As shooting enthusiasts prepare to take aim on grouse moors across Britain’s uplands next weekend, research has shown that the sport benefits several threatened species of bird.
The study found that moors that are managed for shooting have 24 times as many lapwing, eight times as many golden plover and six times as many curlew as other moors.
Saturday is the Glorious Twelfth, the start of the shooting season for red grouse and renewed hostilities between supporters of shooting, such as Sir Ian Botham, and conservationists including Chris Packham.
The research, which was carried out by the universities of Durham and Newcastle, challenges a claim made by Packham, the wildlife broadcaster and vice-president of the RSPB, that “driven grouse moor management is ecologically disastrous”.
The RSPB is leading a campaign to force owners of grouse moors to obtain licences for their sport because it says that their gamekeepers are killing hen harriers, England’s most endangered bird of prey, which feeds on grouse chicks.
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The research, funded by owners of grouse moors, looked at 104 areas each measuring 1 sq km on 18 upland estates. Half the estates had active gamekeepers who killed foxes, stoats and crows, which prey on the eggs or chicks of ground-nesting birds, and the others had little or no control of predators.
Researchers said that “preliminary results indicate the importance of grouse moors for a number of upland birds, especially waders” and that meadow pipits and other songbirds were less common on shooting moors. They said one explanation could be that heather on shooting moors is burnt to promote new growth on which grouse feed. Pipits appear to prefer the mixture of grassland and heather on less intensively managed moors.
The researchers found no evidence of hen harriers.
Sir Ian said: “There is a glaring disparity between what the RSPB’s Chris Packham says about grouse moors and what the scientists are saying. The scientists have found that grouse moors have vast numbers of endangered birds breeding on them.
“When Packham calls them ‘ecologically disastrous’ and the people who work on them ‘evil’ and even ‘satanic’ then I wonder if he is motivated by jealousy about how grouse moors outperform the RSPB’s reserves.”
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Jeff Knott, head of nature policy at the RSPB, said: “This grouse moor-funded report tells us what we’ve known for some time. Grouse moors are good for grouse. Some other ground-nesting species benefit indirectly while others do not. Most notably hen harriers, which are completely absent.
“The fact that the killing of predators reduces predation is hardly ground-breaking.
“The RSPB seeks a more balanced future for the uplands, where grouse, birds of prey, mountain hares and people can all co-exist and where unsustainable management practices often carried out on intensive grouse moors, such as the illegal killing of hen harriers, are consigned to the past.”