at least twice – to protect those flapping, panicking idiots the red grouse.
That it was gamekeepers to blame is beyond reasonable doubt. I live in an area notorious for their swift dispatch of pretty much all living creatures. The 2021 edition of the RSPB’s Birdcrime report revealed that 71 per cent of all raptor persecution incidents related to land managed for the shooting of game birds, and every one of those prosecuted were gamekeepers. Kites – and buzzards – have been found dead here before this, with the same toxic substances inside them.
It was the so-called Glorious Twelfth last weekend, and the guns were blazing. Grouse moors make up 7 per cent of our land and provide a magnificent total of 1,500 full-time jobs. The claim that local communities benefit indirectly is a myth: the City boys arrive, they are lodged on the estates, they get driven out to the ranges, they fire away and they go home. In Scotland is is estimated that the gamekeepers kill 250,000 animals to allow people to kill 300,000 grouse.
Every way you look at this industry – from the point of view of economics, morality, the environment, biodiversity, land use – its existence is an absurdity. I asked one gamekeeper up here what proportion of supposed “vermin” he intended to kill. He replied: “The aim is for 100 per cent, but some slip through the net”.
These vermin include all our magnificent birds of prey (including kites, which feed mainly on carrion), mountain hares (which carry a tick dangerous to the bloody grouse), foxes, badgers, stoats, weasels and pine martens (in Scotland – they’ve already made them extinct in England). You walk up onto the moor tops – potentially our most beautiful scenery – and find yourself in a depopulated and scorched, treeless moonscape, the very antithesis of nature. All we have is million upon million of rabbits, hopping about in the blackened heather as if they were in a post-nuclear-holocaust Teletubbies set.
The game lobby will insist that they are protecting wildlife and point to the curlew, a hooting wraith from the wetlands, as a case in point. They cling to the curlew as a spider clings to the side of a bath as the water rises beneath it. Sure, there are curlew on the moor tops, for part of the year, and the occasional golden plover, lapwing and meadow pipit. But precious little else, in this vast and – when the heather’s not on fire – majestic scenery.
They will also tell you that they are protecting a historic way of life and topography. Well, not that historic: we’ve had intensively driven grouse moors for about 150 years, so it’s as traditionally British as football hooliganism. It is true that, as the lobby claims, the scenery is unique to Britain – no other country would put up with it. The burning of the heather – which enables new shoots to grow for the delectation of the grouse – is awful for the environment and climate change.
All this happens because a handful of people want to shoot birds that fly as if they’ve just eaten a full English breakfast after a heavy night on the piss. Talk about hitting a barn door with a banjo.
I have no objection to people shooting game birds for food. In many ways it is vastly preferable to the rest of the meat industry. Nor do I have much animus against the rich folks who own the land, whether they be the Arab rich folks who own the moors to my north or the rich hedge fund monkeys who own the moors to my west. I don’t even have a vast loathing for the City boys who provide the income. My complaint isn’t motivate by class hatred or envy.
Indeed, I would argue that we should increase subsidies to the landowners, provided that they rewild their estates. Wildlife tourism is far, far more popular – and remunerative – than grouse shooting: last year five times as many people visited one single RSPB reserve (Slimbridge in Gloucestershire) as took part in all the country’s grouse shoots. That’s just one, smallish reserve.
Imagine the benefit to the villages and towns if our upland areas had a true diversity of wildlife, rather than being managed deliberately to exclude the very creatures people want to see. But the wealth and political heft of the landowners, as well as their own lack of imagination, means we are left with the barren, charred expanse of grouseland.
ENDS
Raptor Persecution UK 
Great article and sums up my sentiments exactly. Our countryside, environment, carbon stores and rural communities would be far better off without grouse shooting. Shame the Sunday Times fact checkers didn’t spot that Slimbridge is a WWT reserve, not RSPB
There are fact checkers?? đŸ¤¯
Don’t you mean “… accusing him of partiality”/”not being impartial”?
[Ed: Oops, thanks, fixed it!]
Well put and that’s the reason I don’t visit the North Yorkshire Moors it would be to depressing knowing what wildlife should be there!!
10/10 for sentiment. 3/10 for style and accuracy.
And 11/10 for the reaction it will provoke from the DGS brigade!
No doubt. But the desperate propagandists behind DGS will seize on every error, no matter how small, to discredit those who challenge their hobby.
I believe that we must all be as precise as possible in our criticisms, in order to deny these charlatans any opportunity to portray those of us with a genuine concern for our natural heritage as misinformed in any way.
For me the key sentiment is this “Wildlife tourism is far, far more popular – and remunerative – than grouse shooting: last year five times as many people visited one single RSPB reserve (Slimbridge in Gloucestershire) as took part in all the country’s grouse shoots”. This article helps but we all need to get the message out to friends and families. Many people who do not live in the affected areas have very little understanding of the true and damaging impact of so called ‘sport shooting’ and if they did then the pressure to stamp it out can hopefully grow ever more compelling.
This is true. 5 times more in Scotland
I agree with Coop on scoring.
Sadly no mention of Hen Harriers but I did like the humour regarding the Curlew bandwagon. I have personal knowledge of just how much some grouse moor owners rely on this for “flying the flag” for their care of the moors!!
I’ve enjoyed walking the moors in England and Scotland since my youth and have witnessed several crimes of gamekeepers in both areas. Keepers will often refer to hill walkers as townies who know nothing about the countryside who peddle ignorant myths. I beg to differ. My wanderings over the years have taken me to remote areas where I have found birds of prey in poletraps and foxes in snares that were never checked. Walkers in the hills are still bullied by keepers today. There is a song called the Manchester Rambler by Ewan MacColl I think many folk would find of interest. It would be my first choice if I ever get invited on Desert Island Discs.
While I’m 100% in agreement with Mr Liddle on this occasion, having dealt with him professionally myself in my Wildlife Trust days I would advise a long spoon. He’s always on his side, which may or may not overlap with yours or ours. Just a warning to be careful about any more direct dealings or reputational linkage, from personal experience.
Bill, what problem did you have dealing with me?
No answer.
Wonderful words from Rod Liddle. He deserves a medal for standing up to be counted on behalf of our beleaguered, decimated wildlife. How dare these gamekeepers used banned poisons, traps and shotguns to wage war on species that are vital to our falling biodiversity count – just to provide murderous entertainment for amoral wastrels and dysfunctional human beings. There can be no excuses for the killing that is going on, aided and abetted by our government agencies who are turning a blind eye to the criminal activities of shooting estate owners and their killing tools, the gamekeepers.
Chris Packham is bigger than the Countryside Alliance, pure and simple.
A fantastic article, as good as any anti DGS one I’ve ever read. A wee shame re the Slimbridge mistake, but not the end of the world. He tore into the fallacy of grouse moors being good for rural jobs and economies right at the very start, which is something that needs to be done a lot more and he was absolutely spot on underlining how desperately they’re using the curlew to try and give them some conservation credentials. The only thing he left out was the increased flooding you’ll get downstream of grouse moors due to the absence of trees and muirburn damaging peat’s capacity to absorb water. There’s some terrible flooding occurring in Yorkshire not too far from grouse moors, it just needs a bit more joining of the dots in the public consciousness.
I know the Yorkshire moors a bit, they’re like a past its best currant bun. Places such as the Bronte’s village of Haworth and Brimham Rocks are still sweet and lovely like the currants, but between them are vast expanses of wildlife free, tree less moor – shite like the now mouldy bun. You’d only go out on the moors if you wanted to be bored/depressed. If articles like this are being published in the Sunday Times then grouse shooting’s star must really be plummeting.
Excellent article totally agree with everything! I live on the edge of north Yorkshire Moors and since the massacre of the beautiful red kites in June that we watched I loathe them now desolate expanses of nothing same thing full of rabbits grouse characterless.
[Ed: comment deleted as libellous]
Thank you very much Rod, Brilliant article