I’m gunning for trouble, but grouse moors should be subsidised by taxpayers
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Version 0 of 1. It’s easy to imagine that grouse moors involve rich men shooting birds for fun and the countryside becoming a Bermuda Triangle for birds of prey. So how then can it be possible to persuade you that £4m of public subsidy should be paid to the grouse industry? Well, first of all, Friends of the Earth is wrong to suggest that the subsidies given to these estates are for grouse shooting. They are for the sheep management they also carry out. Such details aside, this is still one of the best investments that the state makes on your behalf. Think of it through the eyes of an ethical investor. What are the recipients of the £4m – a penny a month from your pay packet – actually producing? Grouse typically live for two years, spending their entire lives in the wild. The chickens we eat live for just 42 days before being bulk-slaughtered at a rate of 29 birds every second. Our so-called free-range chickens have indoor stocking densities of 13 birds/sq m. Grouse are simply Britain’s ultimate free range food – the most ethical meat you can buy. Creating the ideal conditions for grouse to flourish is the task of thousands of gamekeepers working on 500 grouse moors in Scotland and England. Key to their work is managing the heather, which provides food for the birds and hides their nests from predators. Thousands of acres are seeded for heather, with sheep kept away until the plants are strong enough not to be uprooted. In the spring when the ground is wet and the heather dry, gamekeepers conduct managed burns to stop the heather getting too high. That is because if it does, dangerous wildfires take place which destroy ecosystems and also set fire to the peat beneath, which can then burn for years. As a vital store of CO2, the consequences of that are obvious. The RSPB has been lambasted by international ecologists over its opposition to managed burns for “twisting data”. The heather thrives on wet conditions, so gamekeepers put a lot of effort into keeping the soil damp. This enables peat to regenerate – storing CO2 and reducing the risk of water rushing off the hills into the valleys below. Neither Natural England nor the Commons environment committee have yet to find any evidence that grouse moors have ever caused downstream flooding. When grouse moors are drained for sheep or forestry, the run-off risks are clear. Heather is not just a favoured breeding ground for grouse. Dozens of other ground nesting birds thrive on the purple moors, including birds of prey. The truth that dares not speak its name among bird activists is that grouse moors are critical bird sanctuaries for endangered lapwings, curlews and golden plover. The RSPB’s own scientists have acknowledged that up to five times as many of these birds breed on grouse moors than on other moors, which include their own reserves. Yet even more important than homes for birds are jobs for humans. My team has helped more than a hundred people who work in and around grouse moors to give evidence to parliament on how the visitors pouring into their areas to shoot grouse provide jobs – not just for gamekeepers but also in hotels, restaurants and garages. From taxidermists to taxi drivers and chimney sweeps to rural internet specialists, these workers have been telling MPs how their livelihoods would be at risk if opponents of shooting had their way. Yet I can hear your fears that some gamekeepers go too far in protecting their livelihoods and kill birds of prey like hen harriers – a bird which is common in Scotland but very rare in England. Officials seeking to tackle this problem are aware of a couple of facts that are deeply inconvenient to activists. The first is that no gamekeepers have been convicted for attacking a hen harrier in England for 15 years. The second is that even if some persecution is going on, the reality is more complex, as the RSPB itself is failing to successfully breed hen harriers on the ground it controls in England. Last year only one chick survived on its seven nests. This year only one pair of hen harriers chose to nest on RSPB land. There are problems to manage in the countryside. But your penny a month is achieving a great deal – and is a far lower burden on the taxpayer than the amounts we pour into supporting sheep farming, forestry and windfarms. Questions could also be asked about the value for money provided by the millions the RSPB receives from taxpayers. Defra officials should ask it to give annual data on how many birds breed on its reserves. The truth is that it is spiteful jealousy of the wealth of the rich which is energising the social media campaign against shooting. Heather moorland is rarer than rainforest and Britain has 75% of it. It is not just the taxpayer involved in protecting this precious resource. Rich landowners pour money into moorland to support it – I would much rather they subsidise this unique environment than spend their money on CO2-polluting super yachts swanning around the Med. • Ian Gregory runs the You Forgot The Birds campaign led by Sir Ian Botham, which has been taking on the opponents of grouse shooting in the media and Westminster. His lobbying company Abzed also works on fracking and e-cigarettes |