GROUSE-MOOR MANAGEMENT: A BURNING ISSUE

A simple lie beats a complex truth far too often for the future safety of our countryside. The RSPB’s remorseless attacks on grouse moors and rotational heather burning are classic examples. According to them, rotational cool heather burning burns peat, causes floods, destroys biodiversity, drives global warming and is the same as burning tropical rainforest or the lethal and catastrophic wildfires that raged through Australia and California.

None of these assertions – which are easy to make and, coming from RSPB, often believed – is true. However, their refutation takes time and thought, which few people are prepared to give.

Does it matter? Yes, it does. What is at stake is not simply grouse shooting but the survival of our heather moorland, the rare and precious wildlife it supports and the communities of reasonable people whose chosen way of life this threatens to destroy.

Although the RSPB repeatedly refers to grouse moors as ‘industrial landscapes’, nothing could be further from the truth. They are replete with designations: Site of Special Scientific Interest; Special