In March 2024, the Scottish Parliament voted for the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill, which introduced, amongst other things, a requirement for all muirburn to be licensed (see here).
The Bill was enacted in May 2024 and became the Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 and since then we’ve seen the introduction of a grouse moor licensing scheme (although this still remains contentious as the licence has been significantly weakened after lobbying by the grouse shooting industry – an update on that is coming shortly) and the banning of the use of snares.
The introduction of the muirburn licence, also contentious because many conservationists didn’t believe it went far enough (e.g. see here), was due to be in place for the start of the 2025/26 muirburn season on 15 September 2025, some 18 months after the Scottish Parliament voted in favour of it.
NatureScot has held a series of stakeholder meetings over a period of several months to discuss the requirements of the new muirburn licence, including a revised Muirburn Code (justifiably criticised by Nick Kempe, the author of the Parkswatchscotland blog – e.g. see here, here and here) and NatureScot also ran a consultation on the new draft Muirburn Code (the consultation closed on 5 May 2025). NatureScot is currently reviewing the responses to that consultation. Here is a copy of the consultation document detailing the draft new Muirburn Code for those interested:
NatureScot has also produced an interactive map to help identify areas of what has been described in the Act as ‘peatland’ (areas of +40cm peat depth), ‘non-peatland’ and ‘uncertain peatland’ (areas that contain peat but the depth is currently unknown). Those who want to carry out muirburn will need to know the depth of the peat in the areas they wish to burn because licences will only be issued for certain purposes, depending on peat depth:
All the preparations seemed on track for the introduction of the licence before 15 September 2025 but then last week, the Scottish Government and NatureScot caved in to intensive political lobbying by the grouse shooting industry and agreed to delay the start of muirburn licensing until 1 January 2026.
The grouse shooting industry had argued that it wasn’t practical or fair to introduce the licence by 15 September because, according to BASC:
‘Proceeding with muirburn licensing in its current form would have risked confusion, undermined public trust and jeopardised effective upland management‘,
and
‘Introducing a licensing system without clear guidance, stakeholder consensus or adequate preparation would have been deeply irresponsible‘.
This wasn’t just the view of BASC – other lobbyists included the usual suspects such as Scottish Land & Estates, NFU Scotland and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association.
Had the new licence conditions been foisted on these groups with genuinely short notice I might have had some sympathy with their arguments, but given that the Act has already been on the statute books for 13 months, with another three months to go before the intended start date of the muirburn licence, I’d argue that they’ve had more than adequate time to prepare.
I can’t help but compare NatureScot’s decision to delay implementation with its recent decision to impose a new licence condition on raptor fieldworkers monitoring Schedule 1 raptors (whereby licence holders are now required to provide advanced notification to land owners of Schedule 1 monitoring visits). NatureScot imposed this new licence condition without providing adequate preparation time, without providing clear guidance, and without stakeholder consensus.
The Scottish Raptor Study Group made an entirely reasonable case to delay implementation until the 2026 monitoring season to allow its volunteer fieldworkers time to prepare but NatureScot outright refused to do this, and as far as I’m aware, didn’t provide a cogent rationale for its pig-headedness. Senior officials simply kept repeating the mantra that NatureScot had the power to impose whatever licence conditions it liked, without prior consultation.
I haven’t written about that fiasco in detail yet, for a number of reasons, but I’ll get to it soon. There’s a little bit about it here, and it sits within a wider and growing dissatisfaction amongst conservationists towards the decision-making processes in NatureScot’s wildlife management department. Its decision to delay the introduction of muirburn licensing at the behest of the grouse shooting lobby will only add fuel to the fire (pun intended).
I’m not sure whether the delay in implementing the licence will mean that muirburning can still begin on 15 September (the new opening date of the muirburn season according to the Act) or whether the old start date of 1 October will still apply given that licences will not be in place.
Either way, from 15 Sept or 1 Oct 2025, up until 31 December 2025, I’m certain we can expect to see extensive and intensive fires across Scotland’s grouse moors as gamekeepers take full advantage of the opportunity to burn on large areas of deep peat before the restrictions come in on 1 January 2026.
UPDATE 8 July 2025: Intensive grouse moor management ahead of muirburn licensing in Scotland (here)
UPDATE 9 October 2025: Scottish Government delays start of muirburn licences (for second time) after aggressive lobbying by grouse shooting industry (here)
UPDATE 30 October 2025: Scottish Govt fiddles while grouse moors burn (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
Money talks!
Absolutely Mairi L I can’t believe in this present climate not to say the pollution of trying to save the planet this is allowed but it is. Surely the environment agencies have a say.
It would be interesting to see SEPA’s response to the consultation? If you cut the vegetation and scraped it into a pile it would become “waste”. SEPA normally take a very dim view of the unregulated burning of waste. Mind you they are not that well known for having the interests of the environment at heart.
We may be at the start of a particularly hot summer, with high wildfire risk. Will those in authority be able to act promptly if safety issues require a delay in burning permission beyond Sept 15th? Or will that require half a year or so?
In recent news a significant large fire is active, burbubg heather moorland at Dava, to the North of Grantown.
Who in NatureScot makes these decisions? The Board or Principal Officers?
Climate crisis? What climate crisis? Not in Scotland, then?
NatureScot and Government in cahoots with rich psychopaths who want to shoot grouse and deer for fun. Nick Kempe has been calling them out for years but these corrupt officials are more than capable of ignoring everyone, 150k signatures against FlamingoLand, fire risk assessments. They just want their fish in a barrel so the elite can’t miss, otherwise they might have a wee fit and refuse to build another golf course.