‘Almost a fifth of Scotland is managed for grouse shooting’.
This claim was made in a 2018 report, The Case for Reforming Scotland’s Grouse Moors, authored by Ruth Tingay & Andy Wightman and published by Revive: The coalition for grouse moor reform.
The ‘almost a fifth’ claim is an attention-grabber and often shocks people, which is why it is regularly used by Revive as part of its campaign material. For example, here in a flyer advertising a fringe event hosted by Revive at the forthcoming SNP spring conference:
Unsurprisingly, there are some supporters of grouse shooting who appear to be intensely irritated by the ‘almost a fifth’ quote and have been trying to discredit it in recent weeks. Actually, not just discredit it, but apparently to “comprehensively destroy” it.
A bold claim indeed. Unfortunately not one that the claimant could live up to. The following screen grabs are from Matt Cross’s twitter account (he’s a ‘journalist’ who writes stuff for Shooting Times – not always accurately, see here & here). Thanks to the blog reader who sent them in:
Oh dear. It appears Mr Cross isn’t quite the brilliant researcher he thinks he is. First he claims that Revive “didn’t provide a source for the [one fifth] claim” and then he decides the source was a 28 year old publication.
He’s wrong. On both counts.
Had he read Revive’s report, which is readily available on the Revive website, he would have found this, on page 10:
So, to clarify. The ‘almost a fifth’ claim was based on two sources – one from the grouse moor owners’ lobby group Scottish Land & Estates and one from the Scottish Government’s Land Reform Review Group. Neither of these sources are 28 years old.
The Revive report makes no comment on the validity of those two sources (as that would have been beyond the scope of the report) but used them in good faith as the best available evidence. The report also included the caveat that ‘Estimates of the extent of this land use vary depending upon definitions and the type of grouse moor management deployed’.
The report further explained (on page 11) ‘Further complications arise in estimating the extent of land used for grouse shooting when one particular aspect of grouse moor management (predator control) is taken in to account. Predator control occurs on the grouse moor itself but also beyond the boundary of the moor (e.g. in forestry blocks or on in-bye ground) so the mapping of moorland habitat alone is insufficient to calculate the full extent of grouse moor management as a land-use ‘type”.
For all these reasons, it is perfectly legitimate for Revive to state that ‘Almost a fifth of Scotland is managed for grouse shooting’.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Roll on the Glorious 27th April. A start for our Lagopus lagopus scoticus to fight back.
“Scotica”, surely Sir?
I think I have to disagree with your position here. You state that:
“Up to a fifth of Scotland is managed for grouse shooting”.
You then refer to your sources and provide the estimate of 12% to 18% is managed for grouse shooting.
One fifth is 20% therefore your statement of “up to a fifth” is factually incorrect.
[Ed: good point, Winston, thank you. That was a misquoting error on our behalf, not Revive’s, and has now been amended].
While it is heartening to read these exposes on who is getting up to what, and nicking all our land, you’re just giving needless publicity to the opposition by putting their argument up in full there. Put the debunking ahead of the claims made by the grouse shooters, not the other way around. Then once you’ve busted their myths you can put their claim down at the bottom, in small print. Remember, you lose 50% of readers after the first paragraph then 10% of the remainder at each successive one. You make it look like they have a point with the way it is currently structured. Lead with the strongest pro-wildlife, and condemnation of the gentry, material and then shove in their mealy mouthed stuff afterwards. Writing for the masses, against an enemy, means a different style of writing from reports and “balanced” material. The shooters understand that, the pro-environmental lobby needs to as well.
Me thinks Mr. Cross could be ‘upto’ a 24 carat plonker!
Sadly you just need enough people like Matt Cross to spout enough shite with enough (phoney) authority and people believe it and will even throw it back at you when you discuss the issue with them on social media. Even if Matt Cross was correct and ‘only’ 7% of the country was put aside and comprehensively trashed for a minority ‘sport’ that would still be outrageous. We really need a serious and comprehensive look at the whole grouse moor issue that weighs everything up objectively on national television. Surely the size and complexity of the issue require that!!! Quite a few myths could get loudly debunked.
You must be under the illusion that there is a mainstream TV company that is not in the pocket of the rich powerful and privileged.
The fact that they put so much effort into shite PR shows they don’t have quite as much direct influence on the media as they like. Their efforts to get Chris Packman chucked off the BBC are determined, but ludicrous. Even the Daily Telegraph has been known to paint DGS in a bad light… occasionally. They do carry a lot of influence in some quarters including Westminster, but I don’t believe it’s ever been total and that it won’t start slipping – look at the growing number of Tory MPs publicly taking a stand against fox hunting. If more in the mainstream media realised what DGS really entails and all the dodgy shenanigans used to keep it going and against its opponents then they’d realise what a story there is, it’s getting that across to them. We can but try.
MC – ‘this does not mean that the whole square was burned’. Being responsible land owners, the Grousers will naturally claim they are careful not to burn deep peat, riverbanks, rock faces, trees and the like.
But will they shoot there?
I think we should all note that the biggest wildfire in Scotland this year….is on managed grousemoor. I think we have been told that well managed moors prevent wildfire…..could this just be a load of tosh? Yes it is a load of tosh.