Four years ago I announced that the RSPB had taken the serious step of making a formal complaint to the European Commission raising our profound concerns at the state of our finest designated wildlife sites in the North English moorlands - sites protected on paper as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Special Protection Areas (SPAs) but which have been failing to deliver for nature for too long.
Our complaint related specifically to the failure of DEFRA, through its statutory agency Natural England, to take adequate measures to tackle serious and persistent damage to one site in particular, Walshaw Moor in the South Pennines. Subsequently the complaint broadened to cover the other Northern English moorland SACs - focussing on the issue of burning the heather and vegetation on the areas of deep peat soils – soils that should be supporting healthy blanket bog and the wildlife that depends on it.
The management of many of these places has been intensifying in order to produce more and more red grouse to support the driven grouse shooting industry see here, a land use that has shaped our hills, influenced some of our most iconic landscapes and had significant impacts on our wildlife throughout many decades stretching back into the 19th Century.
Today we have learned that our complaint and a separate complaint submitted by Ban the Burn have led to the European Commission beginning legal action against the UK Government by issuing a Letter of Formal Notice. This is the starting gun of a full infraction procedure when the Commission considers a Member State has not applied the relevant laws properly. From the limited information we have it appears that the Commission share our wider concerns over bad application of the Habitats Directive with respect to the blanket bog habitats that are meant to be conserved by SACs in England. We will update our page dealing with this case (see here) later today.
We welcome this move wholeheartedly. These are serious matters and much is at stake.
Moor burn by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
For anyone following these issues over the last four years it will not have escaped your notice that positions have become entrenched. This has manifested itself by, on one hand, repeated calls and petitions to ban driven grouse shooting in England and on the other vigorous defence of the role driven grouse shooting plays and especially the 'benefits' of burning.
We want a resolution.
We have been calling for reform of the way our hills are managed with proper regulation of an industry whose unfettered ambitions to produce ever higher red grouse numbers for the gun are causing growing concern over the direct and indirect impacts on wildlife, including hen harriers and other raptors, the ability of our moorlands to cope with increasing rainfall and to play a part in reducing the risk of catastrophic floods downstream, and the impact on deep peat soils that lock up carbon and prevent its release into the atmosphere and into our drinking water.
Over the coming days we will see an intensification of the rhetoric from both perspectives. I fully anticipate repeated and sustained pressure for the RSPB to join calls for a ban.
That is not our position.
We will probably hear more from our critics, funded by backers linked to the grouse industry, who wish to deflect us from our purposeful work. Will these be direct or via the pages of supportive newspapers?
But now through the Hen Harrier Action Plan and this European Commission led process there is a chance of real progress. The challenge is now with DEFRA, Natural England and the driven grouse industry to respond constructively to the growing evidence that change is needed, and to do so positively - we will be returning to this critical issue regularly both here on my blog and on Saving Special Places.
And I want to hear from you. If you are frustrated that the RSPB is not supporting calls for a ban or if you are outraged that decades of traditional management for grouse are being challenged by our actions or if you are in a place where you see scope for a constructive way forward please let me know your views.
Walshaw Moor from the air
Keith i should thank you for the opportunity to think more about the comparison between Red Kite and White-tailed Eagle introductions and the possible(?) re-introduction of Hen Harriers in the English lowlands. Surely that isn't really going to happen and is it with RSPB support?
It have always worried about the re-release of species which are very likely to be killed on grouse moors. The north-east was obviously a problem area and the Black Isle has actually proven to be a terrible Black Spot.
I argued the case yesterday for the difference between these species but it has always troubled me that all that effort, time, care and even money spent on re-introduction is destroyed in a shot by the criminal element. Plus the simple cruelty of it all (cannon fodder is the phrase that springs to mind), made it seem very wrong but in my mind i tried to justify it for the end goal. But as James C has asked 'What loss rate would be acceptable...?'
There seems to be something fundamentally flawed about this balancing the books way of thinking when the problem hasn't been resolved and which is a requirement by international guidelines for re-introductions.
If this were the developing world where we have no control and it was a threatened species migrating over several countries e.g. Spoon-billed Sandpiper, only then would that kind of desperate thinking make sense. But we have all the cards, this is totally within our control we even have law behind us. Laws are being broken and this has continued for 62 years and it is only getting worse as shown intensification of grouse moors and by population losses in Scotland.
Now all the pieces have fallen into place this dilemma was resolved in one single stroke.
To quote Jim Morrison wrote 'The only solution isn't it amazing?'
Ban Driven Grouse Moors now.
And yes we should have done it before the Red Kite and White-tailed Eagle introductions.