When a Wildlife Trust Cuts Heather, It's Conservation. When a Keeper Does It, It's a Crime?
This week, North Wales Wildlife Trust shared drone footage of a heather moor cut into a neat patchwork of rectangles. It said the work would boost structural diversity and help black grouse and reptiles. The comments were full of praise.
Anyone who has stood on a grouse moor will have recognised the picture straight away. Gamekeepers have been doing this, and explaining it, for generations. When they do, they are called vandals, accused of wrecking the uplands and told their work has nothing to do with conservation.
So here is a simple question. If a patchwork of managed heather is good for wildlife when a Wildlife Trust does it, why is it bad for wildlife when a keeper does it?
The Trust's post is about its Gors Maen Llwyd Nature Reserve. It sets out a clear management plan:
heather is cut in patches on a five-year rotation
every fifth year, an adjacent patch is cut
after twenty years, or four cycles, the reserve will hold a matrix of 5, 10, 15 and 20-year patches
the result is greater structural diversity, which the Trust says is valuable for black grouse and reptiles
That is a textbook description of rotational heather management. Short young heather sits next to older, taller heather, so birds and other wildlife have food, shelter and nesting cover within a few metres of each other. The Trust called the result "fantastic". We agree.
None of this is new to the people who manage the moors. Keepers have long argued that heather left alone grows old, tall and woody. It becomes poor habitat and, as summers get hotter, a growing fuel load that is waiting for a spark.
Managed in small patches on rotation, by cutting and by controlled burning, the same moor becomes a mosaic of different ages. That mosaic is what feeds and shelters red grouse, black grouse, curlew, lapwing, golden plover and the rest of our ground-nesting birds. The breaks between patches also help slow a wildfire.
That is the case keepers have made to anyone who would listen. It is the same case the Wildlife Trust has just made, almost word for word.
Put a drone over a grouse moor and you will see the same patchwork. Yet when keepers post that picture, the response is very different. They are told it is scarring, destruction, an eyesore. They are trolled online, abused by name and treated as the enemy of the very wildlife they spend their working lives protecting.
The method has not changed. The habitat has not changed. The birds have not changed. The only thing that changes is who is holding the cutter.
That is not science. It is prejudice. When the same work is praised from one organisation and condemned from another, the judgement is about people, not about the land.
Gors Maen Llwyd is one example of a pattern keepers know only too well. Whenever they point to the benefits of moorland management, the message is dismissed because of who is delivering it.
Wildfire. Keepers have warned for years that unmanaged heather builds up a dangerous fuel load, and that cutting and controlled burning create firebreaks. They are accused of scaremongering to protect their sport. Then the moors burn, and the same warnings are suddenly treated as common sense when a fire service or a land agency repeats them.
Ground-nesting birds. Keepers point to curlew, lapwing and golden plover breeding on managed moors, often where they have disappeared from the land around. They are told the birds are a by-product of shooting and that the claim is self-serving. Yet when a reserve reports the same species returning under active management, it is a conservation success story.
Predator control. Keepers explain that ground-nesting birds cannot raise chicks where foxes and crows go unchecked. They are branded as killers. When conservation bodies carry out the same work to protect the same birds, it is described as necessary and responsible.
Each time, the evidence on the ground is the same. The reaction depends on the badge, not the result.
We welcome what North Wales Wildlife Trust is doing at Gors Maen Llwyd. This is not about having a go at them. They are right, and they have said so in public.
But if they are right, then the gamekeepers who have been doing the same thing for decades are right too. That deserves to be said just as loudly. The people who have kept these moors as a living mosaic, often in the face of insults and abuse, should be recognised for it, not vilified.
We would ask three things:
That conservation bodies which use rotational heather management say openly that keepers have been doing the same work for generations.
That critics who praise a patchwork on a nature reserve stop condemning the same patchwork on a grouse moor.
That policymakers judge heather management on what it does for wildlife and wildfire risk, not on who carries it out.
If you agree that controlled heather management has a place on our moors, sign the petition to revoke the 2021 and 2025 heather burning regulations . It is open until 23 April 2027.
The heather does not care who manages it. Neither do the birds. It is time the rest of us caught up.
