IngloriousBy Mark Avery Bloomsbury, 2015; hbk, 304pp ISBN 978-1-4729-1741-6, £16.99 Mark Avery's impassioned book calls for a legal ban on driven grouse shooting in the UK. As a scientist and former Conservation Director at the RSPB for 13 years, he is singularly well-informed; and now, being out of harness, he feels unconstrained but enraged by the virtual extermination of the Hen Harrier Circus cyaneus as a breeding bird in England. His book attempts to explain the science in layman's terms, and sometimes becomes a diary or an imaginary venture into a better future, when it starts to ramble. But his solution is extreme, and some might see it as analogous to banning farming to save the Yellow Wagtail Motacilla flava. However, the evidence that he marshals for the deleterious effects of driven grouse shooting is impressive. For the Hen Harrier, legally protected, the UK population ought to be about 2,600 pairs, yet stands currently at between 500 and 800 pairs (and in England, where there should be about 330 pairs, there are currently none). Hen Harriers undoubtedly have a real impact on breeding Red Grouse Lagopus lagopus, as the Langholm trials showed, but nevertheless it is illegal to kill them. Not all grouse-moor owners or gamekeepers are guilty of criminal behaviour, but some of them are, and enough to affect the whole population of harriers. This is partly because, unlike Common Buzzards Buteo buteo that stay close to their natal area, Hen Harriers range over hundreds of kilometres, and the shooting of some in one part of the country can have an impact throughout the range. Grouse-moor owners might be able to mitigate the effect of harriers on the numbers of grouse on their land by diversionary feeding, but do not do so. Some prefer to lobby for permission to undertake 'brood management' - taking chicks from nests and rearing them elsewhere, prior to release - a solution that would not work anyway because of the fluidity of the population, which means that the released birds would not stay where they had been released but instead rejoin the wider population. Others simply evade the law, which is easy to do due to the remoteness of the moors and strong community sympathies that protect local keepers. Though the effect on harriers is the greatest, grouse-moor persecution extends to Peregrine Falcons Falco peregrinus, Common Buzzards, Northern Goshawks Accipiter gentilis, Golden Eagles Aquila chrysaetos and White-tailed Eagles Haliaeetus albicilla. The extent of raptor persecution is known to keep population levels well below their potential. Nor is this the end of the story. In parts of the Scottish Highlands, Mountain Hares Lepus timidus have been virtually exterminated by keepers trying to keep the tick burden on grouse as low as possible, while the use of sheep as 'tick mops' to pick up the insects and kill them by sheep dipping five times a year involves the use of pesticides in the environment on a new scale. Then there is the impact of the muirburn (burning) on carbon storage and flood control. Muirburn is considered essential for high grouse numbers by encouraging heather regeneration. If done carelessly or too intensively, as is often the case, it can have a damaging effect on peat bogs, releasing stored carbon and burning off cover that would otherwise absorb water. Serious flooding at Blubberhouses in the Yorkshire Dales recently has been attributed locally to the excessive burning of the moors above the village. It is hard to quantify the extent of the problem, but certainly in parts of the Highlands, such as Deeside, heather burning has become far more intensive than it was even a few years ago. The destruction of wilderness caused by tracks driven over the moors and by fences put up to keep in the sheep mops is also unacceptable to those who enjoy the open country. Are there any good sides to the management of driven grouse moors? Evidence supports the claim that numbers of breeding waders such as Golden Plover Pluvialis apricaria, Curlew Numenius arquata and Lapwing Vanellus vanellus are higher where muirburn and legal predator control of corvids, mustelids and Red Foxes Vulpes vulpes is practised. Mark Avery does not dispute this, though he quails at the scale of the killing needed to achieve it. Good management of bogs by filling in old drainage ditches is carried out on some estates. Otherwise the defence of driven grouse moors rests on the scale of employment generated in remote rural communities (about 1,500 people in England and Wales and 1,100 in Scotland), the numbers who enjoy the sport (estimated by Avery at about 17,000 but by others as more), and by the revenue it generates. Fewer than half of Scottish moors make a profit, but 96% of all revenue from grouse moors in Scotland comes from driven moors (as opposed to those where the grouse are walked up or shot over pointer dogs). More intensive management, however, is increasing the rate of profit, as well as increasing the unacceptable impacts of moorland management. So it is reasonable to expect that something should be done about it. But is a ban the correct answer? In Scotland, the RSPB has been calling not for a ban but for a licensing system, which would entail inspection of the estates before driven grouse shooting was allowed. This is more flexible and would protect good managers at the expense of bad ones. A weakness of Avery's book is that he says much less about Scotland than about England, but devolution makes it impossible to legislate at Westminster for the entire UK. A licensing system might be more likely to attract the support of politicians, though I would not rate the chances of a proposal along these lines passing at Holyrood any time soon. The grouse-moor interest is probably stronger than the conservation interest in Westminster now, and the former is lobbying for legal control of raptors through licences to kill Buzzards. So Avery's call will probably go unheeded for the present but, as we all know, politics change when popular pressure builds up. Maybe licensing is a better solution than banning, though. Chris Smout Buy this book from the British Birds bookshop, which is run by Wild Sounds
Volume: 
Issue 10

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