Petition: Protect Grouse Moors and Grouse shooting

Revised 24 August

Whatever your perceptions about grouse shooting, I urge you to consider the Countryside Alliance briefing 'Grouse Shooting - the Facts' that is promoted by this petition.  This briefing was prepared by the Countryside Alliance as part of the build up to the start of the grouse season on 12th August, with a view to introducing some factual information into the debate.

Management for grouse may not be perfect, but it is reacting to change brought about by increasing knowledge and understanding of the importance of moorland beyond simply producing grouse.  For example, the move to enhance peatland, and the embracing of management for the benefit of moorland waders.  

In my travels around the country, I witness the passion and knowledge of grouse keepers at first hand; they are a force for good and worthy of support.

It is interesting to look at the interactive map of where the petition has been signed.  There are some interesting hotspots and very few areas where the petition has not received any support.  As I started to write this article, the petition had 9,649 - it has gone up by 13 since then.  It is on track to achieve the threshold of 10,000 signatures required to achieve a response from the government.

The introductory page is here and the petition runs for six months, until 15 February 2017.  If you have not already signed the petition, I recommend it to you.

Sign this petition

HT Board Members at the GWCT Scottish Demonstration Farm

Looking down on the farm from Dinnet Moor

Adam Smith invited fellow HT Board members to visit the Scottish Demonstration Farm at Auchnerran that he runs for GWCT. Malcolm Hay and Dick Birnie joined me for this visit on Thursday, 9 June.  The farm is located north of Dinnet and is just outside the Cairngorms National park.  Adam gave us a tour of the low ground farm and took us up the hill onto Dinnet Moor to view the farm from above.

What to do with the boggy bits?

There is much more information about the farm on the GWCT website.  We were struck by the size of the challenge that GWCT has taken on, as there is a lot of work required to get control of the farm and then develop the systems to demonstrate the GWCT management techniques.  I believe it is just the right thing for GWCT to be doing and I look forward to providing any possible support in this venture.  As I have often said, we do not use demonstration events enough; here GWCT has gone one step further and they will be able to demonstrate their own management.  

From an HT perspective, the link to the adjoining Dinnet Moor is important.  It will allow the farm systems to work across the low ground - moorland boundary which is how similar farms operate in practice, and it also reflects the way that nature and natural systems work.

I will be back at Auchnerran on 12 July, when I am helping the Cairngorms National Park Authority to run a bracken control event.  Details about this event are just being finalised and I will add a post about the event shortly.

Visit to College Valley, Northumberland

Invading Sitka Spruce in the shadow of The Cheviot

I was delighted to visit College Valley again, yesterday.  It was one of a series of visits as part of our Monitor Moors project that seeks to monitor the progress of a range of different moors throughout the country.

College Valley is going through a period of change with the removal of some woodland and a reduction in the grazing levels and it is facing a challenge from invading Sitka Spruce, the result of reduced grazing levels, being in competition with heather management.

What sets this estate out from others is that it is in altruistic ownership.  It is managed by a Board of Directors whose duty is to manage it in a way that increases its value as an environmental, social and economic place of excellence.  Therefore, it is managed for the benefit of all moorland interests and the estate is prepared to introduce novel management practices that other estates may not have not been able to consider.

I will be providing a longer write up in the Trust's Annual Report, this year, and there is a good chance that we will be holding the Trust's AGM in College Valley, in October this year.

Langholm Moor Demonstration Project - completion plan

This 10-year project completes in October 2017.  The project is set up as a company and it is run by a Board of Directors, which met, last week, to discuss how the project is to be managed between now and completion.  This follows the sad resignation of the Headkeeper, Simon Lester, earlier this month, and other reductions in the gamekeeping team.

See the news item on the Project's website for details of the plan that has been announced.

I am a member of the Science & Technical Advisory Group.  As this Group is a form of scientific watchdog for the project, many members are professors, but there are some members who have management experience.  I was invited to join the Group in 2013 to provide further support on habitat management, and it has helped to have had some direct output from the Project that I have been able to share with Scotland's Moorland Forum.

The Directors have acknowledged that the Project is not going to meet all the targets that were set for it. However, there have been many successes and I welcome the plan to write up properly all the work that has been completed so that the moorland management community can get full value from the project. Inevitably, there will be criticism that all the targets will not be achieved, but this should not be seen as failure.  Targets are always going to be at risk when dealing with natural systems that cannot be tightly controlled, and the final report from the Project will need to balance the successes against the challenges that still remain to be answered.

Will there be an appetite for a Langholm 3 project?

The Role of Fire in UK Peatland and Moorland Management

A paper has been produced that reflects on the role of fire in moorland management and it is due for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, in May.  A copy of the report, which is marked 'For Review Only', has been circulated and to prove that this is an emotive subject,  comments have started to fly.  However, much of the rhetoric is based on the merits, or otherwise, of commenting on a report before it has been published.

One of the authors of the report, is Professor Rob Marrs, the Trust's President.  After discussing the report with him, I have agreed that I will not comment on the report until it has been published by the Royal Society.  At this stage, I will ask Rob to provide his comments on the report and I will add a post to this blog.  I will also aim to include a more in-depth review in the Trust's Annual Report that will be published in early August.

The Case for Grouse Moor Management

Adam Smith, Director Scotland for the GWCT, has published a blog post that states the case for grouse moor management being an essential part of sustaining Scotland’s uplands.

Adam is a member of the HT Board, and the post can be viewed on the GWCT website.

Molland Moor, Exmoor - Winner of the Samuel Foss Conservation Award

Baroness Ann Mallalieu (left) and Mrs Christina Williams (right)
(Photo: Western Morning News)

The Western Morning News has reported on the presentation of The Exmoor Society's 2015 Samuel Foss Conservation Award to Molland Moor.  See the full article.

Baroness Ann Mallalieu, the Vice President of The Exmoor Society presented the award to Mrs Christina Williams, the owner of Molland Moor.

The article commented on how Christina William’s "drive and commitment to a five-year project called “Graze the Moor”, set up with the Molland Estate, the Heather Trust and other partners, has been able to monitor the impact of changes to the grazing regime, including the introduction of winter grazing by cattle. The hope is that, through the experiment, winter grazing will begin a long-awaited fight-back against the explosion of gorse, bracken and Molinia grass that is threatening the moor’s character."

I have had some involvement with the management of Molland Moor since the Trust ran a demonstration project there 2002-2006.  I am now the project manager for the 'Graze the Moor' project, and I am delighted that Christina William's dedication to the management of the moor has been recognised in this way.

The AGM in Wales: Compromise, Cooperation and Communication

Team Photo on Rhiwlas Mountain

By Patrick Laurie

It turned out to be a beautiful day for the Heather Trust’s AGM and discussion meeting yesterday, at Bala in North Wales, with miserable black clouds breaking up by mid-morning to reveal bright sunshine and wonderful views across the wild hills towards Snowdonia.

Almost forty members, delegates and supporters from a wide range of backgrounds including BASC, RSPB, Natural Resources Wales and FWAG Cymru gathered at the Gorwelian Centre for a morning of presentations, which explored the history and future of moorland management in Wales. Ant Griffith of CLA Cymru spoke passionately about the value of the Welsh Uplands, and Will Duff Gordon and GWCT’s Teresa Dent explained the significance of the Nature Fund, which has really sparked off a new wave of upland interest amongst a range of different Welsh stakeholders.

The thrust of the day was extremely positive and progressive, and the value of compromise, cooperation and communication was emphasized in order to ensure that Welsh moorland provides the best outcomes for the widest range of different interests, from farming and sporting to conservation and peat. 

After an excellent lunch, there was an opportunity to visit the Rhiwlas Estate, with owner and land manager Richard Price, who had offered an impression of the estate’s past and future during the presentations in the morning. Gaining height over the large extent of moorland to the North of Afon Tryweryn, the convoy of vehicles trekked along a rough mountain track between Welsh Mountain sheep and a cornucopia of reddening whinberry plants. 

Discussions near the top of the hill ranged from the potential impact of proposals to change rights of access in Wales to the breeding ecology of hen harriers, and the theme of cooperation ran as a constant thread throughout. It is hoped that Rhiwlas might one day be able to provide some grouse shooting again, and the balanced nature of the exchanges tried to ensure that everybody’s voice would be heard as management work begins to pick up over the coming months.

As always, the broad spread of attendees demonstrated the Trust’s “broad church” approach to land management, and we look forward to keeping in touch with our growing number of contacts in Wales as they approach the various exciting, fascinating challenges the next few years will present.

Respect, Trust & Honesty

I have just finished drafting the Trust’s Annual Report and I found myself writing about the need for respect, trust and honesty in our dealings with different organisations who have contrasting views. This was in the same week that we had two public debates about the best approach to heather burning: Amanda Anderson of the Moorland Association and Pat Thompson from RSPB appeared in Country Life; Tim Baynes from Scottish Moorland Group and Duncan Orr-Ewing from RSPB were interviewed on Radio Scotland.

I was struck by what a waste of time these exchanges were, as no-one is going to trot out anything but their safest party line on these occasions. In my view, this type of exchange only serves to feed sensation, deepen the trenches and sell publications / increase ratings.

We do not need sensation; we need sensible, balanced, positive debate. Partisan exchanges, or broadcasting sound bites through social media, might create heat, but we also need light. Without this, the habitats, wildlife, birds, communities, landscapes and features that we claim to represent will continue to suffer. We are making great strides in many areas, it is not all bad news, but we could achieve so much more if we could only develop respect, trust and honesty in our dealings with other organisations. If we then added a degree of compromise and tolerance, how much better could we all serve the uplands and moorlands of the UK.

Burning in the Uplands - My Cup is Half-Full

Details of the RSPB-led Study

A new study led by the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science has revealed the extent of moorland burning across Britain’s upland areas. This is the first time upland burning has been mapped in detail across mainland Britain. 

Using aerial photography and satellite images, 45,000 1-km squares were mapped across Scotland, England and Wales, and revealed that burning occurred across 8,551 of these squares, including 5,245 squares in Scotland.  In the ten-year period covered by the study, from 2001 to 2011, the number of fires recorded increased rapidly by 11 per cent each year.

For more information see the RSPB press release.  The paper has been published in Biological Conservation, Volume 191, November 2015, Pages 243–250.  The abstract of the paper can be viewed online and the full paper is available to download for a fee.

Comment

This study is useful as it helps to build a picture of what is going on, but while it has highlighted the problems, it has not addressed possible solutions.  I suspect that this was not part of the research brief, but increasingly I believe that we need to put more effort into joining problems to solutions, if we are going to make progress.

It is relatively easy to use burning to fuel a rant about the state of our peatlands, but we should remember that these areas were, until recently (very recently in the life of peat), regarded as wasteland.  These are slow moving habitats and it will take a long time, under consistent management, to improve their condition.  I would be among the first to agree we need to improve the way we manage burning in many areas, and through this the condition of peatland, but before we discard the management tools, which after all have got us the habitat we all now value highly, we need to think about how the peatland is to be managed, and by whom.

In the short term, my action plan for peatland includes:

• Continuing to raise the profile of peatland - it is an important habitat that needs sensitive management;
• Encouraging the revegetation of bare peat areas to reduce erosion by wind and water;
• Introducing guidelines for traditional peat cutting (for domestic purposes only);
• Agreeing what long-term management is required to improve the condition of the peatland; and
• For highly degraded sites, seek funding for capital works to, for example: 
• reprofile peat hags, 
• block man made ditches and other drainage channels to raise the water table, and
• introduce sphagnum mosses to wet sites, where absent.

Longer-term action will rely on the owners and land managers to make the right decisions for the management of the uplands and the peat stocks they contain. This is an area that needs to be looked at separately.

We should not forget that burning takes place to support: crofting; upland agriculture and commons management; and deer stalking, as well as grouse moor management. Picking on grouse moor managers and then using the detrimental side of burning as a stick to beat them with is potentially self-defeating. Privately funded grouse moor managers are a significant proportion of the upland work force, and if their efforts can be correctly focused, alongside the full range of other managers in the uplands, they should be seen as part of the solution, not the problem. We need the support of these people to deliver the objectives we seek.

Also outside the scope of the study are the considerable changes that are already taking place in the uplands. As demonstrated by our Golden Plover Award, and the take up of support from the Peatland Action project in Scotland, landowners and managers are beginning to embrace the 'love your peatlands' message. We still have a way to go with this, but momentum is building.

During the 'bogathon’ visits, in Northern England last year, which the RSPB were part of, we agreed that burning should remain as one of the management tools, but it needs to be applied intelligently, not by rote.  We need to adjust burning techniques and rotations to suit the requirements of the land, including peatland, and this may mean less, or even no, burning in some areas.  This might save grouse moor managers some work!  

Also, the alternative of cutting heather, should not be ignored.  Cutting cannot be used everywhere, but the Trust's recent studies have recorded that some grouse moor managers are getting excellent results through cutting alone.  See our Members' Briefing on Heather Management in the Reading Room on the Trust's website.

I believe that the picture is for from being as gloomy as the study would have us believe.  The winds of change have started to blow, and with encouragement I believe that momentum is building behind improving our management of burning and the condition of our peatland.  My cup is half-full!

Molinia Conference, Huddersfield: 14-16 September

Marsden Moor

If you have an interest in this management of Purple moor-grass Molinia caerulea which dominates large areas of the uplands, do not forget about this conference.  See the earlier post for more details.

I will be there and I hope that there will be a good turn-out from Heather Trust members.

Molinia Conference, Huddersfield: 14-16 September

Molinia on Marsden Moor

The full title of this conference is: "Molinia caerulea on upland peat in the UK: history, dependencies and the role of intervention in achieving conservation goals".

From the flyer for the conference:

"Peat covers much of the flat or gently sloping uplands of the UK, forming blanket mire that can host a number of vegetation types. The type favoured by conservationists, and considered to be associated with the greatest rate of peat formation, involves cotton-grass (Eriophorum) species, ericaceous shrubs and Sphagnum mosses. In practice, this is lacking over large areas of upland where it might be expected, its place being taken by very dominant Purple moor-grass Molinia caerulea. Conservation bodies expend much effort in trying to replace Molinia with the more desirable species and conservation objectives are set with this in mind. This conference examines the place of Molinia caerulea in UK plant communities, factors affecting its growth and experiments looking at ways of adding greater diversity where appropriate. The aim is to gain a clearer understanding, through discussion, of what types of conservation objective should be applied and how to achieve them.

The conference will take place in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, 14-16 September 2015 and will contain two days of presentations and discussion followed by a field trip on Day 3 to look at diversification experiments set up in dominant Molinia on the Marsden Moor Estate. We are able to keep the conference fee low due to generous support from Natural England and the International Peat Society."

I can vouch for Marsden Moor being a good venue for the field visit.  The Trust ran a demonstration project for Defra at Marsden for three years from 2003, and I remember walking the part of the moor shown in the photograph.  At the time, it had a complete coverage of molinia tussocks and it was hard walking.  I suspect it has not changed a lot since.

For more detail about the conference see the Marsden Moor Estate website.

Members’ Briefing - Heather Management

I have been aware of a shift in the balance between heather management by burning and cutting in recent years, and I believe that the amount of management taking place by cutting is increasing. On some moors managers have gone the whole hog and have started to manage their heather by cutting only. The decision not to burn may have been taken for a range of reasons, such as water catchment restrictions, concerns about damage to peatland, lack of manpower or even personal preference.

As a result of this change, I thought it was more than appropriate that we carried out a review of some of the developments in thinking from a Heather Trust standpoint. Patrick Laurie has been working on this for two years and has been to visit many areas where this new thinking is developing. He has collected a large amount of information and we have decided to start publishing this.

The first step is a Members’ Briefing, which is now available from the Reading Room on the HT website. Although it is called a Members’ Briefing, we make this available to everyone and hope that anyone who is not already a member will take the appropriate action if they value the information this briefing contains.

There is much more to be done on this subject and Patrick and I will be working on this.  We will publish more information from time to time.

It is clear that many people feel passionate about their heather management, and we accept that our briefing may challenge some sensitivities. However, before anyone accuses us of going over to the dark side, you should note that we start the Members Briefing with a statement in support of heather burning, but we are keen to explore all the ways to manage heather to make sure that we use the available tools, to the best advantage.

If you agree, or disagree, with our thinking, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please use the comment box below.

The Golden Plover Award - update

After last year’s huge success, The Golden Plover Award for Moorland Management is now seeking applicants for the Award in 2015. 

The annual Award is jointly presented by the Heather Trust and GWCT Scotland in order to promote and celebrate the very best in sustainable, integrated moorland management for a number of outcomes, including sport, conservation, recreation and agriculture. This year’s Award will focus particularly on peatland conservation, helping to highlight this crucial and developing area of upland management.  

In 2014, Savills sponsored the award and laid on an impressive award ceremony at the Scottish Game Fair, where the presentation was made by the former Heather Trust chairman, Malcolm Hay.  I am delighted that Savills are also sponsoring the 2015 award and the award ceremony, which will take place at the Scottish Game Fair on Friday, 3 July. 

Anyone can enter the Award, from farms and estates to individuals and syndicates, and we hope that the application process will attract a wide range of people from across Scotland. Much more information on the Award and its background can be found in the dedicated website for the Award, where application forms are also available to download and complete. 

The closing date for applications is 27 February, after which the judges will consider the applications to narrow down the field to three candidates, which will be visited during the Spring.

Thursday: Scotland - Cairngorms National Park

Talk of weather bombs across Scotland does not deter the Heather Trust, but on arrival, Boat of Garten looked much like this.  However, I reached my objective of The Boat Hotel, in time for a good breakfast.

I passed the day profitably and I was ready for a meeting with the Board of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, in the evening.  The Board is discussing a moorland paper tomorrow, and I had been invited, with others, to express my view of the issues.

The Board is considering a key issue of how to develop the management of the moorland area in the Park in the face of criticism about over-intensive grouse moor management, raptor persecution and bad muirburn practice.  It is a big task, as about 44% of the Park's area is under moorland management.  The Board recognises that the management of moorland fulfils an essential role, but part of the land use planning in the Park is to increase the area of woodland and montane scrub, and it is inevitable that this will put pressure on open moorland.

I expressed my opinion that the Park Authority must be prepared to lead the way in moorland management and suggested that the establishment of demonstration sites would provide an opportunity to show leadership.  I think that these sites would provide a platform for discussion that would be an effective way to introduce ideas to those who own and manage the land, with a view to gaining their support for the various initiatives within the Park.

One day I hope that my advocacy for demonstration sites will bear some fruit, as I think it is a very effective method to establish links, defuse lash points and influence management practices.

Making the Most of Moorland - GWCT guide to grouse moor management

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has published a free guide to grouse moor management that provides information about the role of sporting management in sustaining our upland ecosystems.

Grouse moor licensing

BASC has published a paper entitled “Grouse moor licensing – assessment of proposal and summary of unintended consequences” and the organisation is using this paper to influence policy makers.

The facts presented in this paper serve to highlight how thin the argument in favour of licensing is.  While I can see the need for some change and development in the way that moorland is managed, I can see no logic to justify licensing of grouse moors.  It would be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Positive and supportive engagement by the licensing lobby is much more likely to achieve benefits for the birds they seek to promote and protect.  They will argue that they have tried everything and achieved nothing, but maybe they ought to look to their approach and tactics before walking away in high dudgeon.

A workable and lasting solution must be achievable, but it will not be achieved without compromise.  In my view, we need to give the brood management proposals a chance and learn from the process.  It may not have have all the answers, but at the very least it will be progress.

Retirement of a Moorland Icon

Today marks the retirement of Martin Gillibrand, who has been a force, an irresistible force some would say, to be reckoned with in the English uplands since before most people can remember.  There some impressive statistics in the Lancashire Evening Post article about his outstanding contribution to the English uplands during his period as Secretary of the Moorland Association.

I have watched him in action through long hours of debate in the Best Practice Burning Group, which  Marin was instrumental in setting up.  We have completed 36 meetings together and we are still counting and still talking. Every time that progress looked like it was flagging Martin was ready with his verbal whips to spur us into more action. He will be missed in these meetings, even though there remains no shortage of issues to debate.

I wish him well in his retirement and I look forward to continuing a close relationship with the Moorland Association through the new Director, Amanda Anderson, who has taken over from Martin.

Exmoor - The Graze the Moor project

Our bid, on behalf of the Molland Estate, for project funding from the Exmoor National Park has been successful.

I have been working on Molland Moor on the south side of Exmoor since 2002, and during the last 2 years I have been supporting a case study to look at the grazing management of the moor, particularly the controlled re-introduction of cattle grazing over the winter.   The case study has shown that a longer trial would be beneficial and the successful application to the Partnership Fund of ENPA will provide 5 years of funding  for the continuation and development of the case study work.

The work will include controlled grazing management of the moor throughout the year, stock disease monitoring, vegetation monitoring by Natural England and an independent ecologist, an economic comparison between farms that use the moor and those that do not, and dissemination of the findings to a range of interest groups on Exmoor.

There may be opportunities to use this work to bolt on additional activity and the Trust will be working with Molland Estate, Exmoor National Park Authority, a local firm of Chartered Surveyors and Natural England to make the most of this opportunity.

Better Outcomes for Upland Commons

The Foundation for Common Land has asked for my support with a case study on Bampton Common in Cumbria, which adjoins Haweswater. This is part of a national project that has been established with support from HRH The Prince of Wales.

The aims are stated to be to improve working relations, or interaction, between organisations to strengthen our ability to safeguard and manage the uplands.  The concept behind the project is to gather views from commoners and a range of other interests from a number of commons across England about how better relations can be established.  These will be collated and presented for discussion.  It is a similar concept to the Upland Solutions project that I ran for Scotland's Moorland Forum in 2009-2011.

The other case studies are taking place in the Yorkshire Dales, on the North York Moors, on the Long Mynd in Shropshire and on Dartmoor.  I will be conducting face to face interviews with commoners, and other people I have selected, and then bringing everyone together for a workshop.  I have a local commoner and a representative of the RSPB assisting me with the coordination of the study, and together we will be bringing all the views expressed together into a case study report that will feed into the overall report from the project.

Haweswater is a United Utilities reservoir, which forms part of the water supply for Manchester, and much of the land surrounding the reservoir is managed for United Utilities by the RSPB.  Bampton Common is on the west side of the reservoir and runs over the High Street ridge.  I expect that there will be a large range of interesting issues that influence the management of the common and local views about these issues will provide very valuable input for the project.

This is work that fits very well with the objectives of the Trust, and I am delighted to be able to have some input.  Although in sight of HT HQ, I have not had as much input into The Lake District as I would have liked, but I hope that this work will change this.