If you recall, grouse moor licensing was introduced as part of the Wildlife Management & Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024, as a result of the continued illegal killing of birds of prey on grouse moors and the associated difficulties of identifying an individual suspect and prosecuting them.<\/p>\n
The idea was that a licence to shoot Red Grouse could be amended \/ withdrawn \/ revoked by NatureScot if evidence showed that illegal raptor persecution had taken place (importantly, based on the civil burden of proof, i.e. balance of probability, rather than the criminal burden of proof, i.e. beyond reasonable doubt). It was expected that the licence would cover an estate\u2019s entire landholding, not just the areas where Red Grouse are shot, because raptor persecution crimes often take place beyond the boundary of the moor (e.g. in woodland).<\/p>\n
However, last November, the licences were significantly weakened after legal threats from the grouse shooting industry. Instead of now covering an entire estate, it was announced that the licence holder could decide on the extent of the area the licence covered, specifically the area where Red Grouse are \u2018taken or killed\u2019.<\/p>\n
Effectively, this could mean simply drawing an arbitrary line around their grouse butts, denoting the reach of a shotgun pellet, and argue that\u00a0THAT\u00a0is the area where they take\/kill grouse and thus that should be the extent of the licensable area:<\/p>\n
There has been a year of prolonged campaigning<\/a> to get this loophole closed, led by Green MSP Mark Ruskell and RSPB Scotland, and this work has now paid off.<\/p>\n In a letter to the Scottish Parliament\u2019s Rural Affairs & Islands Committee (the committee scrutinising the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill), published today, Agriculture Minister Jim Fairlie has committed to introducing an amendment at Stage 2 of the Bill to close off this loophole.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s his letter:<\/p>\n We haven\u2019t yet seen the details of Mr Fairlie\u2019s proposed amendment but the deadline for MSPs to submit amendments at Stage 2 closes on 13 November 2025, so we shouldn\u2019t have long to wait.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more to say about this welcome move, and all the hard work that has gone on behind the scenes to reach this stage. I\u2019ll be blogging more about this and I\u2019ll also be discussing it at this weekend\u2019s REVIVE conference<\/a> in Perth (tickets still available \u2013 here<\/a>).<\/p>\n For now, I see this as very, very good news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BREAKING NEWS: The Scottish Government has committed to closing the loophole on the grouse moor licences that were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-242032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/line-of-grouse-butts_boundary-richard-cross-annotated.jpg\")
<\/a>Photo of a line of grouse-shooting butts by Richard Cross, annotated by RPUK<\/p>\n