Battle for the uplands

The cessation of grouse-moor management will end a way of life – and perhaps call time for a number of our iconic species, too

- IAN COGHILL

There is a battle raging for the future of our uplands. On the one hand you have the people who own large parts of them, who live and work there and have created what seems to them, and to the millions who visit the moors every year, to be rare and wonderful landscapes. On the other, there is an alliance of NGOs, activists, civil servants and politicians who have theories about everything and experience of little but who are united in the view that they can change these benighted wastelands into a new Eden if only the stupid locals would get out of the way.

The common ground, which existed a few years ago, has almost gone. Where grouse moors are concerned, it has more or less disappeared completely. This is an unmitigated tragedy. We sit on the brink of a catastrophe and the end of a way of life and a system of land management that has existed for the general good for centuries, and yet those who seek to drive change seem prepared to go to any lengths to avoid and demonise the people who own and work the land.

The uplands have always been a special case. Perhaps, because they look wild and uncultivated, they are seen and treated differently from the rest of rural Britain. Perhaps, because they are sparsely populated, with people who, in the main, are more given to thinking than shouting, they are treated as though they have no communities. Whatever the reason, the effects are clear and getting clearer. Governments and, to an even greater extent, government agencies, encouraged by NGOs and special interest groups, are intent on taking charge and sweeping away the old ways to force the recalcitrant inhabitants to conform to a new dogma or, if they can’t, get out.