Big Highland estates turn away from driven shooting in the name of rewilding

It was over in seconds. High over the grouse moor two hen harriers wheeled slowly around each other before, suddenly, the female darted underneath her mate to catch a freshly caught meal dropped from his talons and took it back to their chicks.

“That was a food pass,” said David Frew, the property manager of Mar Lodge, a vast Highland estate near Braemar in the southern Cairngorms. “You’re really lucky to have seen that.”

On many grouse moors in Scotland, hen harriers struggle to survive. The ground-nesting bird of prey is often shot, trapped or even poisoned to protect valuable grouse stocks from predation. On these shooting estates, the sight of a harrier, eagle or buzzard wheeling overhead would be a sign of failure.

The grouse season starts on Monday with the “glorious 12th”, when moors across the UK will echo to the sharp report of shotguns as grouse are driven into the air by beaters marching in a line through the heather. On these estates, the aim is to shoot several hundred grouse in a day.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A grouse in the Cairngorms. Driven shooting involves killing several hundred birds a day. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

But for the first time in its history one of the main techniques needed for conventional shooting, known as driven grouse shooting, has been banned at Mar Lodge, the UK’s largest national nature reserve, which is owned by the National Trust for Scotland.

Called muirburn, this practice involves burning large strips of heather to create fresh shoots for young grouse. With this major departure in practice, Mar Lodge has joined other Highland estate owners who have replaced driven shooting with a more ecologically minded approach.

Proponents of walked-up shooting, where the grouse breed without any human intervention, say this method is much closer to the Scandinavian and continental model of hunting – a low-impact activity where quarry is shot for the pot, not in their hundreds for a day’s sport.

Its adherents include wealthy Scandinavian estate owners who are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in projects to rewild the Highlands, and gun sports groups which say it can be cheaper and more accessible than driven shooting, an exclusive sport that can cost tens of thousands of pounds a day.

Rewild a quarter of UK to fight climate crisis, campaigners urge Read more

Anders Povlsen, the clothing billionaire who is now Scotland’s largest private landowner, and a keen proponent of rewilding, allows it on his estates at Glenfeshie and Gaick in the Cairngorms.

Thomas MacDonell, the conservation director of Povlsen’s Wildland group of estates, said driven shooting ended at Glenfeshie when the group bought the estate in 2006 and at Gaick to the south-west in 2013.

In Glenfeshie’s heyday in the 1990s, hunters could shoot 2,000 grouse a day. Walk-up shooting means today’s clients – including a party who have booked Glenfeshie this week – may get about 20 birds, on a good day.

Sigrid Rausing, an heiress to the Tetra Pak packaging empire and publisher of the literary magazine Granta, allows it at Coignafearn, her estate in the Monadhliath mountains south of Inverness. So too does her sister Lisbet Rausing, who is rewilding Corrour estate near Rannoch Moor, for her family and friends.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Evidence of previous muirburning by the River Dee at Mar Lodge. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The ethos at Glenfeshie, Gaick, Mar Lodge, Corrour and Coignafearn is simple, said Frew and MacDonell. Heather, montane shrubs and trees are allowed to regenerate, thanks to ruthless culling of red deer, whose numbers have grown to unsustainable levels across the Highlands. Native wildlife such as the mountain hare which are shot on commercial grouse moors are allowed to recolonise, and birds of prey are welcomed.

Their rewilding projects will take 200 years to realise but Frew says they are “not in a rush”.

MacDonell sees their grouse are part of nature’s food chain. “Our grouse are serving an ecological purpose. Eagles need to eat as well,” he says.

Its supporters include Chris Packham, the wildlife film-maker and expert. Ecologists and animal rights campaigners such as Packham are campaigning for the Scottish and UK governments to introduce much stricter controls on driven grouse moors. An expert group chaired by Prof Alan Werritty, an environmental scientist, is finalising a report for the Scottish government which may recommend licensing of estates.

Many campaigners, backed by the Scottish Green party, a coalition of civic and environmental groups called Revive and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds are pressing for licensing – a proposal being vigorously resisted by landowners and pro-shooting conservation bodies.

Opponents of driven shooting argue its environmental costs are too high, partly because large areas of mature heather are regularly burnt to cultivate succulent new shoots for young grouse to feed on. Known as muirburn, it produces the mosaic of rectangular light green patches and dense dark heather which typify driven grouse moors.

Critics argue it produces an artificial landscape. Supporters of intensive shooting such as the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) counter that this technique allows ground-nesting birds such as black grouse, golden plover, lapwing and curlew to prosper where otherwise their numbers would plummet.

Intensively raised grouse are also fed medicated grit, to combat a gut parasite which reduces bag numbers, but most controversially of all, commercial grouse moors need officially sanctioned suppression of crows and ravens, mink, stoats and weasels which all feed on young chicks, and of mountain hare which can carry ticks that feed on grouse.

With that often comes illegal bird of prey persecution: data held by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds shows 558 confirmed cases where eagles, hen harriers, red kites, goshawks and other raptors were unlawfully persecuted across the UK between 2012 and 2017, and many hundreds more which are unconfirmed.

Colin Shedden, the Scottish director of the BASC, rejects many of the complaints about commercial shooting’s environmental impacts, but wishes more estates offered walk-up shooting as it should be far less exclusive and expensive. There are no beaters and gun-loaders to pay, and no expectation of huge bags of game.

“The demand is massive for walk-up, because the vast majority of people who shoot don’t get a chance to shoot grouse,” he said. “We would like to see estates give more opportunities for reasonably priced walk-up grouse shooting. [It would] increase the opportunities for ordinary punters to have a chance.”

• This article was amended on 12 August 2019 to clarify that the practice of muirburning has been banned at Mar Lodge, not driven grouse shooting specifically.