Robbie Marsland is the Director of the League Against Cruel Sports for Scotland & Northern Ireland. He’s also a founding member of REVIVE, the coalition for grouse moor reform.
Here’s his opinion piece published in The Herald today.
Here we go again. The opening of the grouse shooting season is upon us. It used to be called the “Glorious Twelfth”. More often than not, the name is now preceded by the word, “controversial”.
Why the controversy? For decades, the shooting of wild grouse for entertainment flew under the radar. But now, there’s much better public understanding about what’s going on in our uplands.
No matter what your views are about killing an animal for fun, recent research has revealed the circle of destruction that surrounds grouse shooting in Scotland.
This circle of destruction isn’t just a catchy phrase, it’s a systematic assault on natural ecosystems where each destructive practice enables the next, creating an interconnected web of environmental damage that stretches across the grouse moors, that, in total, comprise around 12% of Scotland’s land.
On this land, hundreds of thousands of grouse are shot in a “good year”. A good year means there’s a high density of grouse on the moor, allowing substantial numbers of birds to be shot while still ensuing a sustainable breeding stock. To achieve a “good year”, then, that population of grouse needs to be “managed” by the shooting estates to be unnaturally high.
Population sizes are naturally increased by access to food and shelter and are decreased by exposure to disease and predators, what is commonly understood to be “the balance of nature”. The balance of nature ensures a sustainable ecosystem that looks after itself. But a balanced ecosystem obviously doesn’t produce an over-abundance of grouse that can produce a “good year” for the annual shooting season. To achieve that “good year”, an imbalance needs to be created; the balance of nature is turned on its head.
Extra food and shelter are provided by burning heather in the winter months. This provides new green shoots for the birds in the spring. It also releases C02 in to the atmosphere, encourages wildfires and stops trees from growing. This systematic burning creates the artificial habitat foundation upon which the entire circle of destruction depends.
Birds of prey perch in trees. Of course, birds of prey are protected species, but breeding pairs are mysteriously absent from many Scottish grouse moors. Their natural diet includes grouse.
Foxes, stoats, weasels and crows also naturally control the numbers of grouse. But as they have no legal protection, they can be killed to ensure there are more grouse to shoot. The largest scientific assessment so far revealed that around 200,000 foxes, stoats and weasels are killed by gamekeepers each year in Scotland to ensure artificially high numbers of grouse.
There are compelling reasons why estates invest so heavily in maintaining those high populations of grouse. A report to the Scottish Government from the Independent Grouse Moor Management Group revealed the capital value of an estate can be increased by £5,000 for every pair of grouse shot. Economic rewards such as these may go some way to explain why landowners will go to such lengths to maintain this artificially imbalanced system.
The natural balance of ecosystems isn’t entirely dependent on predation. A disease that regularly reduces grouse numbers is carried by a small worm, the strongyle worm. To reduce its impact, shooting estates deploy tens of thousands of grit-filled trays medicated with flubendazole in an attempt to kill the worms in the guts of the grouse.
This is despite the medical and veterinary industry’s concerns about the over-prescription of such chemicals. This mass chemical medication completes the circle of destruction. The inflated grouse populations created by habitat manipulation and predator slaughter then require pharmaceutical intervention to remain viable, yet this intensive management system operates without meaningful oversight.
Scotland introduced grouse moor licensing in 2024 under the Wildlife Management & Muirburn Act, supposedly to deter wildlife crime and ensure sustainable management. The reality has proven farcical. The grouse shooting industry threatened legal action against NatureScot’s interpretation of the legislation. Rather than stand firm, NatureScot capitulated, weakening the licences by changing coverage from entire estates to tiny areas around shooting butts. It’s still unclear how this mess will be resolved.
Polling shows that 60% of Scots oppose grouse shooting, with 76% against the predator control that kills hundreds of thousands of mammals annually. Even in the most remote rural areas – the supposed heartland of shooting support – opposition still outweighs support.
Turning the balance of nature on its head goes on year in, year out on Scottish shooting estates. But “good grouse years” do not. When you look at historical trends, the last time there was a “good grouse year” was 2018. Predictions, in Scotland, for 2025 suggest that too will be a “bad year”.
That means, even if you think it’s ok to kill a bird for fun, over that period of time more than a million foxes, stoats, weasels and crows will have been killed for nothing. Thousands of square miles of heather will have been needlessly burned and tons upon tons of chemicals will have been ineffectively strewn across the countryside. The economic incentives that drive this destruction continue to operate regardless of whether or not a “good year” for grouse emerges.
The circle of destruction surrounding grouse shooting reveals the true cost of allowing privileged minorities to treat Scotland’s land as their private playground. Until we break this interconnected system of destruction entirely, Scotland’s uplands will continue to serve private interests rather than the public good, and our wildlife will continue to pay the price for a democracy that has forgotten who it’s supposed to serve.
Meanwhile, the circle of destruction grinds on, crushing Scotland’s wildlife and ecosystems beneath the weight of economic interests that benefit the few while imposing costs on the many. For those of us who think its unethical and cruel to shoot a bird out of the sky – it’s always a crying shame.
ENDS
Raptor Persecution UK 
I agree
The guns would have just as much sport and probably more shooting by shooting very fast clays .And estate’s wouldn’t be restricted by dates .
would still be enjoyable and pay good money .
Brilliant article!
I think it is the best, most clear, unemotional, exposition of everything that is wrong with driven grouse shooting and its negative impact on the environment and wildlife overall I have read for a very long time.
It was interesting to see the paper released by GWCT this week that shows a graph of the decline of Red Grouse populations since their ridiculous over-stocking a decade or so ago. I suspect that they have created their very own zoonosis, with disease being the key factor in the decline. No doubt GWCT will be instructed to blame predators, despite the fact they have nearly all been slaughtered on the grouse moors, and climate change, but I will lay odds that investigating disease levels will not be amongst them – a bit like the government not actually ascertaining the true level of TB in badgers, but for the opposite reason.
I’ve never hunted anything for sport. I’ve never shot at anything that wasn’t either 1: a synthetic target 2:something I intended to eat 3: something trying to eat my food (vermin or actively predating my livestock – not just hanging around in the same ecosystem) And, to me, hunting involves woodcraft and skill. Driven birds don’t qualify. That’s not any kind of hunting I recognise.