By Henrietta Appleton, GWCT Policy Officer (England)
The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has just published ‘Sustaining Ecosystems: English Grouse Moors’ which is an audit of the contribution of grouse moor management to society’s wants and needs, as expressed by goals in the Government’s 25 year Environment Plan (25YEP). The audit emphasises the extent to which demands on our uplands have increased over the last 100-200 years; from simply food production to a range of ‘outputs’ such as flood mitigation, carbon storage and recreation, which are commonly termed ‘public goods’.
As a result, public policy now reflects a wider stakeholder interest. Our audit strongly suggested that constraining best practice grouse moor management (GMM) to the extent that it became uneconomic would result in a net loss of public good provision. Yet public policy is currently promoting an alternative upland management system, including rewilding.
In the audit, we assessed the likely nature of ecosystem service provision from the contender alternate land uses: managed wilding, ‘passive’ rewilding, timber, energy production and agricultural intensification - this being the least likely. However much of our assessment of rewilding approaches in particular needed to be subjective.
Lack of rewilding research
Grouse moor management has been researched for 120 years; yet its contribution to ecosystem service provision is not fully understood. Rewilding, both managed and ‘passive’, is substantially less well researched (in the UK) and so it must be risky to base policy on the assumption that its outcomes are better than GMM - or even that it delivers that which is expected. For example, as part of managed rewilding and peatland restoration, cutting is being promoted as an alternative to controlled burning given concerns about carbon emissions and flooding.
Yet there have been few studies that compare the two in terms of ecosystem service delivery. With early results from research by York University suggesting that cutting may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions and flood risk, it would seem that until there is more data and evidence that confirms expected outcomes current public policy direction could generate unintended consequences.
Given the lack of evidence (to date) that these alternative management systems alone would sustain or improve public good provision, it would be more appropriate for policy to accommodate and promote different land management systems in parallel rather than replace a proven system with an unproven one.
Assessing grouse moor management
The value of grouse moor management must not be overlooked. The GWCT’s review and audit demonstrated this. We assessed, using available scientific evidence, the contribution of best practice grouse moor management to the delivery of 25 YEP goals, namely: clean air, clean & plentiful water, thriving plants and wildlife, reduced risk of harm from environmental hazards (flooding, wildfire and tick-borne diseases), and mitigating and adapting to climate change.
In each case we recorded upsides (benefits), downsides, challenges (constraints) and opportunities (future actions in support of net gain). In each case GMM generated at least a net neutral contribution, and in 45% of environmental goods and services assessed a net positive. One of these was reducing the risk of wildfire; an important public good that is, as yet, unrecognised as such.
Wildfire risk and impacts remain a significant consideration in upland policy and are the subject of a recent assessment in the Peak District that makes worrying reading – unless policy accepts that vegetation management through grazing, controlled burning and cutting (where appropriate) is needed alongside re-wetting. Abandonment rewilding may actually be counter-productive in high-risk areas.
More debatable perhaps, given on-going concerns about GMM impacts on raptor conservation, was the assessment that GMM generates a net positive contribution to the targets associated with ‘Thriving Plants & Wildlife’; specifically restoring protected sites, creating wildlife-rich habitat outside protected areas and taking action to recover biodiversity.
We recorded 10 upsides relating to the conservation of habitats, waders and other red-listed species, invertebrates and moths. This included the observation that the hen harrier brood management trial has successfully integrated GMM and hen harrier conservation. Such a success needs to be acknowledged.
However, we also recognized 3 downsides – fewer raptors, less woodland planting and injudicious burning and grazing impacts on habitat composition – and 6 challenges or constraints, not least that current approaches to net zero are emphasizing reducing heather, a globally important habitat, as part of peatland restoration. These downsides and challenges create opportunities and in this regard grouse moor managers need to evidence the co-benefits of GMM through collecting and sharing data and working collaboratively to specifically address 25YEP goals across the upland landscape.
Whilst the lack of evidence of alternative land use system outcomes is a risk to the current and future delivery of goods and services in the uplands, so too is the lack of an updated evidence base for GMM. Current public policy is based on research undertaken over 10 years ago.
Some of it has been the subject of debate within the scientific community with criticisms of methodologies and use of low-quality data from one site and over short timescales. Research papers since then have further increased our knowledge which could be used, for example, to develop sustainable controlled burning practices based on ecologically-driven cycles. There is a need for regular reviews of the evidence base and for policy to adapt.
Conclusion
In conclusion the review finds that moorland ecosystems, many of which are managed more or less for grouse shooting, deliver a net gain in outcomes for society when considered against the framework of the Defra 25 Year Environment Plan. This is a point that moorland managers themselves have not, until very recently, been recognising or recording, probably leading to grouse moors being undervalued and underappreciated.
However, we do find there is room for grouse moor management to do better; and where grouse moor managers address proven criticisms such as with the hen harrier recovery project, other stakeholders should recognize the net gain delivered.
The way forward is to work together to further enhance outcomes that benefit the environment, the economy and society without damaging the shooting incentive which enables these balanced outcomes – it is ‘and’ not ‘or’.