There's no quick fix in black grouse quest

This once common gamebird is in desperate need of a helping hand but reintroductions are hugely complex, as Soldier Palmer discovers

- MICHAEL FIRTH

Having written about rearing grey partridges in a recent edition of Shooting Times (Making hens meet, 28 April), I can’t ignore a similar project that took place soon after that based around black grouse.

Everybody is aware that black grouse are sorely declining and this once common bird has become little more than a rumour in many parts of the UK. There was a time when these birds were well known to gamekeepers and shooting folk, but a catastrophic collapse over the past century has reduced them to a marginal figure in the sporting world.

It’s still legal to shoot them, but they are killed in tiny numbers on a handful of estates where there are enough to sustain a small harvest.

When black grouse first started to collapse, observers often wondered if their populations could be shored up by artificial releases. The Victorians brought thousands of black grouse eggs from Scandinavia to support British populations and there was a steady traffic of black grouse eggs around the UK into the 21st century.

Frustratingly, the birds were still so common that they were deemed rather boring to the mainstream sporting press. Nobody thought to record these projects for the sake of public interest, but I’ve seen letters and diaries to show that dozens of black grouse reintroduction projects took place before World War II.

However, there is almost no evidence to show how successful these projects were. I feel sure that some worked, but subsequent black grouse have been driven out by massive and accelerating habitat change. It’s hard to gauge the success of reintroduction projects when birds were later driven out by other factors.

“A catastrophic collapse has reduced them to a marginal figure in the sporting world”