Scottish CA welcomes significant Scottish Government commissioned research on grouse shooting

The Scottish Countryside Alliance welcomes a series of significant reports, commissioned by the Scottish Government, into the socioeconomic and biodiversity impacts of driven grouse shooting, carried out by Scotland's Rural College and the James Hutton Institute.

This research, ahead of the Scottish parliament election in May, marks an important contribution to the debate on the socio-economic importance of driven grouse shooting to Scotland.

Findings included:

1. Grouse shooting has a positive impact on the environment and species conservation

- Landscape management practices, such as muirburn, helps wildlife to prosper.

2. Grouse shooting is good for the local and wider Scottish economy

- Grouse shooting was found to make an important contribution to the local community and economy. Driven grouse shooting creating higher employment benefits than other moorland uses.

3. Grouse shooting is good for rural communities in Scotland

- Grouse shooting was found to be important to the local community as well as the economy, helping with community retention.

4. Driven grouse shooting stands up well compared with alternative uses for the land

- Grouse shooting, as part of a mosaic of land use, plays a key role in delivering economic and environmental policy objectives.

Countryside Alliance Director of Shooting, Adrian Blackmore said:

'This well-timed research, commissioned by the Scottish Government, is most welcome at a time of intense debate on the merits of driven grouse shooting.

'The findings in this report illustrate the significance and importance grouse shooting has to the local economy and community, generating jobs and benefiting whole communities.

'Recently we have seen political parties, like the Scottish Greens, attack rural communities by seeking to abolish key rural industries, and even destroy these precious moorland landscapes with misguided proposals to build houses and plant forests on them. This research highlights that such actions would not only severely damage rural communities economically, but also directly harm the environmental policy objectives driven grouse shooting helps to achieve. The Scottish Government needs to take account of the findings of this important research in its own policy making.'

You can view the reports here.