Chapter 10
Like hiraeth, cynefin is another rich, Welsh word with no direct English translation. It captures our relationship with homeland, the place of birth and upbringing. It is where one’s soul is no longer restless but knows and understands the physical land; where there is an ease of mind and spirit. As with any good relationship, it is two-way. The trees, rocks, birds, even the grass, seem glad to see you return home. ‘The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly,’1 wrote John Muir when returning to his beloved Sierra Nevada in California, after a period in the city; he may well have been defining cynefin. The Welsh language is rooted in the landscape and has developed a lexicon that is finely attuned to our emotional connection to the Earth.
It is cynefin that I feel as I leave The Roaches and walk towards the White Peak on a beautiful day in May. I know this high road well; it runs straight across moorland and rough farmland, between what used to be the isolated Mermaid Inn and the Domesday village of Warslow. It is an old trackway that has always felt remote; far wetter and more windswept than the valleys below, and is often shrouded in cloud. Sturdy millstone grit walls hold back the heather and rushes, preventing them spilling out onto the tarmac. Even on a bright day the moor wears a sombre face, but it has an ancient heart that has beaten strong and steady for millennia. While the surrounding lowlands were completely transformed by the Industrial Revolution, this landscape has retained a feeling of wildness. Pot banks, coal mines, silk mills and ironworks became the centres of life in the Midlands’ towns, but the moor was far less easy to tame.
The road has given access to this high land for generations. From medieval times it was a route for packhorses taking travellers across the moorland pass, some in search of wealth from the seams of lead and copper in the limestone valleys to the east. In the eighteenth century, hill farmers used it to take milk, butter and meat to markets in Leek, or to be loaded onto trains and sped to London. By 1900 one-fifth of London’s milk was being supplied by north Staffordshire and Derbyshire. It is easy to imagine those men and women of the moor, carts laden, facing the wind, which always seems to blow strong and cold no matter what the time of year. The old farmsteads of the area have names that fit this sturdy landscape: Lumbs Farm, Cave Farm, Hob Hay Farm, Hillside Farm.
A hundred and fifty years ago, a new cohort appeared in this out-of-the-way part of the north Midlands. Attracted by sport and status, upper-class men brought their guns, and local lads made money out of beating the heather to flush birds towards the line of fire. Grouse shooters had arrived to make the most of the many red grouse produced by specially trained gamekeepers. The moor became a playground for the rich and powerful. But by the 1940s, the seismic shake-up of the world order saw old and young, rich and poor joined together for a common cause: to fight fascism. Now American accents joined the local, flat-vowelled dialects, as US troops moved in to practise shelling and mortar fire to support the allies. The intense activity scared away the birds and trampled nests, helping to bring to an end the predominance of grouse shooting. Today, there are still guns on the Warslow Moors, but of a different type and with a different aim; the Territorial Army practises covert manoeuvres here. A local keeper tells me that at night, as he waits to shoot foxes, he can track the troops with his infrared spotter as they crawl through the heather, their camouflaged faces and clothing glowing brightly.
As with The Roaches, the history of the land defines its character. And somewhere out there, either side of the old road, new curlew families are, hopefully, emerging, adding their stories to the saga of this moor. Around twelve pairs of curlews nest here. A local ranger tells me that they are still on their eggs, which are tantalisingly close to hatching. This is one of the most exciting times to watch them.
After a month of quiet incubation, there is a sense of agitation and energy in the air. The sitting adult, which can either be the male or the female, seems unable to relax or get comfortable. It is restless and frequently shifts position. Every now and then it stands up to delicately move the eggs with its long bill and feet, nudging them gently to turn them around. Sometimes it just watches them before settling down again, wriggling gingerly to cover the eggs as well as it can. After twenty-eight to thirty days, hatching begins, and it can take many hours. The wader expert Desmond Nethersole-Thompson recorded a chick taking seventy-seven hours to wriggle free, and ornithologist Tony Cross told me that a chick in one of the nests he was watching took four days to extricate itself from the egg. It looks exhausting.
All the while the activity around the nest increases. The two adults communicate far more frequently, bubbling and curlee-ing loudly, but also with low whistles or three-note piping. At other times they sing softly to each other, a curlew duet, but then, astonishingly, they can break out into a surprisingly full-on crescendo of trilling before they swap incubation duties. The sitting bird throws back its head and opens its bill wide, its whole body quivering with the effort of forcing so much sound out through its throat and into the air. After all the furtiveness of the weeks of incubation, this noise is surprising. Surely a fox can hear it, too?
As hatching progresses, vocalisations take on a greater range. The incubating bird starts to whistle quietly, its throat extending and contracting. It also emits a range of low growls, piping, clucks and hoots, or it uses its bill to clack and snap. These calls are directed at the unhatched chicks, and the tiny chicks reply with audible peeps. They are conversing with their parents, learning their calls. On the day they break out they will immediately make miniature, two-note, high-pitched, truncated curlees, thin and reedy but definite precursors to the full-throated notes of the curlew.
The guard bird is some metres away. It yaps and whaups at any sign of danger and its partner responds by sinking low, stretching its head and neck out flat on the ground. Or it may sit bolt upright, peering around. Every sinew is tense and the feathers on its head erect. Eventually, it relaxes, and cooing softly it turns to snuggle its long bill deep into the feathers on its back. Even in this position it still calls, whistling into the warmth of its own down, staying in touch with the eggs. The curlews’ world is changing. As each chick emerges it peeps and the adult replies, often tucking its head beneath its belly and touching the chick gently with the tip of its bill. There is now an almost constant curlew conversation, and over the following few hours the chicks will peer out for the first time from under the wings to take in their new world.
Right from the start they feed themselves, eating insects around the nest with their small, shiny black beaks, which won’t grow into the long, new-moon shape for a year. Curlew chicks have wanderlust in their blood, and within a day or two they are off. Tiny bodies, little more than fluff with feet, are all too easily damaged. Huge agricultural machines, hooves of cattle and sheep, running dogs, carnivores catching food for their own young – all of these pose a threat. They need to keep alive for five weeks before they will be big enough to fly, and from then on, their survival rate is good. But for now, in the tender weeks after hatching, they need vigilant parents, lots of insect food and peace.
This drama is just beginning on Warslow Moor as I pass by. A group of lapwings, pumped up with angst and anger, chase off a sparrowhawk. Their weird whining screams and their dizzying flight are disorientating, and the sparrowhawk gives up. It is a demonstration of how important numbers are in tackling predators. Mobbing a bird of prey is effective, but a few birds are simply not intimidating enough and are easily ignored. At least one lapwing family survives. I watch an adult lead its chicks away from the road, strutting proudly over patches of bare ground and around bits of old farm machinery. Its upright stance and long crest blowing in the wind give the impression of a highly strung nursemaid. Both curlews and lapwings are breeding more successfully on heather moors compared to other areas, benefiting from the management.
All around this part of the South West Peak District telltale patches of burnt heather show where the grouse moors, belonging to Lord Derby, are still active. Historically this was rich shooting country. In 1935 a record 2,724 red grouse were shot here.2 After the Second World War, however, the Peak District lost over a third of its heather cover, as land was reclaimed for forestry and sheep grazing, but some grouse shooting still hangs on. In a layby I stop to talk to a gamekeeper. He is somewhat taciturn and wary of questions, but he believes, along with other keepers I have talked with, that the general increase in raptors (birds of prey) such as buzzards, sparrowhawks, red kites and peregrines over the last few decades is taking its toll on grouse numbers. Not only are they depleting grouse chicks, he complains, they are devastating the other ground-nesting birds alongside them. He would dearly like to control raptors, and the evidence indicates that some gamekeepers do so, despite the birds’ blanket protection.
The control of birds of prey by gamekeepers, on both the uplands and lowlands, has a long and bloody history. The red kite, once one of the most common raptors throughout Britain, was extinct in England and Scotland by 1879. By the end of the nineteenth century, another species – once so numerous it was named after its habit of taking domestic chickens, the hen harrier, had gone from mainland Britain. Only about forty pairs were left in the more remote parts of Scotland. Persecution confined buzzards to the far southwest and northwest of England. A combination of farmers, shepherds and gamekeepers, all targeting meat-eating birds, meant similar devastating scenarios for goshawk, Montagu’s harrier, white-tailed eagle, marsh harrier, golden eagle, peregrine falcon, sparrowhawk, osprey, kestrel and merlin. Anything with a sharp beak and talons was considered a threat to grouse productivity, classed as ‘vermin’ and treated as such. Persecution, combined with widespread landscape and environmental changes in the twentieth century, meant birds of prey became extremely rare.
The legacy of those intense years of predator control is still present on some shooting estates, where vestiges of a mindset that wants to eradicate any threat to grouse still holds sway. Raptors were included on the list of Schedule 1 species and given the highest protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. It is illegal to disturb or kill any bird of prey, but the law, it seems, is frequently broken and persecution continues on some grouse moors of northern England and Scotland.
Despite the great reduction in heather moorland across the UK over the last sixty years, grouse shooting is still popular. In England and Scotland there are in the region of 250 shooting estates and between 12 August and 10 December each year they host 40,000 shooters. Producing grouse, however, is an unpredictable business. Whether a grouse moor can actually hold a shoot depends on keepers producing a surplus of red grouse above a baseline, which each grouse moor sets for itself. As a rough guide, that is about twenty pairs per hundred acres. Red grouse are wild birds that are native to Britain and confined to heather moorland. Their numbers can be boosted by providing ideal breeding conditions: good food, good habitat, and keeping predators, diseases and parasites to a minimum. If everything works well, and the weather is good during the crucial breeding season, many birds will survive, providing the shootable surplus. But that isn’t always the case. Cold wet springs, or years with high infestations of ticks and gut parasites, can kill young chicks, meaning too few adult grouse for shooting in the autumn/winter.
The moors are therefore managed to maximise chick production, which includes heavily suppressing things that eat them. Many predators are legally controlled, making the killing of foxes, crows, mink, stoats and weasels the bread and butter of a keeper’s job. Killing birds of prey, however, is now illegal and comes with a heavy fine or even imprisonment; but that hasn’t stopped some (not all) shooting estates breaking the law. In 2015 the RSPB revealed that out of the 176 convictions for raptor persecution since 1990, 68 per cent were gamekeepers, although it doesn’t specify if they were from the uplands or lowlands. But in the last couple of years it seems to have been more difficult to catch criminals. In 2016 there were 81 incidents of persecution of birds of prey, but no convictions. In 2017, despite video footage of a gamekeeper shooting a hen harrier on its nest, the evidence was deemed inadmissible and the case dropped. Criminal acts still take place, but it appears to be fiendishly difficult to convict the perpetrators.
Birds of prey are killed throughout the year, not just on moors in the breeding season, for many are also targeted on their wintering grounds. In 2015 the RSPB confirmed sixty-four cases of shooting and trapping. There were also thirty-two confirmed incidents of poisoning, including fifteen buzzards, four red kites and three peregrine falcons. In 2017 the Scottish government increased its pressure on the grouse industry after one-third (forty-one out of 131) of tagged golden eagle chicks went missing between 2004 and 2016 over or near grouse moors in eastern Scotland.3 The Scottish Environment Minister, Roseanna Cunningham, wrote:
The continued killing of protected species of birds of prey damages the reputation of law-abiding gamekeepers, landowners and indeed the country as a whole. Those that carry out these crimes do so in defiance of the will of Parliament, the people and their own peers. That must end … By looking at ways of strengthening the legal protection for birds of prey we are sending out a strong message that Scotland’s wildlife is for everyone to enjoy – not for criminals to destroy for their own ends.4
All raptors are at risk, but it is the hen harrier that wears the dubious crown of Britain’s most persecuted bird of prey.
Just a few miles from Warslow Moor, a hen harrier’s nest was destroyed in 2011. The eggs were smashed and the feathers of a female were found nearby. The male disappeared, too. It is impossible to prove this was malicious. It could have been the work of a fox or dog, but as the number of hen harriers remain stubbornly low across England, it is hard to believe crime isn’t a major factor in some of these incidents. In 2015 five male hen harriers simply vanished, causing their partner birds to abandon their nests. This is covert persecution. The bodies are rarely found and evidence is nigh on impossible to gather.
The reason hen harriers are particularly targeted is because they nest on the ground, often in heather, next to grouse, and their presence shifts the dynamic of the moor. Hen harriers are large birds of prey, and, when hunting, their silhouette gliding over the hills causes grouse families to scatter. Young chicks often lose contact with their parents, and if the weather is cold and wet, many die from exposure. The grouse chicks are also a favoured food for hen harrier chicks. During the breeding season parent harriers can take a grouse chick every three hours to feed their own young, which means as many as 270 chicks in a few weeks just to supply one hen harrier nest.5 That sounds high, but it can be dealt with. Hen harriers can be distracted from taking game-bird chicks by what is called ‘diversionary feeding’, where keepers put out dead rats and chicken chicks near the harrier nest as an alternative food supply. This has been shown to work very well and reduces the take of grouse chicks by nearly 90 per cent. If hen harriers stayed at one pair on a moor, all this would not be a problem, but they don’t.
The lack of ground predators, along with plentiful food and good heather condition, benefits harriers as well as grouse, and harriers breed very well on grouse moors: too well for the grouse-moor owners. Unusually for raptors, they like to nest in loose colonies. One pair of harriers will attract others, and numbers quickly build up. A study on Langholm Moor in southern Scotland showed that hen harriers increased from two pairs in 1997 to twenty pairs in 2002. That is too many pairs for a keeper to manage by diversionary feeding, and the harriers ate over a third of the grouse chicks, preventing a shootable surplus. As shooting parties can pay up to £30,000 for a weekend, grouse have to be made available, and therefore the pressure to eradicate the enemies of red grouse is great.
The startling fact is that in England in 2016 only four pairs of hen harriers bred successfully, despite there being enough habitat for over 230 pairs.6 In 2013 no hen harriers bred successfully at all. In Scotland the number of breeding pairs fell from 505 to 460 between 2010 and 2016. Despite high-profile campaigns, protection schemes, satellite tagging and monitoring, harriers continue to ‘disappear’, mainly over shooting estates in northern England and Scotland. It is, though, worth noting that they continue to decline over Wales and the island of Ireland too, where there is very little grouse shooting. Large-scale losses of breeding habitat due to forestry and intensification of farming are also factors that have to be considered.
In 2016 a Hen Harrier Action Plan was launched by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which brought together ‘organisations that are best placed to help drive actions forward for the hen harrier on the ground and who are committed to doing so’.7 The members of the group were the RSPB, Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, the Moorland Association, the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation, the National Parks and Natural England. One solution on the table was ‘Brood Management’. This has proved to be highly controversial. It involves an estate allowing a small number of hen harriers to nest and rear young, but it allows moorland owners to stop the build-up of colonies. The suggestion is that the nests of hen harriers be kept at one pair per ten kilometres. If another pair nests within that distance, the moor owner can request that the second pair is removed to an aviary and then released in suitable habitat in the same region. This approach was not accepted by the RSPB, who want persecution to stop altogether before any intervention at their nests is considered. The negotiations reached a stalemate as hen harriers continued to be targeted by several estates, and the RSPB withdrew from the process.
The result of this very human conflict is that some grouse moor managers make sure no harriers nest on the moors at all, rather than risk a build-up of numbers, which they then can’t control. The result is high levels of persecution. Some of the blame for this appalling situation must lie with those who pay high sums to shoot red grouse. Grouse moors are a service industry; if their clients demanded a criminal-free moor with a wide range of wildlife thriving on it, that would happen. If they continue to demand very high numbers of grouse, and turn a blind eye to raptor persecution, criminal acts will continue. But I know of no pressure being put on the shooting fraternity themselves to shift their expectations.
Despite two hen harriers being found shot in 2017, there are some signs of hope. In the same year, ten young fledged from three nests in Northumberland. At least seven nesting attempts were known, but they failed due to natural causes. It is a pathetically small number, but at least it is something. This, along with the continued increase in the numbers of other raptors in the UK, is, hopefully, a sign that things are beginning to change.
As in so many wildlife conflicts, while the arguments rage, the losers are the wild creatures, in this case hen harriers. And caught in the middle of this particular struggle between grouse moor management and raptor survival are the other ground-nesting birds: curlews, lapwings, meadow pipits, ring ouzel, skylarks and golden plovers.
To experience an all-out breeding wader extravaganza, a grouse moor is a good place to go. Curlews are twice as likely to be found on a grouse moor than outside of one, and their success at raising chicks there is over three times greater.8 This is heartening when so much is against them in other areas. I saw this concentration of curlews for myself before I set off on the Walk. It was the result of a blog I wrote on curlews for Mark Avery, a high-profile conservationist, wildlife campaigner, hen harrier champion and former Director of Conservation at the RSPB. Off the back of that article a grouse moor owner invited me to his shooting estate in Wensleydale, next to the magnificent, medieval Bolton Castle. It was with some trepidation that I set off to meet Tom Orde-Powlett (who is introduced in Chapter 2), the latest in line to take over the running of Bolton Castle, which has been in his family for 600 years. I felt nervous driving to Leyburn that February afternoon. I knew I was out of my comfort zone. I know nothing about shooting and don’t know anyone who shoots, nor do I have any experience of the wealth and the culture that usually go along with it.
The castle is both impressive and intimidating. A combination of age and history stirs the emotions, especially as Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned here. Most of the building has fallen into disrepair and the jagged stonework and tumbledown walls seem to be straight out of the romantic paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael. The turrets rang with the harsh calls of jackdaws. We met in Tom’s office at the top of a spiral staircase in one of the intact wings. It felt cold, as only a stone building can, but Tom was warm, welcoming and polite and immediately provided tea and sandwiches. ‘How are we going to get on, Tom?’ I asked. ‘I’m left-wing, vegetarian with vegan tendencies and have never even held a gun, let alone shot anything. I’m not sure we have much in common.’ He smiled: ‘We will get on just fine,’ he replied. And we did.
On that first visit in February we watched a hundred or so curlews flying into their evening roost in wet fields below the castle (described in Chapter 2). My second visit, in early April, was just a couple of weeks before setting out for Ireland. As evening fell I gave a public talk out in the middle of the moor. About fifty locals, farmers, landowners and keepers gathered on a chilly hillside to hear about the walk, and to have a barbecue. The bubbling of displaying curlews provided an evocative backdrop, and £1,000 was raised for the British Trust for Ornithology Curlew Appeal. By nightfall it was very cold and an awesome panoply of stars shone overhead. As the last of the 4x4s disappeared down the moorland track, I took a sleeping bag and spent the night in a stone hut that stood proud on the hill crest. The silence was profound, broken only by the occasional cry of a bird. At 6am I went outside as an ashen sky bled through the darkness. The air was sharp and the ground glistened with frost. The outline of the moor was just gaining definition but already the sound was magnificent. ‘The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen,’ wrote novelist Carson McCullers, describing listening to an orchestra, but it could equally apply to the music of nature, to the feelings of immensity that come from the power and purity of birdsong in that hour around dawn.
Never before had I heard so many curlews bubbling and calling their name, flying high in the washed-out sky on stiffened wings. They were dotted everywhere – a curlew panorama. In between, lapwings whined like space invaders, visitors from another planet. Below me a small tarn glinted like a bead of mercury, and from its shoreline rose a flock of black-headed gulls, their harsh calls trailing away as they streamed over a hillside and out of sight. And, barely audible, the liquid, plaintive whistles of golden plovers floated across the heather, perhaps the loneliest sound in Britain. Added to this mixture was the cackle of red grouse. It is clear that this grouse moor in April is far from a monoculture of game birds. Much of Bolton Castle moorland is designated as SSSIs (Sites of Special Scientific Interest) for the variety of wildlife they support, and they are considered by Natural England to be in favourable condition.
This variety and number of ground-nesting birds is possible only because of management. A lot of time and money goes into nurturing this landscape. Left alone, there would be more trees, more predators and less heather. Much of this open, minimalist palette of soft yellows, purples and browns would eventually be closed in by woodland. It isn’t ‘natural’, and only hard work and money keep it this way. It relies on the profits from around thirty shooting days in the four months of the grouse season, subsidies to which all upland landowners are entitled and payments for environmental services, so-called HLS (Higher Level Stewardship) payments. This is a cultural landscape, shaped by history, economics and sport. But little, if any, of our crowded island can be described as wild in the true sense of the word. Everywhere is tinkered with, altered and tweaked, to fit our requirements, from gardens and golf courses to nature reserves and National Parks, and of course, farmland. They are all managed; the differences are a matter of scale and intensity. Here in the uplands it is easy to confuse dramatic and remote landscapes with untouched wildernesses, but they are not necessarily the same thing. Grazing by sheep, cattle and deer, deforestation, mining and the extinctions of species have all changed the land through time. Our needs have dictated everything, and over the centuries we have decided what we want from a piece of land – be that food, housing, industry, parks, leisure or nature. The choice has always been, and still is, ours, and the decisions made usually depend on public opinion and money.
It wasn’t long before I saw one of the two full-time gamekeepers on his morning rounds to check traps for stoats, weasels and crows. There is no need to do much fox control here; they are rare, taken out by neighbouring farms and estates before they reach the grouse moors of Bolton Castle. This happens on nature reserves, too, but usually, the control of foxes and crows is done quietly away from public view. The RSPB, however, publishes its data online. Figures for 2015/2016 show that 368 foxes were killed on twenty-eight reserves and 487 crows on eleven reserves. Other wildlife culled for conservation include red, fallow, roe, muntjac and sika deer, the eggs of gulls, feral Canada, greylag and barnacle geese, mink, rats, mice, goats, grey squirrels and rabbits. If rarer, more specialist, species are to survive, lethal control is often necessary, but always alongside habitat management.9 The RSPB figures are there for all to see, but figures are nigh on impossible to get from other wildlife charities, which are worried about losing members if predator control is done in their name. It is usually contracted out and removed from immediate association. This is, understandably, a difficult problem for conservation organisations to reconcile; their raison d’être is to protect and nurture wild creatures and landscapes, yet to do so they have to engage in unpalatable control. The bloodied and ruthless side of conservation is too often hushed up, but an understanding and open acknowledgement of what is done, and why, is sorely needed.
Tom arrived with tea and energy bars, and as the sun rose we sat against the wall of the hut and viewed the brightening moor. What would he do, I wondered, if a hen harrier arrived to nest here? ‘I’d be delighted,’ he said. ‘They are magnificent birds. But coping with more than one pair might be a problem and threaten the moor’s viability.’ He would, though, be more than happy to help relocate extra eggs safely – the brood management technique, or brood ‘meddling’ as it is called by those who oppose the idea. The peace of that beautiful April morning suddenly had an edge. It is always a difficult and uncomfortable discussion to have with people on either side of the debate.
I had never expected to find myself face to face with this controversy; curlews are as conflict-free as you can get. They stay out of our way and are increasingly rare, so much so that many people nowadays are barely aware of them. Although once on the quarry list, they are no longer shot for sport or for food, nor are they agricultural pests. They are not valuable for their feathers and they don’t carry diseases that affect humans or our livestock. For the whole of my 500-mile walk I never met anyone who wanted to kill curlews. Yet they are embroiled in this bitter conflict. The uncomfortable fact remains that I saw more curlews on grouse moors than anywhere else in the country. They are, by default, in the middle of this conservation battleground. What happens to grouse moors affects curlews, too. The fate of an enigmatic spirit of the wild is bound to the aggressive world of sport and politics. It is not a good place to be; the demands for reform, or even a ban, on grouse moors are growing.
The criticisms of grouse moor management are not confined to the persecution of hen harriers. Some believe that the rotational burning of heather pollutes water courses and causes increased flooding in the lowlands. Burning is also thought to release carbon dioxide, which exacerbates climate change. The number of predators that are routinely controlled, such as foxes, stoats and weasels, is considered too high. So, too, the control of mammals such as hares and deer that carry ticks that can kill ground-nesting birds. Arguments rage over all these issues, with no clear-cut answers to any of them, as surprisingly little data exists. As yet it is not possible to make definitive, science-based statements about the environmental effects of managing a grouse moor, but there are of course different sides of the arguments to consider with an open mind.
In terms of carbon dioxide emissions, the cycle of burning can be seen over a long timescale. If burning is done badly – that is, widespread, uncontrolled and allowed to go down the soil – it is certainly damaging and may well contribute to pollution and flooding. On the other hand, if it is done according to recommendations – that is, over a small area and only to burn off the heather canopy, so-called ‘cool burning’, it is less so. There are, of course, immediate effects as the plants burn, but only perhaps 10 per cent of a moor is burned annually, with the remaining 90 per cent left to regrow on a ten- to fifteen-year cycle. So, seen over the long term, a healthy moor with vigorous new growth is a constant carbon dioxide sink. Other wildlife habitats are also managed in what may seem to be destructive ways, but are in fact beneficial. Hedgerows are cut back, woodland is coppiced and wetlands cleared of encroaching scrub, for example.10
The control of predators like foxes and crows is not confined to grouse moors and is also carried out on nature reserves too, but to a lesser extent, and the number of generalist predators like foxes and crows remains high across the country. The culling of mountain hares, which can carry the ticks that infect ground-nesting birds, is undoubtedly upsetting. Hares do very well on grouse moors, along with rabbits and waders, because of the depression in predator numbers. While hare numbers are naturally kept low by fox predation, they increase rapidly when that threat is removed, and controlling them is part of the management strategy when tick infestation rises. However, mounds of dead mountain hares in the back of trucks and piles of animal carcassess on so-called ‘stink pits’ used to attract predators, is a potent symbol of the intense nature of grouse moor management and very hard for those not involved in the industry to accept.
It is also difficult to accept the many dead rabbits scattered over the roads where there are active grouse moors. Rabbits thrive without predators, and many of them are killed by traffic, especially the kits. In other situations, the carcasses would be welcome food for meso-predators like foxes, but in grouse moor areas they lie on the verges, untouched.
There is, of course, another side to the same coin. Red grouse that are shot in the winter months are eaten, either by the shooters themselves or by selling them to game dealers and restaurants. It is therefore possible to see grouse moors as a form of farming, specialising in producing a high-end product. Other forms of food production found in the lowlands are arguably far worse environmentally and ethically. The ground is regularly ploughed and drained and in many cases the use of chemicals for fertiliser and pesticides is very high. Millions of animals are slaughtered each year to meet an ever-growing demand for meat. Around 950 million birds, 2.6 million cows and 10 million pigs are killed in the UK annually for human consumption. The milk and meat industries in particular are highly damaging to the environment in their production of greenhouse gases, use of water and destruction of habitat. Intensive agriculture produces 10 per cent of Europe’s carbon emissions and is responsible for a decline of over 50 per cent of farmland birds since the 1970s., not just curlews but also yellowhammer, skylark, grey partridge, turtle dove and starling to name a few. The ever-increasing demand for large quantities of cheap food is environmentally devastating. The terms ‘green concrete’ and ‘green deserts’ are often apt for vast swathes of monocultures. When grouse moors are viewed as farms, it can be argued they are less environmentally damaging than the way we produce most of our food.
However, it is undeniable that many people find shooting birds for sporting entertainment distasteful. Increasingly, there is a feeling that killing for fun has no place in modern Britain. However, purely on ethical grounds, if the bird is eaten it is hard to argue that shooting grouse is worse than electrocuting chickens. Viewing it in terms of animal welfare, the life of a red grouse is better than that of a chicken. The birds are wild and living in a good habitat right up to the minute they die, which is more desirable than the short life cycle (usually only five weeks) imposed on broilers, those imprisoned bags of chemicals and hormones that fill our supermarket shelves. It is undeniably true, though, that grouse will only ever provide seasonal food for the well-off, like truffles, wild-caught salmon or hand-picked scallops.
The primary issue that sets grouse moor management apart from other forms of land use is the illegal killing of birds of prey. Until that is dealt with, public and political demands to tighten regulations, or even to shut down grouse moors, will increase. It is difficult to see how birds like curlews will not decline even more rapidly if grouse moors are closed quickly and with no exit plan, especially as the lowlands are increasingly hostile to ground-nesting birds.
All in all, grouse moors are one piece in a mosaic of managed areas in Britain. There are costs, and there are benefits. The future lies in getting the balance right. For the sake of hen harriers, waders like curlew, lapwing and golden plover and for the future of heather moorland itself, it would be a great pity if all attempts to find a solution fail. Fresh winds need to blow through the debate; it feels tired, and the opposing arguments are entrenched. More money for new initiatives has to be provided, and a reconciliation service established to bring together different interests with a renewed sense of purpose. In addition, the grouse shooters themselves must be brought to the negotiating table, as their influence is vital. There is too much at stake for this to fail, but finding a solution is made all the harder by the increasingly toxic stance taken by factions on both sides.
Roughly 12 per cent of the UK’s uplands are managed as grouse moors. What this land will look like if grouse shooting is banned will vary from place to place, and will be dependent on the money available for management after the revenue from shooting is withdrawn. Most likely, landowners will turn to sheep grazing or forestry for income. Other areas may be abandoned and allowed to evolve into woodland, so-called rewilding. No doubt there will be areas that will be protected as heather moorland and managed for moorland wildlife. The Warslow Estate in north Staffordshire, which I visited on my walk, is now a mixture of farmland and nature reserve. This once-grand grouse moor once belonged to a wealthy Victorian shooting family, the Harpur Crewes, who lived at Calke Abbey, near Derby. At its height, 1,365 brace of red grouse was shot here in 1935, but, like The Roaches, the estate was split up and sold after the Second World War. Today it is owned by the Peak District National Park Authority, who employ Tim Robinson as a Conservation Predator Control Contractor. Tim does what he describes as ‘wildlife keepering’, which is less intense than what is done on grouse moors. It is aimed at maximising the greatest range of wildlife, rather than focusing on the production of grouse. He and his assistant keepers reduce the number of crows, foxes, stoats and weasels around known wader hotspots over the winter and early spring months, so that, come the breeding season, there are fewer predators around. In the summer, when breeding is over, they concentrate on habitat management by blocking up old drains to re-wet the peat, remove encroaching shrubs, monitor the amount of grazing by sheep and cut back dense rushes. Predator control is still part of the mix, but there is less of it.
Tim and his team cover an area similar in size to Bolton Castle Estate, about ten square miles. Although he doesn’t officially monitor the curlews, Tim estimates that about twenty pairs breed on the moor and surrounding fields, although he doesn’t know how many manage to fledge chicks. The change to a mixture of farmland, forestry and nature reserve could, if still keepered to some extent, support some curlews. By way of contrast, Bolton Castle grouse moor, a highly managed, thriving shooting estate, has between 100 and 150 pairs of curlews.
Curlews and grouse moors are an uncomfortable mix for many conservationists. A nationally declining wader, for which we have international responsibility, is being supported by an industry that struggles to find acceptance in the conservation world. In some ways, the fate of hen harriers and the fate of curlews are interlinked, and both are dependent on the resolution of an increasingly volatile, bitter dispute.
As the dark, millstone grit, heather moorland transitions to the White Peak, the grouse moors are left behind. The drystone walls change from grey to creamy white. Winding roads thread through the limestone hills and valleys. The fields are now bright green and the deep valleys wear a rich cloak of broadleaved woodland. The White Peak is a miniature Dordogne. I walk with Tim Robinson to Bakewell, discussing predator control and his feelings on grouse moor management and the raptor conflict. He has never been a grouse moor keeper, but he enjoyed beating for grouse shoots when he was younger. He acknowledges the pressure that grouse moor keepers are under to maximise the number of red grouse and agrees that the Victorian mindset of vermin eradication is still present in some areas. He has also been on the receiving end of abuse by animal-rights activists who waited for him to check a fox trap early one morning. Two men shouted in his face, pushed him around and took photographs of his car.
I wonder how Tim, a sensitive man who clearly loves the natural world, deals with a job that for six months of the year involves culling wild creatures. ‘You’ve always got to be sure why you are doing it and what you are trying to achieve. I do it to help waders, they’re in serious trouble. If I didn’t believe it made a difference then I wouldn’t do it. I respect and admire foxes and crows for their intelligence and how they adapt to different situations, but it’s a matter of balance.’ Tim is delightful company, the mortal enemy of foxes and crows by day, a ballad singer in a choir by night.
One thing is clear to me from my visits to grouse moors, both extant and re-imagined: very little about conservation is easy. There is a general perception that protecting wildlife is soft and nurturing, but the reality on the ground is often raw and bloody. Some animals may have to die so that others can live, and those decisions are fraught with conflicting views. Conservation frequently requires highly political decision-making, where heightened feelings can spill over into aggression and entrenched positions. Its place in the complex mix of cultural and social activities is always subject to debate, and as society evolves, species will be kept or lost depending on our societal choices. During the walk I saw for myself the conflicts around turf-cutting, commercial forestry, silage production, grouse shooting, livestock farming, wind turbines, dog walking and even jogging. All of these can directly impinge on a curlew’s wild world. Curlew conservation therefore focuses on the discrepancy between what we want and what birds like curlews need, which is to be left alone over large, varied landscapes. That is a big ask in today’s world. In my more pessimistic days on the walk, I wondered if keeping curlews in our countryside simply demands too much of us, and what we are observing is an inevitable trailing off to extinction. Thankfully, those days were less common than the more optimistic ones, which were certainly underpinned by my many wonderful encounters with the bird. Until the last curlew sings, there is still hope and the story is far from over.
My moor visits are not quite done. Next, I visit the Eastern Moors, just to the west of Sheffield. Once a grouse moor, then owned by the water board, then intensively farmed, it is now managed by a partnership between the National Trust and the RSPB. Ten square kilometres of it is one of the six RSPB Trial Management Projects, the paired sites (with active and control areas) dotted around the north of the UK, working out what is best for upland curlews. This is an active area where foxes and crows are controlled and a range of habitat changes is being carried out. There are twelve pairs of curlews nesting here. I chat with the site manager, Danny Udall, and we discuss the idea of widespread curlew farming as a last-ditch attempt to save them. It seems a desperate measure. Danny has seen an increase in buzzards in the area over recent years, but he thinks curlews still manage to chase them away fairly successfully. One of the biggest problems in this particular spot is the sheer number of people.
This patch of the Dark Peak, the name given to the millstone grit moorland from here northwards, receives ten million visitors a year. It is the first area of ‘wilderness’ that is easily accessed from Sheffield, Derby, Manchester, Leeds, Chesterfield and Huddersfield. Walking across it on a wet, dreary day, it seems such an over-used moor, much like The Roaches but on a bigger scale. It is expected to be something for everyone: a wildlife sanctuary, a leisure facility, a climbers’ paradise, a wilderness experience, an archaeological site, a bridleway, a dog-walking area and a sanctuary for ground-nesting birds – hardly one inch of it is left untrodden. It is a piece of the wild that has been packaged up and presented to the public as a one-size-fits-all piece of moorland for any activity. The Eastern Moor’s website features a large picture of a curlew on the front page and boasts:
… breathtaking scenery and an abundance of wildlife, the Eastern Moors has something for everyone! The site offers open access with a network of bridleways and footpaths and internationally renowned climbing edges.
As an amenity close to cities it works well and is much loved. Even on a wet day there are lots of people setting off on walks or exercising their dogs. As the rain comes down more heavily, we walk away from the car park and into the heart of the moor, and here there are fewer people. Shrouded in mist, a herd of red deer graze at a distance from the tracks, hiding themselves behind a bluff. I try to ignore the signs and information boards and imagine I am watching these deer in a wild setting, but it is far from wild. Just beyond the curtain of mist, only a few miles away, are the densely populated conurbations and industry of northern England. If these large, impressive mammals can find a home here, can moorland birds? Ring ouzels are being helped to share their space with rock climbers, but it remains to be seen if curlews can increase and thrive in this multi-use site. The aim of the RSPB is to increase the number of pairs of curlews in both the active and trial areas by ten pairs. At the moment there are twenty-seven pairs in total, but I wonder how even that modest increase can be achieved. On the way back, an adult curlew flies over our heads, calling in alarm. Maybe it has a nest nearby. A family and their labrador walk across the heather while the bird circles anxiously. There are few places that have the same cheek-by-jowl nature of wildlife, wilderness and people as here on the Eastern Moors. The team working on the Trial Management Project are kind and helpful and I wish them every success in a very challenging environment.
My last two nights in the Peak District are spent with Tim Birkhead, a professor of zoology at the University of Sheffield and an acclaimed writer on natural history. He and his wife Miriam kindly offered to put me up and give me some space for downtime. On a sunny morning, Tim and I walk the hills on the fringes of the Eastern Moors near the Redmires Reservoirs, three man-made lakes providing water to Sheffield. This is also an active grouse moor. A ring ouzel flits amongst the crags while curlews fly up from the heather, trilling brightly. We watch a keeper checking traps in a valley below the track. Signs on stiles and gates ask people to stay on paths and to keep dogs on leads to protect the nesting birds, and on the whole this seems to be obeyed. Tim comments that people walking in this area would be surprised to hear curlews were in such trouble, as they seem to be doing fine.
My visits to the moors of Staffordshire, Derbyshire and North and South Yorkshire are intellectually and emotionally challenging, so it is good to have some time to talk things over with Tim and absorb some wisdom – and to touch base with the dreaming spires of academia. I ask if I can wash some clothes. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I think it goes in there,’ pointing to the dishwasher. I am grateful to be in such kind company and to soak up some much-needed peace in a calm house full of knowledge. Over breakfast I happen to mention how much I like bullfinches, such handsome birds. ‘Did you know the males have tiny testes, and very simple sperm? Compared to a reed bunting, which has enormous testes for its size and very long and complicated sperm?’ I didn’t, but only Tim would think that this was a perfectly normal conversation over coffee and toast.
I return to the Eastern Moors later in the summer to look for curlew chicks with naturalist Kim Leyland, employed on the RSPB Curlew Project. The day is so misty it is impossible to see even a few metres ahead. For most of the time we wander a small patch of what is called Big Moor, which is well away from the main tourist areas and where Kim had seen chicks just days before. Trying to spot tiny camouflaged birds in long grass in the fog, whilst constantly being bitten by midges, is a little trying. Crows in the trees caw and flap as they scan the ground. In Irish mythology the crow is associated with Morrigan, a warrior goddess and a bringer of death. Harsh on crows, perhaps, but from the perspective of curlews, not too far from the truth. The crows readily take curlew eggs and chicks, and if they work as a team, which they seem to do, the parents find it hard to fend them all off.
As two adult curlews become increasingly distressed by our presence, we retreat to the car and watch them from behind a drystone wall by a busy road, but the curlew family remain frustratingly hidden. Eventually, right at the end of the day, a wary adult curlew appears out of the long grass and walks into a section of shorter grass with the air of being on duty. As the traffic zooms past behind us, tiny yellow and grey chicks emerge. They are as bright as buttons, confident and cute. Unaware of the big world outside of their heathery nursery, the two fluffballs of hope for the future pick their way over the vegetation with their enormous and rather comical feet. The adult wanders behind, and like any parent of toddlers, seems afraid to take its eyes off them, even for a second. Standing tall on a rock near a twisted hawthorn, about 50 metres away, the other parent keeps watch. Occasionally they call to each other. It is a wonderful scene and we watch until the family potter back into the undergrowth and out of sight. The Eastern Moors, with all their complexity, are still producing the curlew goods, and it is truly a delight to behold.
After my stay in Sheffield I am rested and ready for the last section of my walk, to head for the agricultural lands of the east and then on towards the sea. But first, one last detour. I am invited to supper with someone who had phoned me a few days before. ‘Come to Belper station, I’ll meet you. I want to give you some chocolate and say thank you for helping curlews. We’ll give you a roast dinner.’ I have no idea who this man is; all he told me was his name, but it is too good an offer to refuse.