This case study is taken from our Real Wilders book, which you can download here or you can buy a print copy here.
The Raby Estate in County Durham was planting trees and rewetting long before the current trend, providing a haven for a wide range of threatened bird species
When it comes to demonstrating the conservation benefits of grouse moor management, it doesn’t get better than Raby. The 30,000-acre estate has the highest density of waders in Britain outside the Orkneys, about a third of all the black grouse left in England, and a breeding population of merlin of regional importance, as well as large numbers of passerines and a whole suite of raptors. When retired headkeeper Lindsay Waddell first came down from Scotland, he hadn’t seen anything like it.
He said: “Brought up in an Angus glen, I was used to a good selection of birds, but my move south brought me into contact with a completely different density of ground-nesting birds. I shall never forget one of my first spring mornings at Raby. The sound of the dawn chorus was almost deafening. The whole assemblage was at it: black grouse, curlew, lapwing, snipe, redshank, skylark, and many more.”
So how has the estate been so successful in maintaining such an extraordinary abundance of redlisted species when alternative land uses have seen them disappear? In the 70s and 80s, CAP headage payments, subsidies based on the number of sheep on the ground, led to vast swathes of the UK’s heather moorland being destroyed by overgrazing.
Lindsay explained: “Once sheep remove most of the heather, bilberry, cotton grass and other plants from the surface, if you get the wrong kind of grass growing back, it is very difficult for those dwarf shrubs to re-establish themselves. The impact on biodiversity is massive. From keeping the whole suite of moorland birds, you completely remove some of them. It’s not much good for black grouse, red grouse, and even a lot of the pipits prefer the dwarf shrub mix, which has a knock-on impact on predators like merlin.”
The fact that Raby was managed for grouse, meant that subsidies to overgraze were resisted as sheep production was not its primary objective. At the same time, entirely eradicating herbivores from the ecosystem would be damaging. Grazing plays a vital role in maintaining the grass swards on the in-bye land next to the moors, which are the favoured breeding places of lapwing, redshank, oystercatchers and other waders; and sheep on the hill help prevent vegetation growing rank or being lost entirely due to the natural regeneration of woodland.
Lindsay said: “In everything, keeping the balance is very important. If you had no grazing, mostly non-native trees would recolonise and the main breeding ground for waders in this country would be lost because they need wide open spaces.”
Rewetting and tree planting
Grouse management is often wrongly blamed for the huge ditches dug across vast swathes of heather moorland, which were funded by the government in the mistaken belief it would improve grazing and, therefore, productivity following wartime food shortages. These drains or ‘grips’ are a danger to grouse chicks, whereas keeping water on the hill, particularly in drier summers, is of great benefit to them. Rewetting is the current trend in upland management, but Lindsay was blocking grips 40 years ago. Ironically, his work was being part-funded by English Nature, while at the same time MAFF was still offering grants for digging drains.
He said: “Though, these days, the rewetting of these places is flagged up as something new, we were doing this way back in the 1980s to stop the erosion of peat by excessive water flow. We plugged up the whole drainage system on 16,000 acres of moorland on Raby over about 5-10 years, which saved numerous broods of grouse as well as lambs from getting trapped in the drains. Today they have refilled with vegetation with small pools along their length providing ideal habitat for numerous species of sphagnum and invertebrates, an important food source for the chicks of moorland birds.”
Tree planting at Raby is another example of where a measured approach has been in contrast to everchanging and potentially damaging government policy. About 30 years ago, concerned that the black grouse population was suffering due to a series of severe winters, Lindsay began establishing plantations of native trees on the edges of the moor to provide food and shelter for the red-listed species. On one occasion, in spite of Natural England support, he struggled to get permission because at the same time Defra schemes prohibited tree planting on the grounds that it spoiled the integrity of the open moorland. In the end, a compromise was reached whereby trees were allowed as long as they didn’t protrude above the skyline.
Lindsay said: “We planted a lot whenever the opportunity arose, and they’ve proved very beneficial to black grouse in particular. There is room for more tree planting around the fringes of grouse moors, and a lot of other moor owners have followed suit since then. Grouse moor management done well is the best of both worlds because you end up with a mixed landscape that’s good for your upland breeding waders and passerines as well as species that benefit from tree cover.”
Historically, grouse management saved large areas of the uplands from commercial sitka spruce plantations, which were also incentivised by government grants. Raby resisted the temptation to plant forestry and the estate even purchased a piece of land next to a grouse moor to prevent it becoming a conifer plantation. Tree plantations are a threat to upland bird assemblages, both because they harbour predators and because many species are not adapted to closed canopy woodland.
Merlin breeding success
David Raw a volunteer field-worker from the Durham Upland Bird Study Group has been studying merlins in the area for over 30 years to provide one of the most comprehensive breeding studies of the species in the UK. He said: “Merlins are birds of the open moor and close canopy woodland wouldn’t be appropriate.”
As ground-nesting birds, merlins also benefit from the legal control of generalist predators by current headkeeper Andrew Hyslop and his team. Andrew said: “We carry out predator control for the grouse, but by doing so we are protecting all ground-nesting birds including curlew, lapwing, hen harriers and merlin.” Raby prides itself on the fact that you can see the full suite of raptors on the moor and many breed there. This is in part due to the abundance of food in the form of the passerines and small mammals that thrive under grouse management.
David said: “Merlin is a Schedule 1 species, and it was recently redlisted with a UK population of only 1,100-1,350 pairs. But here in Durham we have a good proportion. Pairs on Raby, in particular, show really good productivity. Managed grouse moors are the optimal habitat for breeding merlin, providing heather for nesting sites, predator control and their principal prey, meadow pipits and skylark. We get a tremendous amount of cooperation from the keepers, who are immensely proud of their merlin. We are allowed free access to complete the studies and we share information. Together we build a comprehensive independently verified picture of productivity each season.”
Raby’s grouse moors are listed as SAC and SPA, affording them the highest level of protection, and many of the birds listed in the original designations, like golden plover and curlew, are still in abundance. Lindsay believes it would be disastrous if grouse management were to cease in favour of a light touch or abandonment approach and points to the example of Langholm Moor, which is a short flight for a wader over the Scottish border from Raby.
“Upon the cessation of the game management at the end of the final piece of work there in 2018 the bird populations of the Langholm moors have pretty much slid to oblivion,” he said. “I’ve heard that most of the groundnesting birds, including the raptors, have suffered serious declines. Merlin are down from seven pairs to one left nesting in a tree, a strategy the bird employs when being predated at ground level. It’s become a classic example of moorland scrubbing, with a lot of non-native pine trees taking over what was an open landscape but will soon be no more than a woodland. It’s an SPA for hen harriers, but how long it will stay like that I don’t know.”
There are no plans to leave Raby to a similar fate, but recent changes in regulations have caused the effective abandonment of large areas of heather moorland. Andrew Hyslop is deeply concerned that Natural England’s decision to ban controlled burning on deep peat in designated areas will eventually make the habitat unsuitable. He said: “We are doing our best using grazing and cutting, but in many instances these methods are impractical. If you take any of the management tools away, you are severely restricting our ability to ensure the breeding success of the red-listed species.”
Concerns over rewilding's impact on conservation
Over decades, Lindsay has seen grouse management’s remarkable conservation success continue as fads for upland land use come and go, but he is concerned that current direction of policy and ideology threatens its legacy at a time when many of the species associated with it need it most. He said: “There is a real risk that the rewilding bandwagon takes over from the reality and economics of traditional upland land management as myths are perpetrated regarding exactly what a grouse moor is. It is not a monoculture of heather, indeed far from it. It is a mosaic of the whole suite of moorland dwarf shrubs with room for larger cover on the periphery to aid a wide range of species.”