Non-essential work continued on grouse moors despite widespread calls for it to end but now a temporary stop to muirburn will be enforced by the law.
AS the Covid 19 crisis continues the call for muirburn to temporarily end on grouse moors has been ignored.
Revive, RSPB Scotland and even Scottish Land and Estates called for it to cease to ease the burden on emergency services and to reduce any possible strain on public services. Muirburn is not ‘essential work’ so why was it still happening?
Muirburn, the practice of burning heather in patches and strips, is said to make the environment more suitable for red grouse, to maintain their unnaturally high numbers for sport shooting. The tall heather provides concealment from predators, younger heather (regrowth after burning) provides adult grouse with more nutritious shoots for food, and short heather provides greater insect availability for chicks.
The more grouse that are shot in the shooting season (August 12th – December 10th) the more the shooting estate is worth. In fact, a 2019 Scottish Government report showed that for every brace of grouse killed, around £5,000 is added to the capital value of a driven grouse estate.
There is a huge pressure to do everything possible to maximise the numbers of grouse and this leads to large-scale environmental damage and the unnecessary killing of tens of thousands of Scotland’s animals which are said to threaten their unnatural population density.
The industry’s lack of voluntary restraint with muirburn is yet more evidence that it needs strong legislative measures to tackle the unsustainable practices associated with driven grouse shooting.
The Scottish Government’s commissioned report on grouse moor management by Professor Alan Werritty was published last December and it recommended a licensing scheme for all muirburn. Revive agrees with this approach but the terms of any license are of key importance.
4% of Scotland’s landmass is regularly burnt every year on grouse moors and a huge proportion of this is on areas of deep peat – an immensely important natural resource for carbon sequestration. Peatland in Scotland stores almost 25 times as much carbon as all trees and plants in the UK and muirburn threatens this greatly – when damaged, peat can actually emit carbon.
Muirburn is just one of many unsustainable practices which take place on grouse moors. Decision-makers will soon have to decide if a few extra grouse for sport shooting are worth the environmental cost. Ending all muirburn for grouse shooting would also reduce the burden on the government to police large land areas if muirburn for grouse shooting was otherwise allowed to continue under licence.
Therefore, it’s profoundly clear that in these circumstances a licence to muirburn should never be granted and that muirburn for any conservation reasons should only be carried out under a fully transparent licence system to stop loopholes being exploited by grouse moor managers.
Yesterday Andy Wightman MSP proposed an amendment to the Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill (Emergency Bill) in Parliament, calling for an end to muirburn for the remainder of the season. It was passed by a large majority of MSPs which is very welcome. This is important because it serves as a reminder that real change needs to be enforced, not based on voluntary goodwill where actors often ignore best practice or exploit loopholes when they have a vested interest.
Moreover, it shows that when there is the political will to tackle a crisis, common sense can prevail. Considering the world also faces a climate crisis Revive calls on MSPs to continue their show of leadership and end muirburn on grouse moors once and for all.
