The Future Landscapes Forum & its links to driven grouse shooting

A couple of weeks ago I received an invitation to attend the launch of a new report on ‘controlled burning’ in the uplands, by a group I’d never heard of – the Future Landscapes Forum. By ‘controlled burning’ I assumed they meant muirburn, the deliberate setting fire to heather moorland to boost the number of red grouse available for shooting.

I didn’t attend the launch (and I’ll explain why below) but I was curious about this newly-formed group – who are they, what are they doing, who funds them, and what links, if any, do they have to driven grouse shooting?

The name of the new group, the Future Landscapes Forum (FLF), is pretty benign and pretty vague; it doesn’t provide much of a clue about who might be involved. So I googled it and found the FLF website, which helpfully names the five individuals involved, all of whom have played a role, of varying degrees, in defending various elements of grouse moor management but particularly muirburn:

Professor Andreas Heinemeyer (Associate Professor, York University)

Dr Mark Ashby (Ecology & Conservation Teaching Fellow, Keele University)

Professor James Crabbe (Professor of Biochemistry, University of Bedfordshire; Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford University; Visiting Professor at the University of Reading and at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai in China)

Professor Simon Denny (formerly Director of Enterprise, Development and Social Impact, University of Northampton [retired])

Professor Rob Marrs (Emeritus Professor of Applied Plant Biology, University of Liverpool & Past President of the Heather Trust)

The FLF website states that ‘many‘ of the five have ‘conducted key research and published a considerable body of recent peer-reviewed science and assessments pertaining to this important habitat‘ [heather dominated landscapes]. Some of them have, for sure, and some of that has been funded by the grouse shooting industry.

The FLF website goes on to include a section called, ‘Why are we speaking out?‘ which states the following:

“As a group of leading scientists and practitioners in upland management and socio-ecological impacts, we have growing concerns that the public and policy debate about managing heather moorland is neither properly informed nor evidence-based.

Indeed, there seems to be a concerted effort to derail an evidence-based approach and sound future policy by certain influential organisations and individuals who ignore or distort evidence, often present unevidenced arguments, or deploy arguments based on selective elements of scientific papers and reports that support their position.

Such arguments are often reductive, lack context and are presented wrongly as the scientific consensus.

We believe that debate and, increasingly, decisions about upland management have become polarised and overly focused on a single issue: driven grouse shooting. Our view is that this focus is wrong and dangerous.

Our concerns are not related to habitat management for grouse; indeed, we would be making this position statement if grouse, and grouse shooting, did not exist“.

It’s interesting that the FLF criticises some of the debate about upland management because it ‘lacks context‘ as some of the FLF team’s own work has received similar criticism (e.g. see here, here, here, here, here, here) but has often been used by the grouse shooting lobbyists as showing ‘scientific consensus‘. The scientists can’t be held responsible for how the grouse shooting lobby interprets their scientific research, but it seems unlikely that they’d be unaware of how it was being presented.

Even Natural England describes a recent piece of work by Heinemeyer comparing heather burning with mowing or uncut management approaches (published in early 2023) as being “widely reported as justifying the ongoing use of burning management” but that it is “best seen as an outlier in the range of scientific studies relevant to management of blanket bog“. (I’ll write a separate blog about that because it’s too much to include here).

It’s also worth noting that two of the FLF team (Prof Heinemeyer and Prof Marrs) have both featured in videos pushed out by the various Regional Moorland Groups as part of their propaganda campaigns to promote grouse moor management. They’re entitled to contribute to such output, of course, but visitors to the FLF website may not be aware of this, given FLF’s efforts to distance itself from driven grouse shooting interests.

It’s also worth noting that two other members of the FLF team (grouse-shooter Prof Denny & Prof Crabbe) only recently published a report (a hopelessly biased one, in my view) on so-called sustainable driven grouse shooting, a report described as ‘truly objective’ and timed to make the headlines during the Inglorious 12th. The report was commissioned (and presumably funded?) by the Regional Moorland Groups. Say no more.

Incidentally, that Denny & Crabbe report was reportedly ‘peer reviewed by three academics from UK universities‘ but strangely, they weren’t named. It wasn’t Heinemeyer, Ashby & Marrs, by any chance?

I think it’s disingenuous of the FLF to distance itself from the driven grouse shooting debate, for all the reasons I’ve provided above but also because upland management for driven grouse shooting (specifically, muirburn) lies at the very heart of the climate emergency and the UK’s response to it. We’re not talking about the odd little fire here and there – we’re talking about the widespread, deliberate burning of heather on the UK’s carbon-storing peatlands across vast areas of the British uplands -let’s not pretend that there’s nothing to see here.

The focus is very much on driven grouse shooting and for very good reason. Indeed, it’s why the Scottish Government is about to licence muirburn as part of its Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Bill, designed to regulate grouse moor management after years of inertia. I see the FLF’s position statement on controlled burning has featured in The Scotsman today, no doubt timed to coincide with the Scottish Parliament’s ongoing scrutiny of the Bill.

I couldn’t find any information on the FLF website about who is funding this group. The five members may be funding it themselves of course, but I do wonder about the Moorland Communities Tradition Ltd, who incidentally appear to have a new Director, one Andrew Gilruth, formerly of GWCT (and ironically, given FLF’s statement, well known for cherry picking and distorting evidence) and now working as the Chair of the Regional Moorland Groups.

I said at the beginning of this piece that I decided not to accept the invitation from FLF to their launch event last week. And here’s why. Take a look at the invitation they sent out and pay attention to the RSVP address:

Sabi Strategy. Hmm. Where have we heard that name before? Ah yes, the slick London PR agency that’s been linked to promoting the foul and aggressive output of the pro-grouse shooting astroturfing group, C4PMC (here).

Is it a coincidence that this PR agency is also working for FLF? Perhaps, but of all the PR agencies available that FLF could have hired, it strikes me as being an unlikely coincidence.

In writing this piece I’m not advocating that the upland research undertaken by the FLF team be simply dismissed – some (but not all) members of this group are indeed experts in this field and their findings are of interest to the ongoing debate on upland management – but let’s not pretend that there aren’t also links to the driven grouse shooting industry.