Heather and Grouse

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 On the moors the heather is blooming!


The upland moors hereabouts are full of heather. There are three main types of heather common on the moors. This one is Ling  (Calluna vulgaris). The other two are Bell Heather (Erica cinerea) and Cross Leaved Heath (Erica tetralix).

A lot of land near here is managed for grouse shooting. Heather is a crucial element in this. The large estates (thousands of hectares to an estate sometimes) stock their moors with grouse chicks. Grouse are native to this environment but in order to have the density of grouse so that each client can shoot lots of them the levels of stocking go well beyond natural population levels. This is a lucrative business for the estates who may charge more than £1000 per person per day for shooting. The grouse need a patchwork of heather at different ages. Young heather with buds to eat, and old heather thick enough to shelter in.  In order to achieve this the estate managers burn strips of heather in the Autumn in a controlled way to ensure that there is newly regenerating heather the following Spring. On a dry day in the off season it can look as if the hills are on fire. Heather burning is often challenged by environmentalists for the amount of carbon this releases into the atmosphere.
Grouse moors do more damage than this. 40 years ago landowners could access grants (through the EU) to allow them to "improve" their land for heather by digging drains to dry it out. This process certainly helped the heather but had the result of drying the peat bogs which both releases carbon into the atmosphere and increases the rate of rain run off so that there were more instances of flooding in the valleys. With the symptoms of climate change here being severe winter floods there is now an initiative to "slow the flow." These same landowners are now applying for grants to block up drains to restore peat bogs. I have heard of cases where the same digger drivers that did the drainage 40 years ago are now being paid to block the drains!
Other issues with grouse moors are that they lead to a nett reduction in biodiversity. Some less enlightened estates encourage gamekeepers to keep predation of young grouse chicks under control by the illegal shooting of raptors such as hen harriers and the trapping of carnivores such as stoats and weasels. Sorry - a bit of a rant! I am prompted by the fact that the start of the grouse shooting season is the "glorious 12th" of August which was last week. It would be nice to think that the new system of agricultural subsidy (publication expected soon) will be a bit more enlightened but I'm not holding my breath.

Diary
A hedgehog on the lawn last night. The tawny owl keeps reappearing on his daytime perch in the orchard (probably the same individual that was shrieking outside my bedroom window last night!




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