The SSSI Double Standard: RSPB's Failure at Geltsdale Exposes Conservation Hypocrisy

When it comes to Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in unfavourable condition, private landowners—particularly driven grouse moor estates—face relentless attack. The RSPB leads the charge, routinely weaponising unfavourable SSSI statistics to demand licensing schemes, ban moorland burning, and restrict shooting. Every percentage point of unfavourable condition on private land becomes ammunition in their campaign against traditional moorland management.

Yet data from the RSPB's own Geltsdale & Glendue Fells SSSI reveals a staggering hypocrisy: after decades of management and an estimated 20 years of direct control, the conservation giant has left nearly half (47%) of this flagship site in unfavourable condition. Where is the RSPB's accountability? Where are the headlines? Where is the soul-searching about their management failures?

The RSPB's Geltsdale reserve in Cumbria presents a striking case study. Despite decades of RSPB management—including an estimated 20 years of direct control without any shooting activity—nearly half (47%) of the site's 36 management units remain in unfavourable condition. While 19 units (53%) have achieved favourable status, 15 units are classified as "Unfavourable Recovering" and two remain "Unfavourable No Change."

This is not a marginal failure. It represents a significant proportion of a flagship conservation site that, despite optimal management conditions and the absence of activities typically blamed for poor SSSI performance, has not reached the standards that private landowners are routinely castigated for failing to meet.

The contrast in public discourse isn't just remarkable—it's outrageous. The RSPB has built an entire campaigning infrastructure around attacking private estates for their SSSI condition. Their press releases, parliamentary lobbying, and social media campaigns consistently portray gamekeepers and estate managers as environmental villains. Burning, grazing, and shooting are condemned as ecological crimes. Licensing schemes are demanded. Prosecutions are celebrated. Yet when it comes to their own performance, there's deafening silence.

Geltsdale represents everything the RSPB claims is necessary for successful moorland conservation. No shooting for 20 years. No driven grouse moor management. No gamekeepers supposedly persecuting raptors. Complete control over burning, grazing, and habitat management. Unlimited access to conservation expertise, scientific advice, and funding. This should be their showcase—proof that their prescriptions work.

Instead, it's an embarrassment. Nearly half the site remains in unfavourable condition, with two units showing no change whatsoever. After two decades.

If this were a private grouse moor, the RSPB would be demanding a public inquiry. There would be reports, campaigns, petitions to parliament. The estate owner would be pilloried as incompetent or worse. The RSPB would insist the land should be taken into public or charitable ownership—where, they would claim, it could be "properly managed."

But Geltsdale is in charitable ownership. It is being managed according to the RSPB's own conservation principles. And it's failing by the very metrics the RSPB uses to attack others.

So why are 47% of units still unfavourable? The RSPB won't tell you. They're too busy launching campaigns against moorland estates that perform better than they do.

The obvious answer—though one the RSPB will never publicly acknowledge—is that achieving and maintaining favourable condition on upland SSSIs is genuinely difficult. But this truth destroys their entire narrative. If managing moorlands successfully is complex and challenging even under ideal conditions, then the RSPB's simplistic attacks on grouse moors—blaming burning, shooting, and gamekeepers for every unfavourable SSSI unit—are exposed as dishonest campaigning rather than evidence-based conservation advocacy.

These challenges don't disappear simply because land is managed by a conservation charity with a royal charter. They don't vanish when shooting stops or when you remove the people who've managed these landscapes for generations. The difficulty is inherent to the ecosystem itself—something the RSPB understands perfectly well but refuses to acknowledge when attacking private landowners.

This raises serious questions not just about double standards, but about the RSPB's credibility and integrity. If unfavourable condition statistics are proof of poor management when they appear on private estates—as the RSPB constantly insists—then the same standard must apply to them. By their own metric, the RSPB has failed at Geltsdale. If they had any intellectual honesty, they would admit this failure, apologise to the members who fund them, and immediately cease their attacks on private landowners who achieve better results.

But don't hold your breath. The RSPB operates by one rule for others and another for themselves. Consider their advantages: expert staff, scientific resources, millions in charitable funding, complete management autonomy, no economic pressures, supportive regulators, and 20 years to get it right. Yet they cannot get 47% of their own SSSI units into favourable condition. Meanwhile, they demand that private estates—working with far fewer resources, genuine economic constraints, and hostile regulatory environments—should achieve perfection or face prosecution and licensing restrictions.

The lack of transparency becomes even more damning when examining the survey data. Only five of Geltsdale's 36 units have recent survey information available, with three dating to 2013—over a decade ago. This means the RSPB doesn't even have current data on the condition of most of their showcase site. Imagine the outcry if a private grouse moor operated with such sparse monitoring. The RSPB would accuse them of deliberately avoiding scrutiny, of hiding environmental damage, of failing their conservation duties.

Yet the RSPB does exactly this on their own land, and nobody calls them out.

The RSPB cannot have it both ways. They cannot build campaigns demanding restrictions on private landowners based on SSSI condition while their own flagship sites fail to meet the same standards. They cannot claim moral authority on moorland management while leaving nearly half of Geltsdale in unfavourable condition after two decades of complete control.

Their hypocrisy is not just a matter of double standards—it actively damages conservation by destroying trust and goodwill. Private landowners who work hard to manage their land sustainably, who invest in habitat improvements, who cooperate with conservation goals, are told their efforts are worthless because a percentage of their SSSI units remain unfavourable. Meanwhile, the RSPB's failures are ignored.

This selective accountability makes a mockery of evidence-based conservation policy.

The Geltsdale data proves what many have long suspected: the RSPB's campaigns against grouse moors have never been about evidence or conservation outcomes. They're about ideology and fundraising. The organisation knows perfectly well that achieving favourable condition across complex upland ecosystems is difficult—they're living proof of it. But acknowledging this reality would undermine their lucrative campaigning narrative.

So they stay silent about their own failures while amplifying those of others. They demand accountability from private landowners while avoiding it themselves. They present themselves as conservation experts while their flagship moorland reserve languishes in unfavourable condition after 20 years of management without any of the activities they claim cause harm.

The RSPB owes private moorland owners an apology. They owe their members an explanation for why half of Geltsdale remains unfavourable. And they owe the conservation sector a commitment to honest, evidence-based advocacy instead of the selective, hypocritical campaigning that Geltsdale exposes.

Until the RSPB can achieve better than 47% unfavourable condition on their own land, they should withdraw every campaign, every press release, and every parliamentary submission that attacks private estates for similar or better performance. Anything less is pure hypocrisy.