Grouse Moor Management Deserves Living Heritage Status — and Now There's a Campaign to Make It Happen

The Moorland Association, Countryside Alliance, and National Gamekeepers Organisation have joined forces to get grouse conservation and shooting recognised in the UK's new Inventories of Living Heritage.

The campaign, Our Upland Living Heritage, launched today with a simple but powerful argument: the traditions, skills, and community networks built around moorland management are as much a part of Britain's cultural fabric as bell-ringing, dry-stone walling, or Highland games — and it's time they were treated that way.

grouse moor management is a living, community-sustained land-use tradition

The timing couldn't be better. The UK ratified the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2024, and 2025 is the first year the new national inventories are open for submissions. The coalition is getting in early.

A dedicated website — ouruplandlivingheritage.com — is already up and running, gathering pledges and first-hand testimony from across the moorland community: gamekeepers, farmers, beaters, flankers, pickers-up, dog handlers, hospitality workers, and the rural residents whose lives are shaped by the rhythms of upland life.

Andrew Gilruth, Chief Executive of the Moorland Association, didn't mince his words:

"Grouse conservation and shooting is a lynchpin of the uplands' living heritage. Across these areas, from the Peak District to the Northern Pennines, it is essential to the preservation of our iconic heather moorlands, which are enjoyed by thousands of ramblers, birdwatchers, and holidaymakers every year. Shooting supports jobs from gamekeeping to hospitality and helps to keep communities together in an age of increasing isolation and loneliness. The craftsmanship, community spirit, and environmental stewardship involved in grouse shooting and conservation deserves to be celebrated and recognised as an essential part of the character and culture of the uplands."

The numbers back it up

This isn't just sentiment — there's serious research behind it. A 2023 report by Professor Simon Denny, independently overseen by Professor James Crabbe of Wolfson College, Oxford, and peer reviewed at three UK universities, identified six distinct orders of economic impact flowing from moorland managed for grouse shooting. That runs from direct jobs and local business spend all the way through to ecosystem services like wildfire prevention and carbon storage.

The environmental picture is hard to argue with. Shooting estates account for 29% of upland Sites of Special Scientific Interest — nearly double the 16% you'd expect by chance. And 74% of England's upland Special Protection Areas are managed as grouse moors. The patchwork of heather created by careful management supports a diversity of habitat that alternative land uses would struggle to match.

Then there's the social side. Professor Denny's research found that taking part in driven grouse shooting has a statistically significant positive effect on mental health and wellbeing compared with the national average. Using the World Health Organisation's own assessment tool, the societal value of beating on a grouse moor just twice a week came out at up to £1,966 per person per year — purely from the physical activity benefits. In remote communities where loneliness is a real and growing problem, the networks that grouse shooting sustains aren't a nice extra. They're essential.

It's about much more than shooting

What's smart about this campaign is how it frames the story. Our Upland Living Heritage isn't asking for special treatment for a field sport. It's making the case that grouse moor management is a living, community-sustained land-use tradition — one that has shaped Britain's most iconic upland landscapes since the Victorian era, and that keeps alive a body of practical knowledge found nowhere else.

The submission is built around five pillars: living rural heritage, iconic landscapes, social and community value, health and wellbeing, and knowledge and education. That puts it right alongside the kinds of traditions UNESCO was designed to protect.

Get behind it

The submission process needs evidence of community consent and active cultural practice. If you're part of this world — whether you're a keeper, farmer, gun, beater, or someone who simply values these landscapes and the way of life they support — your voice counts.

Head to ouruplandlivingheritage.com to pledge your support and share your story.