Glorious Grouse – the best prospects for a decade

On the eve of the Glorious 12th – the official start to the red grouse shooting season, more than 150 delegates attended a national conference, which focused on the science that underpins the conservation of our uplands. The message relayed to gamekeepers, moor owners and conservationists attending the conference was that the prospects for the forthcoming red grouse shooting season are the best for well over a decade.

The conference presented the latest scientific research carried out by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust; particularly highlighting that science based game-management is delivering some of the most effective conservation in our uplands.

Dr David Baines, head of the Trust's upland research, said, "In many areas, this is going to be a glorious grouse season, but for other areas range contraction of red grouse caused by a burgeoning number of parasites is becoming a real problem."

Over the past 30 years Trust scientists using pointer dogs to help accurately pin-point the location of grouse, have been carrying out grouse counts on more than 250 moors across England, Scotland and Wales. Delegates to the conference heard that this long-term data is essential in helping to develop techniques such as using sheep as 'tick mops' to reduce the impact of tick diseases that can seriously affect humans, grouse and other wildlife. With winters becoming warmer and wetter, the parasitic strongyle worm is also becoming an increasingly worrying problem.

Dr Baines explains, "Red grouse can suffer huge population crashes because of the parasitic strongyle worm. In order to maintain our grouse stocks, counter-intuitively, shooting older birds on the moor is a good way of controlling the disease as they often have very heavy worm burdens that will infect younger, healthier birds."

But the scientists warned delegates that any further loss of grouse shooting would be a devastating blow to upland conservation.

Dr Baines said, "Our long-term monitoring clearly shows that management carried out on our grouse moors benefits a whole host of other species as well as increasingly rare and precious heather habitats. The loss of grouse shooting, which acts as an economic driver to protect our moorland habitats, could result in further loss of declining wader birds such as golden plover, curlew and lapwing as well as other species such as merlin, one of our smallest birds of prey."

Rare black grouse, have benefited enormously from the management carried our by moorland managers and gamekeepers. Dr Phil Warren, who leads black grouse recovery in the north Pennines said, "The North Pennines is surrounded by active grouse moors and black grouse are one of the few Biodiversity Action Plan species to hit their conservation target ahead of time because of the management techniques practiced by moorland managers particularly habitat management, heather burning and targeted predator control of species such as stoats – a major predator of black grouse chicks and eggs."

The conference was chaired by the Trust's Chairman Mr Mark Hudson. Summing up the scientific presentations, he said, "Heather moorland is rapidly disappearing across Europe and Britain's grouse moors are one of its last strongholds. In countries like the Netherlands, where there is no grouse shooting, 95% of its former cover has been lost.

"Grouse shooting makes a huge contribution to nature conservation in the uplands and the financial investment in moorland management for grouse provides a highly sustainable form of land use in contrast to unmanaged upland areas. In the spring grouse moors are alive with peeping waders and displaying grouse, birds that are fast disappearing from the rest of the country. So it is essential that upland policy and land management practices are based on good science if we are to achieve the right balance and conserve and enhance these areas for the future. That is what the Trust's upland research programme is all about."