Grouse Moor Licencing: the legal mess we always thought it would be

NatureScot caves in to the demands of the shooting industry

To the surprise of no one, NatureScot (the executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government responsible for the country's natural heritage) has caved in to the demands of the shooting industry - trashing the overhyped grouse moor licencing system just months after its implementation.

Licencing was brought in (allegedly) to stop the raptor persecution that underpins the entire grouse shooting industry. Now NatureScot has decided to hugely reduce the area of land affected by the new licensing regime after legal threats from shooting estates and land owners.

Rather than an entire moor being covered by a licence, estates themselves will be able to tell legislators which bits of land they want licences to cover. That could mean (as Raptor Persecution UK noted) just the area around shooting butts rather than the more remote areas ‘over the hill’ where almost all the illegal killing of birds of prey like Hen Harriers and Golden Eagles (by gamekeepers, not the estate’s clients blasting away at grouse from the butts) takes place.

NatureScot said the change was necessary because the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act (which was based on the two-year-long 2019 Werritty Report and which after further years of wrangling and debate was passed by a large majority at Holyrood in March this year) was badly drafted. Why it decided that now is clearly down to pressure from lobbying by wealthy estate owners who never wanted the Act passed in the first place and are doing everything they can to limit its reach. While NatureScot is still crossing its fingers and saying, “We expect the area covered by the licence to be the full extent of the grouse moor“, it has no legal way to enforce that, and only the most gullible civil servant will think for a second that estate owners will allow it to happen.

Mitigation? What mitigation…

NatureScot has tried to suggest it is mitigating this disastrous undermining of the law by introducing a second change which they say “Will allow us to revoke the licence if raptor persecution which is connected to the grouse moor takes place outside of this licensed area“. They have also tried to reassure the public that as part of the licence condition it requires grouse moor managers to take “reasonable steps” to ensure no raptors are persecuted anywhere on their estate.

Who on earth are they kidding? In law’ reasonable’ is open to interpretation and could ‘reasonably’ include an estate manager telling a gamekeeper that it was against the law to kill raptors while tacitly sending him out with a gun to ‘make sure’ a harrier is ‘moved on’. None of this ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ backroom stuff will be written down of course, and try proving in a court of law that what was said in an unrecorded conversation should lead to the withdrawal of a licence. Not a snowball’s chance in Hell of that succeeding.

And what does ‘connected’ mean in practice anyway? Just the land where birds are shot, or the land (in the increasing case of pheasant and partridge shooting on grouse moors) where they are reared and released as well? The land where other activities take place - tourism, forestry, an access road perhaps? Again, try proving distinctions like that in a court.

The fact is that the Muirburn Act was only brought in because of the rampant raptor persecution which has already been illegal for decades but which the estates, the police, and the courts very rarely seem able to prove who is behind. Gamekeepers don’t voluntarily confess, estates don’t hand over employees, and defence lawyers are adept at muddying cases. Protect the Wild said over a year ago that “The entire shooting industry is expert at appealing charges and dragging cases through the courts. Withdrawing an operating licence once it has been issued will be protracted and expensive if not almost impossible.” We can now add, “especially if the public body for administrating the system drives a 4X4 through the legislation…”

Licencing will NOT end raptor persecution

Never forget this weakening of legislation took place in the same week that it was announced that Police Scotland were trying to find out who killed a satellite-tagged Golden Eagle that ‘disappeared’ over a grouse moor ‘wildlife crime hotspot’. Or that an Osprey was found shot in the Glen Doll area on 12 August – the opening day of the grouse shooting slaughter-fest. Or that in March this year a satellite-tagged Hen Harrier, ‘Shalimar’, disappeared in the Angus Glens in circumstances similar to the Golden Eagle - she was the fourth tagged Hen Harrier to have disappeared in the area since 2017.

Grouse shooting relies on the eradication of predators, birds and mammals that have lived on the moors since the last Ice Age. What was needed was not the licencing of an activity that has no place in the midst of crashing biodiversity and a climate crisis, but its closing down. If not that, then at least far better enforcement of existing laws, much more funding for enforcement, investigations, and prosecutions, and courts being empowered to take all wildlife crime far more seriously.

Licencing was always the wrong answer

Protect the Wild has made no secret of its dislike of licencing grouse moors. We have argued many times that:

• A licence will legitimise the grouse shooting industry and officially okay the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Red Grouse every year. That is not acceptable to us.

• Licencing essentially says that the ‘legal’ killing of countless numbers of foxes, corvids, stoats/weasels, and other native animals in traps and snares to support the industry can continue as of now. That is also unacceptable to us.

• We were led to believe that licencing would magically halt raptor persecution, but legislation already exists to protect birds of prey and has done so for over half a century, yet they are being killed on grouse moors as a matter of routine: why should that change when estates shield criminals and it is so difficult to secure a conviction?

• Lastly, proponents of licencing are essentially saying that having committed wildlife crimes for decades, having trashed SSSis and burnt internationally scarce habitats, estates shouldn’t be shuttered but should be offered licences that not only permit all this slaughter and habitat destruction to continue but officially sanctions it!

Nothing we are seeing about the latest licencing fumble alters our view.

Many critics say that the estate owners who orchestrate all this slaughter and harm on their land think ‘they are above the law’. As we have long believed and NatureScot has just proved, it’s more accurate to say that ‘they make the law’ instead…

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