Mool For You

This month, the Countryside Alliance brings our attention to a new study challenging the RSPB’s case for further restrictions on grouse shooting

- Tim Bonner

A new study by scientists at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) titled ‘An alternative view of moorland management for red grouse Lagopus lagopus scotica’, has publicly taken to task much of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ (RSPB) reasoning for further legislative restrictions on grouse shooting. The GWCT, drawing on their own scientific expertise, is highly critical of the RSPB’s position, stating ‘the case for such actions [further restrictions] is far from watertight’.

No grouse shooting, no moors!

The GWCT draws on a number of published papers that contribute to the ongoing discussion around moorland management, but that were not cited by the RSPB in their most recent article on the subject, a paper entitled ‘Environmental impacts of high-output driven shooting of red grouse Lagopus lagopus scotica’.