Do Britain’s uplands need more management, less management, or simply a different kind?
Recorded at The Game Fair 2026, Richard Negus and George Browne are joined by Dr Nick Hesford and Dr Felix Meister of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust to examine the red grouse and the much larger argument surrounding its habitat.
The conversation ranges across heather moorland, muirburn, wildfire, legal predator control, grouse disease and GWCT’s long-running research into falling breeding productivity. Nick and Felix set out the Trust’s interpretation of the evidence and explain why they see red grouse management as a driver of benefits for curlew, lapwing, golden plover, black grouse and rural communities.
They also confront the politics around grouse shooting, the idea that management is inherently bad, and the difficulty of getting competing camps to look at the same landscape together. Rewilding, ecosystem services and changing Scottish policy all enter the discussion, along with the deceptively simple question beneath it: if nobody manages the moor, what happens next?
In this episode
- Why heather moorland is rare, valuable and politically contested
- What GWCT’s long-term red grouse monitoring is beginning to reveal
- Muirburn, peat, carbon and the distinction between prescribed fire and wildfire
- Predator control, the Otterburn experiment and ground-nesting birds
- Louping ill, strongyle worms, ticks and grouse breeding productivity
- The class politics surrounding grouse shooting and conservation
- Rewilding, ecosystem services and the reality that every land use creates winners and losers
- How joint monitoring can bring gamekeepers and raptor workers onto common ground
Links
- GWCT guide to conservation and grouse moors
- The Moorland Balance — GWCT’s detailed guide to grouse and moorland management
- GWCT’s 2026 red grouse research update
- Predator control and moorland birds — the Otterburn experiment
- GWCT Scotland team — Nick Hesford and Felix Meister
- GWCT Scotland Moor Walks 2026
- Future Moors and changing upland policy
- NatureScot guidance on muirburn licensing
- Scottish Government independent review of grouse moor management — the Werritty Report
Credits
Presented by Richard Negus and George Browne
Edited and Produced for SideCountry by Amy Green.
DISCLAIMER
Views are those of individual speakers and do not necessarily represent SideCountry, its presenters, contributors, partners or sponsors. For general information and entertainment only. Laws, seasons, access and guidance change; check official sources, obtain permission and act within your competence.
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain minor errors.
Richard Negus: Hello everyone. We are on day one at The Game Fair at Ragley Hall and George Browne and I are secreted out of the back of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust stand and we're very, very pleased to have with us today Nick and Felix from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust to talk more about the red grouse. Nick, would you first of all let the listeners know who you are and what it is that you do?
Dr. Nick Hesford: Thanks, Richard. I'm Nick Hesford and I'm the director for the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust in Scotland. So I oversee all of our work, our research and our advisory and our policy work north of the border. But prior to that, I worked as a scientist with our upland research team, specifically studying red grouse, mountain hare and wading birds.
Richard Negus: Fantastic. Felix, tell us a bit about yourself.
Felix Meister: Yeah, so I'm the senior advisor at the GWCT in Scotland and the remit of our team, the way I see it, is to take the research that the trust has produced over the years and use it to inform stakeholders at all levels, from policy down to land managers on the ground, and promote best practice.
George Browne: And for listeners who are not familiar with the GWCT and what you do, could you just give us a very quick potted overview of what the organisation does and how you're funded and all that sort of thing?
Dr. Nick Hesford: Yeah, well, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust's a world-leading conservation scientific body. And we're fairly unique as a conservation charity in the UK because we don't own or manage nature reserves. We work with 70% of the UK, which is privately owned, privately managed, because in order to have successful conservation at scale, you need to be able to work with those people who are managing the farms, the estates, and our uplands.
George Browne: Yes. What is the figure for the amount of land that is managed, as it were, for nature exclusively, you know, reserves and that sort of thing? Do you know that number off the top?
Dr. Nick Hesford: I don't know that number off the top of my head.
George Browne: I think I saw in some of the literature this morning, it's around 10%, something like that, of the landmass of the UK, which isn't very much.
Dr. Nick Hesford: No. Nature reserves absolutely have their place, but they need to be connected in the landscape if you're going to have successful conservation.
Richard Negus: So that probably leads us rather perfectly into it. Am I correct in saying that heather moorland is a very rare habitat?
Dr. Nick Hesford: Heather moorland is, we know it's globally rare.
Felix Meister: Well, it was something like 70% heather moorland worldwide is in the UK.
Dr. Nick Hesford: But that figure's contested, I'd say that.
George Browne: It depends on whether you call it upland heather moorland or whatever, doesn't it? But what we can say is that there's a lot of it here in the UK and that it is a really important ecosystem and quite an unusual one.
Richard Negus: So why is this rare habitat, which we know we have a lot of here in the UK, such a contested area when one sees some of the figures that GWCT presents on species numbers? Where are the pinch points? What are the conflicts that are going on up there?
Dr. Nick Hesford: Good question, Richard. I think there are a number of areas of conflict in the uplands and not all of them are around conservation. But if you take, for example, muirburn, the science is contested. There is science to say that burning can be good for the environment and good for carbon sequestration, but also other science that says muirburn causes a net release of carbon. But where we find the difference in that particular instance is over the time frame in which these studies have looked at something like muirburn When you look at muirburn over a genuine cycle, so 10 to 15 years, we see a net carbon store rather than a release. A lot of research that says muirburn releases carbon into the atmosphere tends to be done over a three-year cycle, because that is the funding mechanism for most universities in the UK because it's PhD funding. So that's where you see that difference. But actually, if you look over the actual cycle, we tend to see a net carbon capture, because it's producing fresh heather shoots, fresh growth, which then capture carbon in the process.
Richard Negus: So it's largely a carbon issue. So Felix, as you would put your scientist's hat on, from what I see from when I've been recently researching my next book up there, I'm seeing to my layman's eye more wildlife on managed moors, yet we hear the narrative that to not burn is better for carbon. Is there a conflict, do you believe, between people who are managing habitats for biodiversity and people who are managing habitats more with a carbon view on? Is there almost a conflict?
Felix Meister: I don't think there is at all, to be honest, Richard. I don't think there is. And we've got several studies to show, A, that, for example, managing heather moorland through burning benefits certain plant species that are particularly invested or particularly active in peat formation such as sphagnum mosses. So burning does help promote these mosses by reducing the heather canopy and letting light reach the ground level for mosses to thrive and be more actively involved in peat formation than it would otherwise be. But at the same time, we also have other research suggesting that some of the most vulnerable bird species thrive in a more structurally diverse habitat, managed through burning for instance. So they go hand in hand I would say.
George Browne: And burning is a, if you'll forgive the pun, a bit of a hot topic at the moment because huge parts of the uplands all over the UK are on fire. But that's not the only management tool that is used in the upland. And so can we talk a little bit about some of the other contentious practices, so predator control for example. What does your research say about predator control in the uplands and what impact does it have?
Dr. Nick Hesford: We know predator management is hugely important in the uplands. We had a 10-year study, the Otterburn project, which looked specifically at this, where we looked at sites where predators were managed and sites where they weren't. Then we swapped the management on those sites. What we saw, without a doubt, was an increase in the numbers of vulnerable wading birds, black grouse as well in those areas. It is a really vital conservation tool. Interestingly, I think you may have seen a paper published by the RSPB a few years ago and it concludes that predator management is not an important factor in the protection or conservation of waders, particularly curlew. What they actually meant was inadequate predator management is not an important factor. It's really important that we have the full suite of predator management techniques available to us in order to deliver successful conservation. And that's really important in the uplands. And the position we're in Scotland at the moment, we've recently lost snaring, two years ago, I think, as a conservation land management tool, which has been so important, particularly where you have isolated moors that are operating on their own. You have predators there that need control.
Richard Negus: Felix, we've talked about key factors such as heather management and predator control. What else is integral to the well-being of the biodiversity of the uplands?
Felix Meister: Well, one thing that is a huge part of our work, especially in August and September, is to assist with health and disease monitoring in grouse. That's another factor that sort of management with a focus on grouse will heavily rely on because grouse are susceptible to a variety of parasites and viruses, strongyle worms, for instance, which affect the digestive system, or the tick-borne louping ill virus, which has a very high mortality rate in grouse chicks and all these things, especially in combination, can have a huge, huge impact on grouse. With louping ill, we're also talking about ticks and tick control, effective tick management, which is not just for grouse at the end of the day. Things like Lyme disease, for instance, are increasingly affecting humans. Dogs have recently died from louping ill in Scotland.
Richard Negus: Gosh, I didn't know that.
Felix Meister: Yes, three dogs last year. It's an increasing problem. I think this year in particular, ticks have been extremely prevalent. We've seen them everywhere. So that is an increasingly important aspect of that level of management as well, which relies on sheep grazing on the hill and regular treatment with acaricides.
Richard Negus: Okay. In Scotland, you have a more open access policy for hill walkers there than we perhaps do in England. Focusing on grouse: because I do a lot with grey partridge, I often say if we look after the grey partridge, we see that they are a barometer species. You get the grey partridge right, everything else is right on the farm. Is that a similar thing with the red grouse? And if we get the red grouse right, is it also better for people using the moors?
Felix Meister: Well, people perhaps, but certainly I would subscribe to the idea that grouse are also very much an indicator species, much like grey partridge are for farmland in the lowlands. I would say red grouse are an indicator species for the health of moorland habitat. Because if grouse are thriving, it stands to reason that red-listed curlew, lapwing, golden plover, merlin, hen harrier, all these species will also thrive. And many other things, not just birds, but also plants, mountain hares, all these things.
George Browne: There's no such thing as a problem that exists in isolation, is there? A disease will affect more than one species. Am I right in saying that you guys have been doing some research into the sort of whole life cycle of the grouse, of the red grouse, and what the challenges are at different moments in that life cycle?
Dr. Nick Hesford: GWCT has been monitoring red grouse for the last 45 years. And we've done that consistently, monitoring the same sites across England and Scotland in the same way, using pointing dogs to look at how many pairs there are and to look at how well they breed into the summer. And we can use that to advise estates on their shooting programme. What's been apparent from that data set, and it's a unique data set that we have over the last 10 to 15 years or so, is that there's been an apparent decline in the productivity of grouse. And that's happened on moors which have been pretty intensively managed, as well as those that are less intensively managed. And moors where they have high prevalence of diseases such as louping ill and strongylosis, as well as moors that have very little of those diseases. Some of the most recent crashes that we've seen have happened across moorland throughout the UK, regardless of its management. And we can't really point to a single factor as to what's driven those declines. And so it was apparent that we needed to come up with a new research programme that looked at all these factors that we know impact grouse and those that we don't know, to look at how they're related and how they interact to drive breeding productivity. The hope is that we'll be able to look at one or more issues that we can then advise gamekeepers and land managers on so they are in the future able to produce a consistent, sustainable surplus of grouse.
George Browne: The red grouse in the UK is a unique species, right? It's related to, but different from the willow grouse on the continent. So it's always struck me as a bit odd that there isn't more focus on this species from a scientific perspective, given that it is unique to the British Isles.
Felix Meister: It is well researched, but it is also very elusive. It is very enigmatic. I think that's a fair statement, isn't it?
Richard Negus: Do you think, Felix, one of the things that I remember, a farmer in my neck of the woods, we applied for some funding to do some grey partridge conservation work, and it was overturned in favour of some orchids. The farmer who put the application in, he said, the problem is, in inverted commas, that the grey partridge is a Tory bird. And I suppose by that he slightly means it is the logo of the GWCT, for example. Do you think that, as George just said, it's unique to us? Is it because those who most overtly seek to increase its numbers are chaps possibly in Tweed, possibly with a slightly plummy voice who would quite like to shoot them? Do you think it almost suffers as well as benefits from that support that it gets?
Felix Meister: Most certainly. I mean, I think that sort of class and political angle does inform the debate to a huge degree, and it's always perceived as elitist grouse shooting and grouse moor management and all that, because the sort of the argument against it is very much focused on the shooting aspect of it and on the kind of people who have access to it who can afford a day's grouse shooting, which is obviously not cheap. But what our science is trying to focus on is that this is really just a side effect of the management that's happening. The shooting happens on only a few days a year; for the rest of the year the management does all sorts of other things which are hugely beneficial to all sorts of other species as well. Much like grey partridge. I mean, some people have the privilege of shooting grey partridges, but the management that makes that possible is a much more important part of things, isn't it? Yeah.
Richard Negus: One thing Matt Ridley said when he won his gold at the Purdy Awards was he wanted to thank the red grouse on behalf of the black grouse because their loss was the black grouse's gain. I mean, do you think that is possibly something whereby all the science you have done, and that has been done over the last 45 years, clearly indicates that well-managed grouse moors have a wider biodiversity to them. Why aren't more people understanding that?
Felix Meister: It's very difficult to reach certain audiences. We've been finding this time and again, I think. And we've been trying to work harder at this. So we've organised events targeted at the general public, trying to get people to come to managed grouse moors. We had four of these in April. We want people to see it to understand it: to show a recent [unclear], show a recent patch of muirburn and see how the underlying moss layer is completely unaffected by the fire. Show predator control in action, and show all the thought that goes into preventing non-target captures, for instance. Things like that, show grit trays, show how medication is contained so there's no environmental contamination. And it's crucial you also experience the wildlife in April on a managed moor.
George Browne: So this is taking people up onto the moor to—
Felix Meister: See all this with their own eyes rather than just being told about it. And we've had really good feedback, we've had good turnout, but it could have been much better. Everyone is sitting in their camps. Reaching audiences you're not already reaching, and people you're not already speaking to, is a real challenge.
Dr. Nick Hesford: I mean, sort of the level of knowledge that we'll get at these walks is people will come on a walk and they won't understand before they get there that grouse are actually very different to pheasant and partridge and that they haven't been released. All the management that goes into it is into supporting the breeding population. But it's interesting that people will still take a stance on grouse and grouse management without even having that basic level of understanding.
Richard Negus: Do you think, I mean, you're up there quite literally at the coal face or the heather face?
George Browne: Peat face.
Richard Negus: Peat face. How important is it to those isolated rural communities, the people who live there? How important are the moors to them? How important is it to have a sustainable population of grouse?
Dr. Nick Hesford: I mean, it's absolutely vital. Particularly in Scotland, some of these communities just wouldn't exist. The schools, the post office, the local shops, the butchers, they just wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the sporting interests on the estates. And grouse is a massive part of that.
George Browne: And what would happen to the biodiversity if those estates ceased doing the management? Because as you said before, the management is for the grouse. That's the driver and the wider biodiversity is the beneficiary. So what happens if we stop burning, for example, if we lose more predator control options?
Dr. Nick Hesford: We know exactly what will happen because we've done the science and you'll lose species. You'll lose curlew, lapwing and golden plover. In our work down at Otterburn, we saw a local extinction of things like black grouse. So we will see a dramatic impact on the biodiversity. And it happens quite quickly. I mean, we look at areas of Scotland that used to be well-managed grouse moors down in Dumfries and Galloway, for example. In fact, one moor down there, I think, still holds the record bag for grouse in Scotland. Now we can't find them. You lost the grouse management and the grouse interest; you lost your wading birds with that. We've lost mountain hare in those areas. So these species become locally extinct in some cases. So we know what happens. Just trying to get people to understand that is one of the difficult jobs that we have.
Richard Negus: We've talked as much about the fact that we can see the science and the science is both obvious and it's also intricate as well. If you were given a pot of money or access to more open channels, what fundamental message would you give to the average citizen of the British Isles when it comes to the state of the uplands and what the uplands actually need if they are to retain a decent level of biodiversity and abundance?
Felix Meister: I think maybe Nick has his own views, but I would say there are a lot of idealistic visions of the uplands out there and what they should look like and what they ought to look like and what they think it may have looked like at some point in the past. But I think at this point in time, the uplands need management. If we don't manage them, we'll lose them. I think it's as easy as that. Not managing heather, for instance, means building up a fuel load that can go up in flames in devastating wildfire events, as we have seen on quite a dramatic scale this year and last year. And these wildfires are nothing like muirburn. They're burning deep into the peat layer and they release masses of carbon. They might cause erosion on slopes. They're absolutely devastating. That is just one example. If we don't manage it, we'll lose the habitat altogether in the long run.
Dr. Nick Hesford: Yeah, I think one of the biggest things I would like to get across to the general public is that you may not like what's happening in the uplands, you may not know anything about it, you may not care to know anything about it, but most people are benefiting from the ecosystem services that are delivered through that management, whether it's through cleaner water, whether it's through carbon sequestration, or whether it's through the biodiversity that we know has a huge impact for social reasons as well. That's the message I'd like to get across. But being able to do that, you know, often, when doing podcasts like this or running our own events, we tend to be preaching to the converted. We need to work out a way of getting to those individuals who wouldn't ordinarily listen to it. And I should say, I mean, I started my journey with the GWCT. I was a zoology graduate, interested in conservation, never held a gun in my life before, never shot. And I do now, I do a bit of stalking, I do a bit of shooting where I can, but that's because I saw that as a way to get to conservation, a way of really delivering for conservation.
George Browne: I think one of the biggest misconceptions, or perhaps just a general view, is that management equals bad. I think there is this notion that in some way if management is occurring it's because there's something wrong or that the management itself is doing something bad. I don't know if you would agree that there isn't really anywhere in this country or these islands that is unmanaged in that sense. Do you come across that, this idea that management is inherently a bad thing or an indicator of something being wrong?
Felix Meister: Well, there is. I think there's a widespread idea that sort of management prevents a sort of ecological restoration that would happen otherwise, return to the Caledonian forest or these things, which is, of course, very romanticised. It's a bit of a fallacy really at the end of the day. There is a lot of palaeoecological science suggesting that woodland started disappearing from the uplands long before substantial human intervention occurred. So I think all that is slightly sort of constructed. But yes, I think you're absolutely right. Management as a bad thing is something that we should probably scale back a bit. This is a very widespread idea out there.
Dr. Nick Hesford: I've been with the trust now for nearly 10 years, but prior to that, I was managing a rewilding site in the Scottish Borders. And you might think that sort of management, managing a rewilding site is an oxymoron to some, but it does require management. It's the tree planting, the deer control. But those rewilding sites aren't unmanaged; it's simply management of a different kind, with different outcomes. I mean, we saw on that particular site an increase in some warbler species during the time that it was being rewilded. But we also saw the extinction of black grouse. So you have winners and losers in all sorts of management.
George Browne: Just to play devil's advocate though for a moment, would a rewilder say, yes, we might have to do some management at the beginning, but we hope to scale that management back over time and be able to be hands off. Or do you think that is not really a plausible approach?
Dr. Nick Hesford: I think you're right. Some might say that, but in my mind, you know, rewilding, we hear it said all the time, it's different things, different people. I mean, rewilding can happen on, you know, an active farm in, you know, particularly in the little corner of that farm as much as it can on a moor that has been taken up and repurposed for tree planting or whatever happens to be.
Richard Negus: We've touched on this a couple of times now: quite frequently semantics seem to create friction. It is also a slightly political view. And I can understand why politicians like this view of rewilding, because as it's been sold by some, it was shut the farm gate and run away. And the politician would think, well, that sounds a lot cheaper than having a team of scientists, experts, skilled gamekeepers and land managers involved with it. I'll go for the cheap option, thank you very much. So it does strike me that possibly, am I correct in thinking that, on top of all the natural challenges that the poor old grouse has, you've also got the challenges of policy.
Dr. Nick Hesford: Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Look, one of the research projects we're looking to undertake in conjunction with the Heather Trust is one that we call Future Moors. And this project is specifically designed to look at the ecosystem service delivery and also the disbenefits of traditional moor management and then we'll model that to look at how that might change under current and potential future policy scenarios and climate so that we can say to policy makers, if you're going to go down this road or make this decision, this is the impact that it will have. Is that what you want?
George Browne: You've used this phrase a couple of times, ecosystem services. Can you just go into a bit of detail about what you mean by that?
Dr. Nick Hesford: So these are the services that are delivered through the environment.
Richard Negus: To Joe Public.
Dr. Nick Hesford: To Joe Public, yeah. They can be cultural or ecological, for example, biodiversity. You have provision of clean water that's delivered through moorland, carbon sequestration. So it's the services that are delivered through the environment, I suppose.
George Browne: It struck me while we've been speaking that these are emotive spaces that we're talking about. There are strong views on either side, but it strikes me that nearly all of the time everybody is really aiming for the same outcomes, which is healthier ecosystems, stronger rural communities, and so on and so forth. So how do we narrow that space between what could be described as two opposing sides? How do we bring people to try and work more collaboratively on this rather than fighting quite so much.
Felix Meister: Well, that's very difficult, isn't it? Because people are very entrenched in their positions and a lot of it comes around to ideology. But I think in Scotland we're quite lucky because I think the Scottish Government, NatureScot, they've taken a good role in recent years in sort of bringing everyone together and discussing these things. There was a bit of a learning curve there as well. If you take muirburn, for instance, which is now regulated in Scotland under a licensing system. But I think they brought everyone to the table and discussed what they wanted to achieve and how to achieve it with muirburn code and these licences. But I think there was a lot of progress and development there, including an acknowledgement of what muirburn does deliver in terms of ecosystem services and biodiversity. And I think we're in a much better position now just because we've got a very good rapport with NatureScot and the Scottish Government.
Dr. Nick Hesford: In Scotland, we have a government-led stakeholder group, which is a very useful channel for that. But we do need to get that message across to the general public. And that's what's so difficult. And how we do that is, you know, I mean, more things like this podcast, but also more widespread media as well, trying to get the stories into it. But equally, just having conversations with the people you meet. I've not met one person where I've talked about what we do and who hasn't then gone, I didn't know that. Actually, maybe I need to rethink my position. We have a scheme in Scotland that's worked really well, which GWCT runs and which we set up, which was in response to the Werritty Review, which was the review into the environmental impacts of grouse moor management, which looked at the topic of raptors. And it essentially said that it wanted to see an improvement in raptor populations on managed moorland over the next five years. But actually we had practitioners who were there saying, well, we have raptors and they're just not being picked up by the raptor monitors. How do we capture this data? And so we set up a scheme using the same transects, monitored every year. Those transects are surveyed by a gamekeeper and a raptor worker. So there's no dispute over what you're seeing. It has brought them together. They are both working towards the same goal. One drives and the other does the survey. It has been a way of actually bringing them together and closing that gap.
Richard Negus: You're saying that we need the general public to understand, but there are two opposing sides in the uplands made up of people who care about them, or certainly say they do. We obviously need those guys to get together. You're saying that this does work when you actually bring them together and say, come on.
Dr. Nick Hesford: We've certainly seen that with this particular project. You'll always have individuals who will have their entrenched views. You can't change that.
George Browne: Such a scientist's answer. Yes, in this specific case, it works. I think you almost certainly agree that the science is the thing that can drive people to collaborate and to see things differently. Because we have preconceptions, everybody does. You come into a topic with your preconceptions and then if you are presented with science that contradicts your preconceptions, if you've got your head screwed on, you will then reconsider those preconceptions. And I think that's probably the key thing that you guys are doing is generating this science to inform discussion.
Dr. Nick Hesford: Yeah, absolutely. What we need is support as an organisation to get that science further out there. That's really what needs to happen.
Richard Negus: For people listening who want something more approachable than a scientific paper, which can be quite daunting, if you were going to point them towards some bullet-point information that explaining the state of play in the uplands on the managed moor, where would you recommend they look? Is there a book, a piece of work that you've been involved with? Where should they go to?
Dr. Nick Hesford: We have lots of publications that are aimed at a basic understanding of the uplands, which talk you through the science we have done and put that into plain English. And that's probably the best place to start.
Felix Meister: And they could come to our moor walks.
Richard Negus: And come to a moor walk. Well, thank you, Nick. Thank you, Felix. Absolutely superb and really great to talk to you. Thank you.
Felix Meister: Our pleasure.
Dr. Nick Hesford: Thank you very much. Thank you.
Richard Negus: Hello everyone. We are on day one at The Game Fair at Ragley Hall and George Browne and I are secreted out of the back of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust stand and we're very, very pleased to have with us today Nick and Felix from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust to talk more about the red grouse. Nick, would you first of all let the listeners know who you are and what it is that you do?
Dr. Nick Hesford: Thanks, Richard. I'm Nick Hesford and I'm the director for the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust in Scotland. So I oversee all of our work, our research and our advisory and our policy work north of the border. But prior to that, I worked as a scientist with our upland research team, specifically studying red grouse, mountain hare and wading birds.
Richard Negus: Fantastic. Felix, tell us a bit about yourself.
Felix Meister: Yeah, so I'm the senior advisor at the GWCT in Scotland and the remit of our team, the way I see it, is to take the research that the trust has produced over the years and use it to inform stakeholders at all levels, from policy down to land managers on the ground, and promote best practice.
George Browne: And for listeners who are not familiar with the GWCT and what you do, could you just give us a very quick potted overview of what the organisation does and how you're funded and all that sort of thing?
Dr. Nick Hesford: Yeah, well, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust's a world-leading conservation scientific body. And we're fairly unique as a conservation charity in the UK because we don't own or manage nature reserves. We work with 70% of the UK, which is privately owned, privately managed, because in order to have successful conservation at scale, you need to be able to work with those people who are managing the farms, the estates, and our uplands.
George Browne: Yes. What is the figure for the amount of land that is managed, as it were, for nature exclusively, you know, reserves and that sort of thing? Do you know that number off the top?
Dr. Nick Hesford: I don't know that number off the top of my head.
George Browne: I think I saw in some of the literature this morning, it's around 10%, something like that, of the landmass of the UK, which isn't very much.
Dr. Nick Hesford: No. Nature reserves absolutely have their place, but they need to be connected in the landscape if you're going to have successful conservation.
Richard Negus: So that probably leads us rather perfectly into it. Am I correct in saying that heather moorland is a very rare habitat?
Dr. Nick Hesford: Heather moorland is, we know it's globally rare.
Felix Meister: Well, it was something like 70% heather moorland worldwide is in the UK.
Dr. Nick Hesford: But that figure's contested, I'd say that.
George Browne: It depends on whether you call it upland heather moorland or whatever, doesn't it? But what we can say is that there's a lot of it here in the UK and that it is a really important ecosystem and quite an unusual one.
Richard Negus: So why is this rare habitat, which we know we have a lot of here in the UK, such a contested area when one sees some of the figures that GWCT presents on species numbers? Where are the pinch points? What are the conflicts that are going on up there?
Dr. Nick Hesford: Good question, Richard. I think there are a number of areas of conflict in the uplands and not all of them are around conservation. But if you take, for example, muirburn, the science is contested. There is science to say that burning can be good for the environment and good for carbon sequestration, but also other science that says muirburn causes a net release of carbon. But where we find the difference in that particular instance is over the time frame in which these studies have looked at something like muirburn When you look at muirburn over a genuine cycle, so 10 to 15 years, we see a net carbon store rather than a release. A lot of research that says muirburn releases carbon into the atmosphere tends to be done over a three-year cycle, because that is the funding mechanism for most universities in the UK because it's PhD funding. So that's where you see that difference. But actually, if you look over the actual cycle, we tend to see a net carbon capture, because it's producing fresh heather shoots, fresh growth, which then capture carbon in the process.
Richard Negus: So it's largely a carbon issue. So Felix, as you would put your scientist's hat on, from what I see from when I've been recently researching my next book up there, I'm seeing to my layman's eye more wildlife on managed moors, yet we hear the narrative that to not burn is better for carbon. Is there a conflict, do you believe, between people who are managing habitats for biodiversity and people who are managing habitats more with a carbon view on? Is there almost a conflict?
Felix Meister: I don't think there is at all, to be honest, Richard. I don't think there is. And we've got several studies to show, A, that, for example, managing heather moorland through burning benefits certain plant species that are particularly invested or particularly active in peat formation such as sphagnum mosses. So burning does help promote these mosses by reducing the heather canopy and letting light reach the ground level for mosses to thrive and be more actively involved in peat formation than it would otherwise be. But at the same time, we also have other research suggesting that some of the most vulnerable bird species thrive in a more structurally diverse habitat, managed through burning for instance. So they go hand in hand I would say.
George Browne: And burning is a, if you'll forgive the pun, a bit of a hot topic at the moment because huge parts of the uplands all over the UK are on fire. But that's not the only management tool that is used in the upland. And so can we talk a little bit about some of the other contentious practices, so predator control for example. What does your research say about predator control in the uplands and what impact does it have?
Dr. Nick Hesford: We know predator management is hugely important in the uplands. We had a 10-year study, the Otterburn project, which looked specifically at this, where we looked at sites where predators were managed and sites where they weren't. Then we swapped the management on those sites. What we saw, without a doubt, was an increase in the numbers of vulnerable wading birds, black grouse as well in those areas. It is a really vital conservation tool. Interestingly, I think you may have seen a paper published by the RSPB a few years ago and it concludes that predator management is not an important factor in the protection or conservation of waders, particularly curlew. What they actually meant was inadequate predator management is not an important factor. It's really important that we have the full suite of predator management techniques available to us in order to deliver successful conservation. And that's really important in the uplands. And the position we're in Scotland at the moment, we've recently lost snaring, two years ago, I think, as a conservation land management tool, which has been so important, particularly where you have isolated moors that are operating on their own. You have predators there that need control.
Richard Negus: Felix, we've talked about key factors such as heather management and predator control. What else is integral to the well-being of the biodiversity of the uplands?
Felix Meister: Well, one thing that is a huge part of our work, especially in August and September, is to assist with health and disease monitoring in grouse. That's another factor that sort of management with a focus on grouse will heavily rely on because grouse are susceptible to a variety of parasites and viruses, strongyle worms, for instance, which affect the digestive system, or the tick-borne louping ill virus, which has a very high mortality rate in grouse chicks and all these things, especially in combination, can have a huge, huge impact on grouse. With louping ill, we're also talking about ticks and tick control, effective tick management, which is not just for grouse at the end of the day. Things like Lyme disease, for instance, are increasingly affecting humans. Dogs have recently died from louping ill in Scotland.
Richard Negus: Gosh, I didn't know that.
Felix Meister: Yes, three dogs last year. It's an increasing problem. I think this year in particular, ticks have been extremely prevalent. We've seen them everywhere. So that is an increasingly important aspect of that level of management as well, which relies on sheep grazing on the hill and regular treatment with acaricides.
Richard Negus: Okay. In Scotland, you have a more open access policy for hill walkers there than we perhaps do in England. Focusing on grouse: because I do a lot with grey partridge, I often say if we look after the grey partridge, we see that they are a barometer species. You get the grey partridge right, everything else is right on the farm. Is that a similar thing with the red grouse? And if we get the red grouse right, is it also better for people using the moors?
Felix Meister: Well, people perhaps, but certainly I would subscribe to the idea that grouse are also very much an indicator species, much like grey partridge are for farmland in the lowlands. I would say red grouse are an indicator species for the health of moorland habitat. Because if grouse are thriving, it stands to reason that red-listed curlew, lapwing, golden plover, merlin, hen harrier, all these species will also thrive. And many other things, not just birds, but also plants, mountain hares, all these things.
George Browne: There's no such thing as a problem that exists in isolation, is there? A disease will affect more than one species. Am I right in saying that you guys have been doing some research into the sort of whole life cycle of the grouse, of the red grouse, and what the challenges are at different moments in that life cycle?
Dr. Nick Hesford: GWCT has been monitoring red grouse for the last 45 years. And we've done that consistently, monitoring the same sites across England and Scotland in the same way, using pointing dogs to look at how many pairs there are and to look at how well they breed into the summer. And we can use that to advise estates on their shooting programme. What's been apparent from that data set, and it's a unique data set that we have over the last 10 to 15 years or so, is that there's been an apparent decline in the productivity of grouse. And that's happened on moors which have been pretty intensively managed, as well as those that are less intensively managed. And moors where they have high prevalence of diseases such as louping ill and strongylosis, as well as moors that have very little of those diseases. Some of the most recent crashes that we've seen have happened across moorland throughout the UK, regardless of its management. And we can't really point to a single factor as to what's driven those declines. And so it was apparent that we needed to come up with a new research programme that looked at all these factors that we know impact grouse and those that we don't know, to look at how they're related and how they interact to drive breeding productivity. The hope is that we'll be able to look at one or more issues that we can then advise gamekeepers and land managers on so they are in the future able to produce a consistent, sustainable surplus of grouse.
George Browne: The red grouse in the UK is a unique species, right? It's related to, but different from the willow grouse on the continent. So it's always struck me as a bit odd that there isn't more focus on this species from a scientific perspective, given that it is unique to the British Isles.
Felix Meister: It is well researched, but it is also very elusive. It is very enigmatic. I think that's a fair statement, isn't it?
Richard Negus: Do you think, Felix, one of the things that I remember, a farmer in my neck of the woods, we applied for some funding to do some grey partridge conservation work, and it was overturned in favour of some orchids. The farmer who put the application in, he said, the problem is, in inverted commas, that the grey partridge is a Tory bird. And I suppose by that he slightly means it is the logo of the GWCT, for example. Do you think that, as George just said, it's unique to us? Is it because those who most overtly seek to increase its numbers are chaps possibly in Tweed, possibly with a slightly plummy voice who would quite like to shoot them? Do you think it almost suffers as well as benefits from that support that it gets?
Felix Meister: Most certainly. I mean, I think that sort of class and political angle does inform the debate to a huge degree, and it's always perceived as elitist grouse shooting and grouse moor management and all that, because the sort of the argument against it is very much focused on the shooting aspect of it and on the kind of people who have access to it who can afford a day's grouse shooting, which is obviously not cheap. But what our science is trying to focus on is that this is really just a side effect of the management that's happening. The shooting happens on only a few days a year; for the rest of the year the management does all sorts of other things which are hugely beneficial to all sorts of other species as well. Much like grey partridge. I mean, some people have the privilege of shooting grey partridges, but the management that makes that possible is a much more important part of things, isn't it? Yeah.
Richard Negus: One thing Matt Ridley said when he won his gold at the Purdy Awards was he wanted to thank the red grouse on behalf of the black grouse because their loss was the black grouse's gain. I mean, do you think that is possibly something whereby all the science you have done, and that has been done over the last 45 years, clearly indicates that well-managed grouse moors have a wider biodiversity to them. Why aren't more people understanding that?
Felix Meister: It's very difficult to reach certain audiences. We've been finding this time and again, I think. And we've been trying to work harder at this. So we've organised events targeted at the general public, trying to get people to come to managed grouse moors. We had four of these in April. We want people to see it to understand it: to show a recent [unclear], show a recent patch of muirburn and see how the underlying moss layer is completely unaffected by the fire. Show predator control in action, and show all the thought that goes into preventing non-target captures, for instance. Things like that, show grit trays, show how medication is contained so there's no environmental contamination. And it's crucial you also experience the wildlife in April on a managed moor.
George Browne: So this is taking people up onto the moor to—
Felix Meister: See all this with their own eyes rather than just being told about it. And we've had really good feedback, we've had good turnout, but it could have been much better. Everyone is sitting in their camps. Reaching audiences you're not already reaching, and people you're not already speaking to, is a real challenge.
Dr. Nick Hesford: I mean, sort of the level of knowledge that we'll get at these walks is people will come on a walk and they won't understand before they get there that grouse are actually very different to pheasant and partridge and that they haven't been released. All the management that goes into it is into supporting the breeding population. But it's interesting that people will still take a stance on grouse and grouse management without even having that basic level of understanding.
Richard Negus: Do you think, I mean, you're up there quite literally at the coal face or the heather face?
George Browne: Peat face.
Richard Negus: Peat face. How important is it to those isolated rural communities, the people who live there? How important are the moors to them? How important is it to have a sustainable population of grouse?
Dr. Nick Hesford: I mean, it's absolutely vital. Particularly in Scotland, some of these communities just wouldn't exist. The schools, the post office, the local shops, the butchers, they just wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the sporting interests on the estates. And grouse is a massive part of that.
George Browne: And what would happen to the biodiversity if those estates ceased doing the management? Because as you said before, the management is for the grouse. That's the driver and the wider biodiversity is the beneficiary. So what happens if we stop burning, for example, if we lose more predator control options?
Dr. Nick Hesford: We know exactly what will happen because we've done the science and you'll lose species. You'll lose curlew, lapwing and golden plover. In our work down at Otterburn, we saw a local extinction of things like black grouse. So we will see a dramatic impact on the biodiversity. And it happens quite quickly. I mean, we look at areas of Scotland that used to be well-managed grouse moors down in Dumfries and Galloway, for example. In fact, one moor down there, I think, still holds the record bag for grouse in Scotland. Now we can't find them. You lost the grouse management and the grouse interest; you lost your wading birds with that. We've lost mountain hare in those areas. So these species become locally extinct in some cases. So we know what happens. Just trying to get people to understand that is one of the difficult jobs that we have.
Richard Negus: We've talked as much about the fact that we can see the science and the science is both obvious and it's also intricate as well. If you were given a pot of money or access to more open channels, what fundamental message would you give to the average citizen of the British Isles when it comes to the state of the uplands and what the uplands actually need if they are to retain a decent level of biodiversity and abundance?
Felix Meister: I think maybe Nick has his own views, but I would say there are a lot of idealistic visions of the uplands out there and what they should look like and what they ought to look like and what they think it may have looked like at some point in the past. But I think at this point in time, the uplands need management. If we don't manage them, we'll lose them. I think it's as easy as that. Not managing heather, for instance, means building up a fuel load that can go up in flames in devastating wildfire events, as we have seen on quite a dramatic scale this year and last year. And these wildfires are nothing like muirburn. They're burning deep into the peat layer and they release masses of carbon. They might cause erosion on slopes. They're absolutely devastating. That is just one example. If we don't manage it, we'll lose the habitat altogether in the long run.
Dr. Nick Hesford: Yeah, I think one of the biggest things I would like to get across to the general public is that you may not like what's happening in the uplands, you may not know anything about it, you may not care to know anything about it, but most people are benefiting from the ecosystem services that are delivered through that management, whether it's through cleaner water, whether it's through carbon sequestration, or whether it's through the biodiversity that we know has a huge impact for social reasons as well. That's the message I'd like to get across. But being able to do that, you know, often, when doing podcasts like this or running our own events, we tend to be preaching to the converted. We need to work out a way of getting to those individuals who wouldn't ordinarily listen to it. And I should say, I mean, I started my journey with the GWCT. I was a zoology graduate, interested in conservation, never held a gun in my life before, never shot. And I do now, I do a bit of stalking, I do a bit of shooting where I can, but that's because I saw that as a way to get to conservation, a way of really delivering for conservation.
George Browne: I think one of the biggest misconceptions, or perhaps just a general view, is that management equals bad. I think there is this notion that in some way if management is occurring it's because there's something wrong or that the management itself is doing something bad. I don't know if you would agree that there isn't really anywhere in this country or these islands that is unmanaged in that sense. Do you come across that, this idea that management is inherently a bad thing or an indicator of something being wrong?
Felix Meister: Well, there is. I think there's a widespread idea that sort of management prevents a sort of ecological restoration that would happen otherwise, return to the Caledonian forest or these things, which is, of course, very romanticised. It's a bit of a fallacy really at the end of the day. There is a lot of palaeoecological science suggesting that woodland started disappearing from the uplands long before substantial human intervention occurred. So I think all that is slightly sort of constructed. But yes, I think you're absolutely right. Management as a bad thing is something that we should probably scale back a bit. This is a very widespread idea out there.
Dr. Nick Hesford: I've been with the trust now for nearly 10 years, but prior to that, I was managing a rewilding site in the Scottish Borders. And you might think that sort of management, managing a rewilding site is an oxymoron to some, but it does require management. It's the tree planting, the deer control. But those rewilding sites aren't unmanaged; it's simply management of a different kind, with different outcomes. I mean, we saw on that particular site an increase in some warbler species during the time that it was being rewilded. But we also saw the extinction of black grouse. So you have winners and losers in all sorts of management.
George Browne: Just to play devil's advocate though for a moment, would a rewilder say, yes, we might have to do some management at the beginning, but we hope to scale that management back over time and be able to be hands off. Or do you think that is not really a plausible approach?
Dr. Nick Hesford: I think you're right. Some might say that, but in my mind, you know, rewilding, we hear it said all the time, it's different things, different people. I mean, rewilding can happen on, you know, an active farm in, you know, particularly in the little corner of that farm as much as it can on a moor that has been taken up and repurposed for tree planting or whatever happens to be.
Richard Negus: We've touched on this a couple of times now: quite frequently semantics seem to create friction. It is also a slightly political view. And I can understand why politicians like this view of rewilding, because as it's been sold by some, it was shut the farm gate and run away. And the politician would think, well, that sounds a lot cheaper than having a team of scientists, experts, skilled gamekeepers and land managers involved with it. I'll go for the cheap option, thank you very much. So it does strike me that possibly, am I correct in thinking that, on top of all the natural challenges that the poor old grouse has, you've also got the challenges of policy.
Dr. Nick Hesford: Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Look, one of the research projects we're looking to undertake in conjunction with the Heather Trust is one that we call Future Moors. And this project is specifically designed to look at the ecosystem service delivery and also the disbenefits of traditional moor management and then we'll model that to look at how that might change under current and potential future policy scenarios and climate so that we can say to policy makers, if you're going to go down this road or make this decision, this is the impact that it will have. Is that what you want?
George Browne: You've used this phrase a couple of times, ecosystem services. Can you just go into a bit of detail about what you mean by that?
Dr. Nick Hesford: So these are the services that are delivered through the environment.
Richard Negus: To Joe Public.
Dr. Nick Hesford: To Joe Public, yeah. They can be cultural or ecological, for example, biodiversity. You have provision of clean water that's delivered through moorland, carbon sequestration. So it's the services that are delivered through the environment, I suppose.
George Browne: It struck me while we've been speaking that these are emotive spaces that we're talking about. There are strong views on either side, but it strikes me that nearly all of the time everybody is really aiming for the same outcomes, which is healthier ecosystems, stronger rural communities, and so on and so forth. So how do we narrow that space between what could be described as two opposing sides? How do we bring people to try and work more collaboratively on this rather than fighting quite so much.
Felix Meister: Well, that's very difficult, isn't it? Because people are very entrenched in their positions and a lot of it comes around to ideology. But I think in Scotland we're quite lucky because I think the Scottish Government, NatureScot, they've taken a good role in recent years in sort of bringing everyone together and discussing these things. There was a bit of a learning curve there as well. If you take muirburn, for instance, which is now regulated in Scotland under a licensing system. But I think they brought everyone to the table and discussed what they wanted to achieve and how to achieve it with muirburn code and these licences. But I think there was a lot of progress and development there, including an acknowledgement of what muirburn does deliver in terms of ecosystem services and biodiversity. And I think we're in a much better position now just because we've got a very good rapport with NatureScot and the Scottish Government.
Dr. Nick Hesford: In Scotland, we have a government-led stakeholder group, which is a very useful channel for that. But we do need to get that message across to the general public. And that's what's so difficult. And how we do that is, you know, I mean, more things like this podcast, but also more widespread media as well, trying to get the stories into it. But equally, just having conversations with the people you meet. I've not met one person where I've talked about what we do and who hasn't then gone, I didn't know that. Actually, maybe I need to rethink my position. We have a scheme in Scotland that's worked really well, which GWCT runs and which we set up, which was in response to the Werritty Review, which was the review into the environmental impacts of grouse moor management, which looked at the topic of raptors. And it essentially said that it wanted to see an improvement in raptor populations on managed moorland over the next five years. But actually we had practitioners who were there saying, well, we have raptors and they're just not being picked up by the raptor monitors. How do we capture this data? And so we set up a scheme using the same transects, monitored every year. Those transects are surveyed by a gamekeeper and a raptor worker. So there's no dispute over what you're seeing. It has brought them together. They are both working towards the same goal. One drives and the other does the survey. It has been a way of actually bringing them together and closing that gap.
Richard Negus: You're saying that we need the general public to understand, but there are two opposing sides in the uplands made up of people who care about them, or certainly say they do. We obviously need those guys to get together. You're saying that this does work when you actually bring them together and say, come on.
Dr. Nick Hesford: We've certainly seen that with this particular project. You'll always have individuals who will have their entrenched views. You can't change that.
George Browne: Such a scientist's answer. Yes, in this specific case, it works. I think you almost certainly agree that the science is the thing that can drive people to collaborate and to see things differently. Because we have preconceptions, everybody does. You come into a topic with your preconceptions and then if you are presented with science that contradicts your preconceptions, if you've got your head screwed on, you will then reconsider those preconceptions. And I think that's probably the key thing that you guys are doing is generating this science to inform discussion.
Dr. Nick Hesford: Yeah, absolutely. What we need is support as an organisation to get that science further out there. That's really what needs to happen.
Richard Negus: For people listening who want something more approachable than a scientific paper, which can be quite daunting, if you were going to point them towards some bullet-point information that explaining the state of play in the uplands on the managed moor, where would you recommend they look? Is there a book, a piece of work that you've been involved with? Where should they go to?
Dr. Nick Hesford: We have lots of publications that are aimed at a basic understanding of the uplands, which talk you through the science we have done and put that into plain English. And that's probably the best place to start.
Felix Meister: And they could come to our moor walks.
Richard Negus: And come to a moor walk. Well, thank you, Nick. Thank you, Felix. Absolutely superb and really great to talk to you. Thank you.
Felix Meister: Our pleasure.
Dr. Nick Hesford: Thank you very much. Thank you.