"Moorland management has survived two world wars and commercial forestry, but it's politics that currently presents its greatest challenge," writes Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, Tim Bonner, for the Shooting Times, at the beginning of the shooting season.
A lucky few of us were out on the moors last week chasing that extraordinary quarry, the red grouse. I was in the South of Scotland walking up a few brace with my grandfather’s old Westley Richards and a good layer of factor 50. Not many ever get to shoot a grouse, and for those of us who do it is usually a rare and special treat, but grouse shooting has become a totemic issue because it illustrates all that is good about game management, and all that is bad about rural politics.
The development of moorland management to produce greater numbers of grouse in the mid-19th century had a significant environmental and social impact on much of upland Britain. Heather moorland had only previously had value as low-grade grazing, mostly for sheep. However, there was a transformative discovery which established it was possible to produce large surpluses of birds that could be harvested by shooting. This was possible by rotational burning of heather to provide a mosaic of new heather growth to feed grouse and longer vegetation for them to nest in alongside systematic control of predators which prey on grouse. The subsequent development of driven shooting only made the management of moorland for grouse even more attractive.
From the North coast of Scotland to the Brecon Beacons, upland management for grouse developed on nearly every patch of available heather. In the days before World War I, with a ready supply of rural labour to work as gamekeepers and, to modern eyes, a broad approach to predator management, large numbers of grouse could be produced even at the margins of their range.
Grouse shooting recovered after the first war, but World War II saw a collapse in the number shot as nearly all management ceased and whilst there was some subsequent recovery in numbers there was a further decline from the 1970s as a result of commercial forestry, greater grazing pressure and an increase in predator numbers. By the end of the 20th century, management for grouse had retreated to the most productive areas with moors in Wales and the far North of Scotland no longer able to sustain shooting. There had been something of a renaissance in these core areas since the turn of the century, but a series of bad breeding seasons since 2016 has put somewhat of a dampener on recent years.
The reason that grouse shooting remains so important is that management for grouse creates a perfect environment for a whole range of species, especially ground nesting birds, which are increasingly rare in nearly every other habitat. Walk through somewhere like Teesdale in the spring (sticking to footpaths with your dog on a lead) and you will experience birdlife and biodiversity which it is almost impossible to find anywhere else in Britain. This is the result of active, and often quite intensive, management.
Yet, sadly, many who claim to be environmentalists oppose grouse moor management on principle. Some because they are signed up to the cult of 'rewilding' and cannot accept human intervention in natural processes even where they deliver obvious results. Others, even more bizarrely, because grouse shooting has become a cypher for wealth and privilege and the politics of who shoots grouse is apparently more important than the environmental and social benefits that result. The ensuing attacks on grouse shooting are fairly relentless, but the evidence for moorland management only grows and gives the Countryside Alliance and our partner organisations the ammunition to fight them off. This was emphasised in the recent Westminster Hall debate on a ban on grouse shooting which, even in a challenging new parliament, sent out a resounding message about the environmental, economic and social importance of grouse shooting and moorland management.
The news from the moors this summer has been hopeful in some areas with a recovery from recent bad seasons predicted where the heather beetle has not one serious damage. This is of huge importance to many marginal rural communities which are sustained by the income that flows from shooting, and for the continued diversity of our uplands. Those lucky few of us who ventured onto the moors last week and will do in the coming months can therefore do so in the full knowledge that they are engaged in the most sustainable of activities.
This article was first published on 20 August 2025.