News

NO GROUSE ABOUT THIS YEAR’S GROUSE

1st August, 2003

2003 Grouse Shooting Prospects from the Moorland Association

Fine weather throughout the Spring and early Summer nesting season in the North has produced encouraging numbers of red grouse for this season, which starts on 12th August, the Moorland Association reported at the Game Fair today (1st August). Grouse numbers are up by an average of 25% on last year and conditions have been ideal for other rare moorland fringe game birds such as the black grouse and grey partridge.

Said Simon Bostock, Chairman of the Moorland Association: “As grouse are a completely wild bird, moor owners carry out careful counts prior to the start of the season to make sure that they have a shootable surplus of birds – leaving enough healthy young stock for following years. Strong populations are very good news for moor owners and the local economy that relies on income from shooting customers. It is good keepering, along with the fine weather, that has produced a good year for most moors and, crucially, also helped the breeding success of some of our most threatened species”.

Numbers in most of Yorkshire will be well up on last year, with good broods reported from Nidderdale, Wharfedale, Airedale, the North York Moors, and the Yorkshire Dales National Park. North Durham and Northumberland are looking to have a much better season than last year, which was badly affected by adverse Spring weather. Localised rainstorms in mid-May damaged brood sizes in some areas of South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, where a similar season to 2002 is expected. Following historical trends, populations in the Peak Park were expected to dip this year, but it is reported that brood sizes are holding firm.


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Grouse Prospects/2
In contrast to 2002, stocks are at last building from an extremely low base in the West of the country with doubling of both breeding pairs and brood sizes observed in places in Lancashire. In West Cumbria, where there have been several bad years, signs of improvement are encouraging – not least due to heather regeneration following Foot and Mouth.

The Heather Trust reports that grouse in Scotland are ‘as good as we have seen for a long, long time’. Good quality early broods are present in the High Cairngorms, Morayshire, South Grampians and West Perthshire and the Lammermuirs, with Dumfrieshire and South West Scotland as good as last year or better. At the start of the year, some estates were short of breeding stock, but this has recovered across the board.

The population of red grouse in Wales remains precariously low after a severe crash two decades ago. Virtually no driven grouse shooting occurs in the country, which used to support some of the most famous grouse moors in Britain. However, plans for reducing the overgrazing pressures and returning heather to the hills are in the pipeline and management of the moorland fringe, by some major estates, has resulted in a spectacular doubling of black grouse over five years.

Many other birds that rely on the moors to breed are also doing well this year including golden plover, lapwing, curlew, snipe, merlin, nightjar, dunlin, wheatear and redshank. The rare hen harrier, while slightly increasing its breeding success on last year, is not recovering as well as the Moorland Association had hoped. However, recent reports suggest that there are nests of which the monitoring agencies were not aware. Uncontrolled Spring moorland fires, lit by tenant graziers, adversely affected some of the bird’s prime breeding grounds in the Trough of Bowland. There is also evidence that foxes have taken eggs and a freak storm is also known to have completely washed away one nest.
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Note to editors
75% of the remaining heather moorland in the world is found in Britain and forms the habitat for the red grouse – found no where else but the UK. Grouse shooting is responsible for conserving both heather and red grouse. It is the aim of the Moorland Association to ensure that this traditional management of heather continues for future generations.