The RSPB wants to mark everyone's homework, except its own

The RSPB is never short of views on what other people's land should deliver for wildlife. It has campaigned relentlessly for changes to grouse moor management and regulation, and Defra's current call for evidence is the latest battleground. Its message never changes: land should be judged on what it delivers for nature.

Results matter, and in the managed uplands almost every survey to date shows the success red-listed birds are having on grouse moors. That is a record the people who manage those moors are rightly proud of.

It is bizarre, however, that despite the RSPB's protestations against grouse moors, the charity is so unwilling to review the available data from its own reserves. If results are the test, they have to be the test for everyone.

So the Moorland Association has done the job for it. It analysed the charity's own Annual Reserve Avian Monitoring data, which is published on the NBN Atlas under an open licence, free for anyone to use. This is not anyone else's data. It is the RSPB's own monitoring of its own reserves. The Moorland Association compared matched reserves and areas across two periods, 2014–18 and 2019–23, leaving out 2020 because of the disruption to monitoring that year.

For the birds at the heart of the upland debate, the results are eye-opening. Average recorded counts of curlew were 6.6% lower across 29 matched reserves. Snipe were down 10.3% across 46. Golden plover and red grouse were both down 15%, ring ouzel 26% and black grouse 38%.

Some species did better: merlin, skylark and meadow pipit all recorded higher counts. But picture the reaction if a grouse moor had published lower counts of curlew, golden plover and black grouse over the same years. We doubt the RSPB would be calling for patience and context. Grouse moor managers are rarely offered either.

Of course, we appreciate that network averages can blur the picture. A single reserve cannot hide behind them. Lake Vyrnwy is one of the RSPB's signature reserves. On the charity's watch, its wildlife has collapsed. That has happened on a reserve it has had every opportunity to get right. A collapse like that deserves, at the very least, an explanation.

Meanwhile, on the moors the RSPB wants changed, the story is very different. On land managed for grouse, red-listed birds are thriving. If the RSPB wants land judged on its results, it should welcome the comparison.

Then there is the state of the RSPB's own record. The published data contain around 30 numerical curlew counts a year for 2014–18, but only around 23 a year in the later period. For 2023 there is a single numerical count for golden plover and a single one for red grouse.

For meadow pipit, some records simply say "present", with no number attached. Those records outnumber actual counts in every year from 2014 to 2023. The same is true of red grouse, the bird at the centre of this whole debate. In 2020 there were 5 meadow pipit counts against 98 bare presence records, and 9 skylark counts against 100.

This is the published monitoring record of an organisation that demands evidence from everyone else. That leaves the RSPB with an awkward choice. If its monitoring is sound, then recorded counts of several of the birds most associated with the uplands were lower on reserves it manages to its own prescription. In that case it owes its members, Defra and everyone it criticises an explanation.

If its monitoring is not sound enough to show that, then the RSPB's published data cannot tell anyone whether its management of its own reserves is working. An organisation that cannot evidence its own results is in no position to lecture others about theirs.

Either way, this is a complete failure and dereliction of duty by the RSPB. It cannot keep demanding evidence from others while its own record goes unexplained.

This matters because of what Defra is being asked to weigh. Assessing grouse moor management properly means asking not only what it delivers now, but what would happen to the same land under the realistic alternative. That alternative could involve changes to grazing, habitat management, predator management, forestry, rewetting, public access or conservation spending. That counterfactual should be evidence-based rather than assumed. Defra cannot weigh one side of that comparison and merely imagine the other.

Too often it is simply assumed that land managed without grouse shooting will do better for wildlife. The RSPB's own reserves are the obvious place to test that assumption. So far, its published data do not show it.

Until the RSPB can show its own reserves delivering for curlew, golden plover and black grouse, it should think twice before telling anyone else how to manage theirs. And Defra should expect to see that evidence before it gives the RSPB's case any weight.