Gamekeeping on Grassington Moor
The morning’s last shower of rain has left the moorland glowing. Around us, heather adds pinks and purples to the emerald green of mosses and grasses, bilberry and crowberry, and the longer pale grasses add a shimmer of gold. Seven or eight red grouse burst out of the heather, clucking. They fly just high enough to get over the nearby wall, and disappear out of sight. Less than five minutes later, they’ve returned ‘They’re coming back to their territory now,’ says George, who’s our guide for the day.
George Hare is head gamekeeper of C& G Estates, who manage parts of Grassington Common and Consitone Moor as a shooting estate. He’s been here for four years, working with two other full time gamekeepers.
‘Our primary role is to look after the red grouse for shooting, and everything that comes with that. From February, March time we'll get a lot of waders turn up: lapwings, curlews, redshank, golden plover and oystercatchers - they'll all breed up here. Once the young have fledged, they’ll flock back up and migrate out again.’
The majority of the ground-nesting birds that George is talking about are categorised as red listed species by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), which means not only are they rare, but they’re at risk of extinction. ‘We have good populations of them, and they breed every year successfully. It's because they're allowed to breed, they don't get eaten.’
Diversity on the moor
On our tour of Grassington Moor with George, we’ve seen the tumbledown ruins of the old lead mines, and as well as grouse we’ve seen kestrels, kites, ravens, wheatears, a marsh harrier, and, of course, sheep. ‘Sheep are a part of this landscape. They’re not good when heather is young but they do help to keep the heather from getting too big and dominating the moor.’
Current grazing levels, George tells us, are just about right to keep the vegetation in a condition that suits both sheep and ground nesting birds. ‘In the past there was overgrazing,’ George says, ‘but that was the case across the country and it’s changed now. A lot of people think that sheep and grouse don’t mix, but here we all get on ok.’
When we stop, we choose one of the shooting butts for shelter. I’ve never been in one before, and I peer beyond grasses and mosses to the haze of heather beyond. George talks about the vegetation. ‘Just where we’re standing, we've got heather, cotton grass, wavy hair grass, bilberry, lichen. Look a little further and you’ll see crowberry and cloudberry, bog asphodel, soft rush. Some parts of the uplands are blanketed with heather, but that isn't the case up here. I like it like this.’
He’s right - there are more types of grass here than I can identify. And less than a hundred yards from where we’re huddled, there are deep wet patches of mosses, including the sphagnum moss that’s crucial to the slow process of peat formation. Looking at areas of exposed peat where gullies are forming, we talk about the survey that’s being done by Yorkshire Peat Partnership, and plans for restoration that involve the commoners, land owners and other stakeholders (find out more through our interview with Manon Pue here). Another group that George is involved in is the Yorkshire Dales Moorland Group, which aims to raise awareness of a variety of land management approaches, and sets up meetings in schools and with young farmers. This connects with other groups across the country, to share best practice.
Balancing Act
Grassington common is around about 2000 acres. ‘We have the shooting rights on all of it, but we only actively shoot on just over 1000 acres. Our two biggest tasks here are habitat management and predator control. We have a further three and a half thousand acres off the Common; it all gets managed as one whole estate.’ On some estates, pheasants and partridge are introduced; here on Grassington Moor, though, no birds are brought in. The grouse population rises and falls, and George’s role is to adapt management plans and shooting quotas depending on the numbers of birds.
We’ve been chatting all morning, and can’t ignore the controversy that surrounds shooting: it often gets bad press. George shares his frustration at critics of shooting who don’t seem to appreciate the more nuanced picture. ‘I fully understand not everyone's going to agree with it. But there are many added benefits: populations of rare birds aren’t able to breed where there isn't predator control. A lot of people are against shooting, yet they are pro birds. So hopefully, most sane people can see past the grouse shooting and see the added benefits.’
I’m reminded of a recent conversation with Amanda Perkins of Curlew Country who has dedicated more than fifteen years to the protection of curlews; she is adamant that if predators aren’t controlled, curlews and other ground-nesting birds have very little chance of survival. Like so much in Britain’s uplands, things aren’t straightforward. ‘You can have the best habitat in the world,’ says George. ‘If a curlew’s eggs get eaten every single year, though, you are not going to have any more curlews. Nobody can deny that - the population just can’t carry on. When you come off areas like this where there is strict predator control, you're looking at more than 80% predation rates. The birds are so vulnerable.’
The main predators of ground nesting birds are mammals, including stoats, weasels, foxes and rats. Gamekeeping involves setting traps for these animals. Lower down the moor, magpies and carrion crows are controlled too. The gamekeepers will carry out some shooting, and will use scarers to scatter flocks of birds such as Lesser black-backed gulls.
All this talk of predator control feels quite harsh, but George has a sensitivity that seems to arise from simply being here. Of the 365 days in the year, fewer than twenty are shoot days. George enjoys the social buzz on these days, but that’s not all it’s about. For the rest of the year, the gamekeeper’s job is to be out on the moor. George’s wish to become a gamekeeper began when he was six. Back then, he lived in the flatter lands of Cambridgeshire. He’s since travelled north, and is very attached to the moors. He has developed a keen eye for what’s around him. I ask him what he loves about being out here. ‘The weather, the weather! The rain, the snow. It's quiet up here, it's beautiful. During the spring, when we’re watching for curlews or we're grouse marking, you’ll sit for hours and hours and hours.’
One Common, Many perspectives
When we leave George, we come away with new learning about gamekeeping and also with a strong sense of the pleasure George takes from being out on the wide open moor, day after day; but not always on his own. Being a gamekeeper here is also about being part of the community, and when this works well, that’s good news for the moor. As we’re learning through this project, each common has many different elements; and a positive future for land, wildlife and people is most likely when these elements work well together.
