A new study could shed light on why red grouse populations in Scotland have declined over recent years, conservationists have said.<\/p>\n
Populations of the distinctive upland bird have seen a series of sharp declines over the last 10 years.<\/p>\n
There have been several widespread breeding failures and sharp declines across grouse moors managed under a range of different systems.<\/p>\n
Monitoring by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) showed a poor 2024 breeding season led to an average 40% drop in pair counts across England and a 34% decline in Scotland.<\/p>\n
What the maternal grouse project allows us to understand is why some populations have remained consistently low and what’s been driving recent declines and failures to breed successfully<\/p>\n
Nick Hesford, director of GWCT Scotland<\/p>\n
Summer brood counts then revealed a further fall in the number of adult birds, with a 36% drop in England and 29% in Scotland.<\/p>\n
The GWCT said the maternal grouse project, which brings together more than four decades of research with field studies of hens, could help them understand what determines grouse breeding success.<\/p>\n
It hopes the findings can then be translated into practical guidance to help estates build more resilient grouse populations.<\/p>\n
The announcement comes on August 12 \u2013 the so-called \u201cglorious twelfth\u201d, when the red grouse shooting season traditionally begins.<\/p>\n
Red grouse hens are caught and tagged ahead of the breeding season Credit: GWCT\/PA<\/p>\n
Nick Hesford, director of GWCT Scotland, said: \u201cFor decades we\u2019ve known what grouse populations are doing because we\u2019ve monitored them consistently across the uplands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the maternal grouse project allows us to understand is why some populations have remained consistently low and what\u2019s been driving recent declines and failures to breed successfully.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy following individual hens from before they lay until their chicks fledge, we\u2019re beginning to uncover how nutrition, weather, habitat and disease interact to influence breeding success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a level of understanding that simply hasn\u2019t been possible before.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study, which is now in its fourth year in northern England, sees researchers capture and radio-tag hens in the springtime before carefully following them throughout the breeding season.<\/p>\n
August 12 \u2013 the so-called \u2018glorious twelfth\u2019 \u2013 traditionally marks the start of the grouse shooting season Credit: Jane Barlow\/PA<\/p>\n
In March, the GWCT caught and tagged 60 hens across four long-standing study sites in the North Pennines and 51 hens across four new sites in the Highlands.<\/p>\n
The team monitors nesting attempts, egg production, hatch success and chick survival while also measuring heather quality, cotton grass production, cranefly emergence, weather conditions and parasite burdens.<\/p>\n
By combining these detailed field measurements with decades of population data, the trust hopes to identify the subtle interactions that determine whether a breeding season succeeds or fails.<\/p>\n
The study expanded into north-east Scotland earlier this year and will move into southern Scotland in 2027, allowing researchers to compare whether the drivers of breeding success differ between landscapes and regions.<\/p>\n
Leah Cloonan, GWCT uplands adviser, has been monitoring red grouse as part of the project in the English uplands for the past four years.<\/p>\n
She said the study looks at bird body condition and \u201cparasite burdens\u201d, and also at the role of habitat and food sources, with samples of heather \u2013 the birds\u2019 main food source \u2013 analysed in the lead-up to nesting season.<\/p>\n
She said once the birds have nested and lain eggs, the team then uses small temperature data loggers to monitor egg temperatures, which tells researchers how many times the hen leaves the nest to feed.<\/p>\n
She continued: \u201cOnce hatched, we note the number of hatched eggs and we start invertebrate sampling in a typical brood foraging area to assess chick food availability in the seven days following hatching.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year we have introduced a new element to the study which is the capture of rainfall data on a site by site basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cDamp ground is important for the emergence of key invertebrate species, but too much rainfall can have a detrimental effect on the survival of chicks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Hesford said: \u201cThe ultimate aim of the maternal grouse project is to identify factors limiting red grouse breeding success and translating this into practical guidance that can help estates build more resilient grouse populations and deliver more consistent grouse bags in the years ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis understanding will also help guide future, modern, sustainable grouse moor management and conservation in the face of climate change, poor breeding years and increasing legislation and regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new study could shed light on why red grouse populations in Scotland have declined over recent years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-735114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735114","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=735114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}