Creating wild moors through changing policy

Support a transition to sustainable upland management

  • Bring together companies, communities, governments and individuals to regenerate the uplands for nature, climate and people through investment in natural capital: this will support jobs and green infrastructure, innovative nature-based solutions, such as carbon offsetting, and drive landscape-scale restoration of carbon-rich habitats such as peatlands and native woodlands.
  • Provide incentives for landowners and land managers to shift from intensive grouse moor management to nature-based solutions as a core land use in the uplands.
  • Support open-access research and development into accelerating carbon offsetting and other nature-based solutions in the uplands to deliver a broad portfolio of benefits for the economy, environment and communities.

Introduce licensing of grouse moors

  • Bring an end to environmentally damaging practices such as burning, the killing of wildlife to increase grouse numbers and use of medicated grit by requiring all grouse moors to obtain a licence as a condition of operating. Licensing provides an important legal mechanism for migrating the uplands from an unsustainable, degraded landscape to a healthy and functioning environment. Where a grouse moor is reasonably suspected of breaking wildlife or environmental protection law or its conditions of operating then its license can be withdrawn.

Protect peatland on Britain’s moors

  • End the burning of fragile peatlands for grouse shooting in line with the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation to help reach net-zero carbon emissions, provide natural flood management and reverse the national decline of biodiversity.

End the killing of wildlife to increase grouse numbers

  • England’s population of mountain hares should be awarded year-round protection from persecution by being added to the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981.
  • The use of snares, spring traps and cage traps for the purpose of grouse moor management (increasing grouse numbers for sports shooting) should be strictly prohibited.

Ban the use of medicated grit

  • Non-therapeutic dosing of grouse with medicated grit to enable unnaturally-high populations where parasites and disease spreads easily must be banned.