The Moorland Association (grouse moor owners’ lobby group in England), along with three member estates, are due at the High Court in London this afternoon as they seek permission to challenge Defra’s new regulations on peatland burning (Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025), which came in to force on 30 September 2025.
The Moorland Association, along with three member estates (so far the estate names have been redacted from public documents) are seeking permission to challenge the regulations through judicial review.
Today’s hearing is early on in the JR process, where Mrs Justice Lieven will hear outline arguments from the claimants (Moorland Assoc) and the defendant (Defra Secretary of State) before deciding whether the Moorland Association’s arguments are, or are not, of sufficient quality to merit a full, substantial judicial review at a later date.
I don’t (yet) have access to the court documents but here is a redacted copy of the Moorland Association’s Pre-Action Protocol letter (PAP) letter it sent to Defra in October 2025, which was the very start of the legal challenge. The PAP letter lays out the Moorland Association’s grounds – I haven’t yet seen Defra’s response to those grounds.
As one of colleagues pointed out this morning, the words ‘grouse’ and ‘shooting’ don’t feature anywhere in this letter.
As I’ve written before, it seems to me that the grouse shooting industry rarely, if ever, mentions that its interest in heather burning on peatland has nothing whatsoever to do with wildfire management but everything to do with providing a mosaic of vegetation (heather) structure suitable to facilitate an artificially-high number of Red Grouse that can then be shot for ‘sport’. That looks like textbook gaslighting.
More later after today’s hearing…
Raptor Persecution UK 