Great news: the RSPB are going to save the black grouse in Wales. To be fair, they obviously aren't – but that is what they say they can do, and as usual their ever-generous friends in the Heritage Lottery Fund have given them the thicker end of a quarter of a million pounds, £244,059 to be precise.
The area where this miracle will take place is a huge swathe of the Berwyn SSSI, running east from Corwen. According to the grid references this is around 80 sq km of moorland, interspersed with blocks of commercial forestry. The area still holds black grouse but they are a shadow of what used to be there when the grouse moors were operating. Indeed, they may only be clinging on because of the immigration of dispersing grey hens from the area’s only fully functioning grouse moor.
Is there a problem? There most certainly is. Black grouse have been in trouble in Wales for years. The causes are clear. The dear old Forestry Commission drove the aggressive expansion of commercial plantation forestry, up to and including the threat of compulsory purchase of moorland.
The consequent increase in the number of foxes, corvids, buzzards and goshawks has resulted in the wholesale decline of a range of upland ground nesting birds. Golden plover, lapwing, curlew, red grouse and, amongst several others, the poor old black grouse. This has been accelerated by a simultaneous decline in habitat quality caused by headage payments. The result has been a perfect storm.
More commercial forestry plantations has meant more predators – including foxes
To quote RSPB: 'there has been a 46% decline in the last 5 years'. But the decline has been going on for far longer, ever since the government’s policies – enacted vigorously by the Forestry Commission – started the rot a lifetime ago.
Do the RSPB have a good track record of turning round the fortunes of the Welsh black grouse?
According to them they have. This is what they have to say about how good they are:
'RSPB Cymru led a black grouse project in North Wales in the late 1990s. The project was hugely successful increasing the number of lekking males and saving the species from extinction'.
This raises an obvious question: If RSPB saved the black grouse from extinction and were 'hugely successful' in increasing numbers in the late 1990s, why are they in such trouble now? The answer they give is that the funding stopped. They were given a grant of around £2 million and when that ran out they stopped being 'hugely successful'. When the funding stopped, they went from 'hugely successful' to being 'hugely ineffectual'.
There are two conclusions that one can draw from this. First, that RSPB knows how to save the black grouse from extinction in Wales, but won't do it unless someone else pays. Second, that RSPB is exaggerating its success in the 1990's and its ability to recover black grouse populations in order to get £244,059 from the HLF.
These conclusions are broadly correct. The RSPB is perfectly well aware of how to save the black grouse. It knows that the greatest success in the 1990s was in areas where traditional upland gamekeeping was taking place. It also admits in the application that 75% of the Welsh black grouse population lives on the only fully functioning grouse moor in North Wales.
Unfortunately, knowing how to save black grouse and a host of other upland ground nesting birds does not mean that RSPB will do what is needed. The evidence indicates that they would rather see the birds drift into extinction whilst they fiddle about trying to find a different way to save them – any way, other than the one that clearly works.
The RSPB have been managing the Severn Trent estate at Lake Vyrnwy for nearly 40 years. It is their flagship upland estate in Wales. It was famous for its upland birds when they took control and was an historic black grouse stronghold. Under their 'hugely successful' stewardship, black grouse have virtually disappeared. In another HLF bid – in this case for £3.3 million – they stated that if they didn't get the money, black grouse would become extinct.
“Without the serious interventions RSPB is proposing in this bid, in the next few years curlew, black grouse and merlin will cease to appear as breeding species in this area of Wales. It is also likely that the same fate will befall red grouse and hen harrier within a decade”.
In yet another HLF bid for £497,000 for Vyrnwy, RSPB stated:
“Priority species are at further risk from predation, scrub encroachment and lack of landscape scale management that meets their needs. This is particularly the case for the UK BAP curlew and the most southerly UK population of black grouse”.
The only rational conclusions that can be drawn from this evidence is that either RSPB is incapable of doing what is needed to save black grouse from local extinction, or that it is not prepared to do it unless someone else pays.
In fact it is both. It is surely inconceivable that RSPB – with annual operational surpluses consistently exceeding £10 million – and Severn Trent – with annual pre-tax profit of around half a billion – could not afford to save the black grouse on the land they own and manage. Isn't it?
Lake Vyrnwy was once home to a thriving black grouse population
With a single site in plain view, albeit a grouse moor, being consistently 'hugely successful' in producing black grouse, it is surely unbelievable for RSPB to claim that they don't know what works.
They had the resources and they knew what works. Yet, on their own reserve, they have watched black grouse numbers decline to the point of functional extinction. The only rational conclusions that can be drawn from these facts are that they will do little or nothing to save black grouse unless someone else pays – and even then they are unlikely to do what works.
So, in spite of the fact that anyone can see that RSPB have been incapable of conserving black grouse on their own flagship black grouse estate, HLF have given them a quarter of a million pounds to save the Welsh black grouse on land they don't own or even manage.
On the face of it this is simply mad. It takes reinforcing failure to a whole new level. 'You've repeatedly told us that after forty years of your direct management this species is functionally extinct on your land. This is despite us, and others, giving you huge cash handouts to save the bird and its habitat. Now you want another huge lump of cash. That's not a problem. How much would you like?'
Actually it is worse than that. The HLF expect some sort of external validation. In this case, as in so many, that validation comes from the regulator Natural Resources Wales (NRW). To be fair to the HLF, they may not be experts on black grouse and they may not know what has happened at Vyrnwy. Theirs is an administrative function.
NRW is different. They should know, and obviously do. They have been involved in every single one of these 'Give us the money or the birds get it' schemes. There was even a plan to give Vyrnwy – or rather Severn Trent – £750,000 of taxpayers’ money. They know alright. They are complicit.
What NRW should be doing is finding ways to make resources available to facilitate value for money delivery of agreed outcomes, by people and organisations with a track record of success. If you want black grouse, support the people who can produce them – not the ones who can't.
If you are not prepared to do what is necessary to save black grouse in Wales (and it is obvious that NRW are not) just admit it and walk away. Don't fiddle about wasting time and money and having jolly group-think meetings with your friends in the RSPB, working out how to help them get ever-larger grants.
The RSPB's application makes it clear that they are fully aware that 75% of the Welsh black grouse population is concentrated on the Welsh nation’s only functioning grouse moor. They use it as a reason to support the bid because, as they say, if something happens to that moor (they obviously don't call it a grouse moor, that would never do!) the species would be done for.
Is it not ironic that an organisation which is working tirelessly to discredit grouse moor management and to see the activity curtailed to the point of extinction is using the benefits they bring as a justification for getting £244,000 to fiddle while Rome burns.