Principles of Moorland Management - Guidance Published

I am delighted that it has been possible to publish the guidance on three PoMM topics today:

• Heather Cutting
• Mountain Hare Management
• Worm Control for Grouse

This guidance can be found on the Forum's website in a separate Published Guidance page and there is a link to this page from the Home page.

This published guidance has had a long-gestation period but I believe that the effort has been worthwhile.  I understand that some members of the Forum will be happier with the guidance than others, but we should remember that this guidance is intended to be a summation of current thinking with a view to advising practitioners about how to manage in accordance with best practice. This will never be a static position and the intention is to keep all the guidance under review so that it continues to reflect latest information, regulation and experience.

My thanks go to everyone who has contributed to the production of this guidance.  It has not been simple to achieve this level of consensus but I believe this type of guidance provides a baseline to work from and it is likely to that the guidance provides a more flexible and a more effective approach to achieving best practice than the alternative of additional regulation.

I set out some suggestions about the further development of the PoMM project in the earlier blog post.  I hope this will trigger some support to produce guidance for more topics.  Some nice quick, easy wins would be welcome after these three, heavyweight topics!

Principles of Moorland Management

Background

The Principles of Moorland Management (PoMM) project is funded by SNH and seeks to develop guidance with a practitioner focus.  It avoids re-inventing guidance that is already available but aims to draw all the information that relates to a particular topic together in one place.  Input from people with specialist knowledge who are not members of the Moorland Forum is encouraged to make sure that the guidance is as representative as possible of all views.  The Moorland forum will be responsible for reviewing any guidance that is published through PoMM on a regular basis so that the guidance is kept up to date.

Current Topics

The plan was for topics to be kept light and to link to other information wherever possible so that we could achieve a quick turn round between starting to prepare the guidance and then publishing it.  The  in-built ability within PoMM to refine the guidance after publication would allow the guidance to be refined and improved.

This laudable objective has not been achieved in practice.  However, we are now close to the publication of the guidance on three topics:

• Worm Control in Grouse
• Heather Cutting
• Mountain Hare

The guidance for these topics has been made available for Forum members to review in advance of the discussion that will take place during the postponed Forum meeting on 23rd March.  Being an optimist, I am anticipating publication soon afterwards.

Future Topics

Having got the first three topics to the point of publication, I am now looking for topics for the next phase of work.  Current proposals include: 

• Input to the development of a Trapping Code of Practice by SNH
• Sheep Tick Control
• Management for Waders
• Monitoring of Mountain Hare populations
• Fire Danger Warning System

Suggestions

My question to everyone with an interest in the Scottish uplands is what other topics should PoMM be providing guidance for?  The guidance need not be long and involved; it could be as simple as a side or two of bullet points that provide a summary of the key issues and links to other guidance, reports or information.  I see this sort of guidance being prepared by someone who has specialist knowledge of a topic, who might already have prepared more detailed information.  The PoMM guidance could be seen as a way to promote the report or other information to a wider audience.

Longer more detailed guidance can be prepared, but I would welcome suggestions for some 'quick-wins' as well.

Funding

The PoMM project has funding and provided any proposals meet the requirement of the PoMM Steering Group, funding may be allocated to support the preparation of more guidance.

SRUC: Remote Data Capture in the Uplands

Hill & Mountain Research Centre.  Photo:SRUC

SRUC is trialling a remote data capture system at the Hill & Mountain Research Centre at Kirkton, near Crianlarich.

Davy McCracken is looking for thoughts on what sort of data obtained by sensors, either fitted to animals or in the environment, would be useful to help inform any management decisions in remote upland areas.  The presentation provides some background (see below).  The type of data collected is the type that can be transmitted in small packets (i.e. not streaming of videos etc) over a radio frequency network.

Technology exists to build sensors but it is not clear what type of data, and hence sensors, would be useful to upland land managers. Davy is trying to pull together thoughts on uses to inform discussions and any thoughts will be appreciated.  It does not matter whether a sensor exists or not, as the point is to think outside the box to identify the type of data it would be useful to obtain, which currently may be difficult (or impossible) to gather.

Note that the ‘masts’ are only about 1m long and they cost c. £1K, or less, to buy.  Each mast can form a 10 mile radius radio network in rural areas and theoretically can take data from 10,000 sensors! So it is possible to think in terms of an array of sensors and not be confined to single sensors located at single points

Davy cannot be at the Forum meeting on 2 March, but he will be happy to speak to anyone who would like further information.

The presentation about this is on the Briefings page of the Forum's website, along with a form to use to provide a guide to the information that Davy is seeking. Please contact Davy direct, or forward any e-mail traffic to the Forum.

  

Sustainability of Driven Grouse Moors

This is the announcement that was published by the Scottish Government on 24 November 2017. I have edited this slightly to highlight the key sections.  The membership of the Group may be of particular interest to Forum members.  Adam Smith has input to the Group as one of the specialist advisers. 

Membership of an independent group to ensure grouse moor management practices are sustainable and legally compliant has been confirmed.

The new group will be led by Professor Alan Werrity, who previously chaired a Scottish Natural Heritage review into sustainable moorland management. It includes scientists, moorland managers, regulatory experts and advisers from SNH, Scottish Wildlife Trust, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency.

The group has been set up in response to SNH research that found almost a third of golden eagles being tracked by satellite died in suspicious circumstances and that the majority of cases were where land is intensively managed for driven grouse shooting.

The group will look at the environmental impact of grouse moor management practices such as muirburn, the use of medicated grit and mountain hare culls and advise on the option of licensing grouse shooting businesses.

Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said:

“We have been clear that the continued killing of protected species of birds of prey damages the reputation of law-abiding gamekeepers, landowners and the country as a whole.

“This new group will look at what we can do to balance our commitment to tackling wildlife crime with grouse moor management practices, so it continues to contribute to our rural economy, while being sustainable and compliant with the law.

“The group membership reflects the complex nature and wide range of issues that need to be considered and I look forward to hearing their advice in due course.”

Professor Werrity said:

“This is truly challenging work given the traditions underlying moorland management and the concerns coming to light over some mal-practices. 

“My earlier work chairing the SNH Moorland review also sought to reconcile nature conservation interests with promoting the rural economy. I will be taking an evidence-based approach, and for this we have the right mixture of experience, expertise and knowledge on the group to get to grips with the subject. I look forward to getting started on this review. ”

Background

Read in the birds of prey report.

Group Membership

The confirmed membership of the group includes:

Scientists

Professor Ian Newton, Professor Alison Hester, and Professor Colin Reid 

Moorland Managers 

Alexander Jameson BLE MRICS FAAV and Mark Oddy MRICS CEnV MIAagrM. 

Specialist advisers to the group

Dr Calum Macdonald, SEPA; Professor Des Thompson, SNH; Dr Adam Smith, Director Scotland GWCT; and Susan Davies, SWT.

Langholm Moor Demonstration Project - completion plan

This 10-year project completes in October 2017. The project is set up as a company and it is run by a Board of Directors, which met, last week, to discuss how the project is to be managed between now and completion. This follows the sad resignation of the Headkeeper, Simon Lester, earlier this month, and other reductions in the gamekeeping team.

See the news item on the Project's website for details of the plan that has been announced.

The Directors have acknowledged that the Project is not going to meet all the targets that were set for it. However, there have been many successes and I welcome the plan to write up properly all the work that has been completed so that the moorland management community can get full value from the project. Inevitably, there will be criticism that all the targets will not be achieved, but this should not be seen as failure. Targets are always going to be at risk when dealing with natural systems that cannot be tightly controlled, and the final report from the Project will need to balance the successes against the challenges that still remain to be answered.

Will there be an appetite for a Langholm 3 project?

A landmark day for the Forum

It feels like today has been a bit of a landmark day for the Moorland Forum. Some of the buses we have been waiting for have come round the bend on the same day, and we have held two important meetings.

Review of Sustainable Moorland Management

The long-awaited report to the Science Advisory Committee of SNH from the Review of Sustainable Moorland Management was published today, and this is of great interest to the Forum. The Report, and supporting documents, can be downloaded from the SNH website.

There is a lot of detail in the Report that will need to be sifted through, but the ten recommendations are summarised on p5 of the Report and more details of the key issues (and supporting recommendations) are provided on pp30-37. As a taster the recommendations contain:

• Scotland’s Moorland Forum, working with its members and wider stakeholders, is asked to produce a shared vision for Scotland’s moorlands founded on environmental sustainability and critical ecological thinking and to devise a strategy for delivering this. 
• SNH is asked to work with Scotland’s Moorland Forum to design and deliver large-scale, long-term experiments to support our understanding of moorland ecosystem health.

However, this is not yet a call for action. Discussions are taking place between SNH and the Scottish Government about how this work is to be resourced, and I will provide an update about any action that we can get on with at the Forum meeting, on 30 October.

Understanding Predation - Steering Group Meeting

The Project's Steering Group met and received a presentation from the Research Group about the working draft report that has been circulated to them. Discussion took place about the management and presentation of the data that have been collected from the review of the science, the questionnaire and the workshops. There was complete agreement about how the Report could be refined. 

We also discussed the Project Review Seminars, which will take place on 27 Oct, 3 Nov and 12 Nov, and how these will be structured. See the Understanding Predation blog for more details.

I will provide more detail about this meeting, next week, on the Understanding Predation blog and there will be a progress update at the Forum meeting on 30 October.

Chairman's Working Group Meeting

This meeting was held after the Steering Group meeting, and we discussed the agenda for the Forum meeting on 30 October. An important part of the meeting will be a discussion on Rural Skilling. I will circulate an Agenda for the meeting, next week, and this will include a briefing about the Rural Skilling part of the meeting.  

I will ask that members come to the meeting with a clear understanding of what their organisations do already towards providing skills for people in rural areas and what training is provided for the next generation. 

Muirburn Code Review

On the way back from the meetings, I was in discussion with the Scottish Government about the Invitation to Tender for the next phase of the review of the Muirburn Code. I expect to receive the Invitation next week, and I will be aiming to provide a response no later than the end of November, with a view to work starting on the agreed process, early in 2016. Again, more about this on 30 October.

I look forward to working with Members to take forward all these initiatives. It has indeed been a bit of a landmark day, and in preparation for tackling all this, I am heading for three days on the west coast for quiet contemplation and an injection of reality!

Minister's Meeting with the Forum - Muirkirk, 4 September

Representatives of the Forum met Dr Aileen MacLeod, MSP, Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform in the Coach House Inn, Muirkirk, on 4 September.  After a short introduction, we took the Minister onto the moorland to the south of Muirkirk, which is part of the Bute Estate.  Our host was Nick Wright, the manager of the estate, and at various stops we discussed a range of topics with the Minister:

Understanding Predation Project: Chris Wernham (BTO) provided an update on the progress of this project.  The draft report will be presented to the steering group, at the end of September and it will be discussed in three seminars between 27 October and 12 November.  The final report will be published at the end of January 2016.  The Minister confirmed her support for this project and stated that she is looking forward to launching the Report, in February.

Heather Management: Nick Wright described some of the heather management issues on the estate and the impact that the re-introduction of grazing two years ago, using Herdwick sheep, has had.

Conservation Issues: Duncan Orr-Ewing (RSPB) commented on the importance of the site for upland breeding birds and this led into an interesting discussion about the impact that changing management regimes can have on the populations of key bird species.

Land Reform: Tim Baynes (SMG) had been asked for his views about how the Forum could best contribute to the debate about Land Reform.  Many members would be submitting a response to the Bill consultation, and in recognition of the diverse range of opinion across Forum members, Tim recommended that the Forum should maintain the position expressed in Lord Lindsay’s letter to the Minister.  The letter had expressed the willingness of the Forum to respond to any requests for support from the Scottish Government to help identify any unintended consequences that might come from the reforms being considered.  The letter had identified the re-introduction of sporting rates as one issue where the reform might have unintended, negative impacts.

Upland Solutions:  I provided some background about the Upland Solutions project and how this had drawn comparisons in the relationship between the community and the moorland in Muirkirk and the Upper Findhorn Glen, above Tomatin.  It was suggested that if anything this work was more relevant now than it had been when the Project Report was published in 2011.  I suggested that this is unfinished business that the Forum should seek an opportunity to revisit.

Airds Moss Visit

The Minister departed at lunchtime and in the afternoon, the RSPB (Gerry McAuley and Duncan Orr-Ewing) hosted a short visit to the Airds Moss reserve, just to the west of Muirkirk, where substantial peatland restoration work has been undertaken. It was a great opportunity for Forum members to get a feel for the scale of such work.

Molinia Conference, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire: 14-16 September 2015

Molinia on Marsden Moor

Although Huddersfield may be a distance from Scotland, this conference will be applicable to everyone who wants to know more about Molinia across the UK.  I will be attending in my Heather Trust capacity, but I circulate details in case some Forum members would also like to attend, or at least be aware of it.

The full title of this conference is: "Molinia caerulea on upland peat in the UK: history, dependencies and the role of intervention in achieving conservation goals".

From the flyer for the conference:

"Peat covers much of the flat or gently sloping uplands of the UK, forming blanket mire that can host a number of vegetation types. The type favoured by conservationists, and considered to be associated with the greatest rate of peat formation, involves cotton-grass (Eriophorum) species, ericaceous shrubs and Sphagnum mosses. In practice, this is lacking over large areas of upland where it might be expected, its place being taken by very dominant Purple moor-grass Molinia caerulea. Conservation bodies expend much effort in trying to replace Molinia with the more desirable species and conservation objectives are set with this in mind. This conference examines the place of Molinia caerulea in UK plant communities, factors affecting its growth and experiments looking at ways of adding greater diversity where appropriate. The aim is to gain a clearer understanding, through discussion, of what types of conservation objective should be applied and how to achieve them.

The conference will take place in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, 14-16 September 2015 and will contain two days of presentations and discussion followed by a field trip on Day 3 to look at diversification experiments set up in dominant Molinia on the Marsden Moor Estate. We are able to keep the conference fee low due to generous support from Natural England and the International Peat Society."

I can vouch for Marsden Moor being a good venue for the field visit.  The Heather Trust ran a demonstration project for Defra at Marsden for three years from 2003, and I remember walking over the part of the moor shown in the photograph.  At the time, it had a complete coverage of molinia tussocks and it was hard walking.  I suspect it has not changed a lot since.

For more detail about the conference see the Marsden Moor Estate website.

Scottish Natural Heritage - Review of Moorland Management

Professor Alan Werritty is the chairman of the SNH-led review of moorland management.  Here, at the end of a long two days, Alan provides an update on progress.

Our two-day hearing has come to a close.

Our final session ranged over policy issues. We had a lively hearing involving Bob McIntosh, Director of the Scottish Government’s Environment and Forestry Directorate, Duncan Orr-Ewing of the RSPB, Maggie Keegan of the SWT, and Andrew Midgley of Scottish Land Estates.

The Land Use Strategy and the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy featured prominently. We explored in detail the environmental, social and economic pillars of sustainable moorland landscapes. A lot of our discussion centred on the role of a national vision for moorland and regional strategies supporting this.

Now we begin work on our report, which we shall draft by the end of February. 

Meanwhile, I must thank my colleagues for supporting the review, and the many people who attended the hearing for so enthusiastically participating in our conversations. We have also received some excellent written evidence which helps us greatly.

Professor Alan Werritty FRSE
Chair of the SNH SAC Sustainable Moorland Management Review Group

Scottish Natural Heritage - Review of Moorland Management

Professor Alan Werritty is chairing a SNH-led review of moorland management.  Here, in his second guest blog, Alan provides an update on progress.

We are now well into our hearing on sustainable moorland management.

Yesterday was fascinating. We heard evidence from SNH staff, which highlighted the huge breadth of issues they deal with under the umbrella of ‘moorlands’. We have some strong lines of evidence on wildlife and habitat changes derived from SNHs Site Condition Monitoring, and available on SEWeb.

We then heard from a trio of professors working on water management and geodiversity. We discussed the EMBER project, a number of issues relating to flood management, and heard about growing interest in the ‘roughness’ of upland landscapes in determining water run-off. 

We then moved into economic and amenity issues and heard from representatives of crofting and recreation interests as well as experienced economists and land-use experts. As we ranged over the many values of moorland we were challenged to tease apart views, perceptions and evidence (the term ‘co-production of evidence’ popped into conversation!). So many people, even experts, have hard views about what works well and badly across moorland Scotland, yet the evidence base underpinning this is incredibly patchy and disparate.

We worked late and tried to pull together the threads of much of what we heard, and have read.

This morning, we started with a session on biodiversity, with lively contributions from Professors Steve Redpath and Davy McCracken, both vastly experienced and steeped in the complexities of land use change, conservation and management. A lot of science came to the fore here, and we heard a strong case for more experimental work, and possibly a large experiment on land management practices and impacts. We also heard a lot about the value of a range of evidence types – not just from scientists, but from the wider range of stakeholders connected with the uplands.

We have just finished a session on moorland management practices, with experts from the Heather Trust, Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, National Trust for Scotland, Association of Deer Management Groups, and the renewable energy sector. This was a wide ranging session, with a lot of discussion centring on grouse moor management, the land restoration measures and cooperative approaches to management. These are complex issues, and one issue emerging very clearly is the great range of management objectives, some of which operate at the local landholding level, whereas others cover vast landscapes. Indeed, several people have commented we don’t really have a clear or shared vision for moorlands. We recently saw a public consultation on a national plan for Scotland’s peatlands, and we have a good deal to learn from that.

Professor Alan Werritty FRSE
Chair of the SNH SAC Sustainable Moorland Management Review Group

Scottish Natural Heritage - Review of Moorland Management

Professor Alan Werritty is the chairman of a SNH-led review of moorland management.  Here, Alan provides a guest blog to provide some background to the review.

Today is the first of two days spent gathering evidence on sustainable moorland management. I am chairing the SNH Scientific Advisory Committee  (SAC) review  group reviewing this topic, and we have invited views from more than 20 specialists and advisers drawn from research bodies, government, agencies, land managers and NGOs.  Meeting in Edinburgh, we are looking forward to lively exchanges to tease out what we know, and what we don’t.  Of course we would like to have invited many more, but we have had to be selective.

We are looking to develop our understanding of management, which sustains the fullest range of moorland natural heritage features across Scotland, and which supports ecologically and economically healthy ecosystems.

Periodically, questions are asked about the impacts of sheep and deer grazing, muirburn,  heather cutting, predator control and a range of other management practices on moorlands.  Answers differ depending on whether your interests lie with soils, water, wildlife, economic interests or wider environmental and cultural aspects.  As part of our review, we are trying to identify the management which supports healthy  nature as well as healthy economics.  It is quite a challenge!

In carrying out this review we want to contribute to work underway under the Land Use Strategy (LUS)  and Scottish Biodiversity Strategy (SBS) , as well as work reviewed under the IUCN Peatland Programme .   Other important sources of information are to be found on Scotland’s Moorland Forum website  and  as a result of Natural England’s recently completed first phase of a review of the evidence base on the management of the English uplands.  We have already pulled together a lot of information, and have received very helpful submissions.

Beyond the hearing, we shall draft our report and submit it to the SAC for its meeting on 5^th March. The report will then be presented to the SNH Board.

My colleagues on the review group are: Professor Robin Pakeman (James Hutton Institute), Dr Colin Shedden (BASC), Dr Adam Smith (GWCT) and Professor Jeremy Wilson (RSPB). The Secretary is Karen Rentoul, supported by Professor Des Thompson (SNH).

Professor Alan Werritty FRSE

Chair of the SNH SAC Sustainable Moorland Management Review Group