Driving Ireland's grouse moors again

The Irish Grouse Conservation Trust has produced driven Lagopus lagopus hibernicus for the first time in more than 60 years – and won the 2019 Purdey Awards

- SIR JOHNNY SCOTT

In September 1958, Lord Ashtown wrote to The Field lamenting the fact that due to habitat loss and afforestation, grouse stocks on the heather moorlands of County Galway and elsewhere in Ireland were so reduced that gamekeepers were no longer employed, vermin of every kind had rapidly increased and “many of us have taken part in our last grouse drive”. This conservation disaster impacted on all moorland birdlife and was compounded when headage payment subsidies were introduced in 1975, inevitably encouraging overgrazing. By 2000, the entire population of Irish grouse (Lagopus lagopus hibernicus), a sub-species of willow grouse, was estimated at less than 200 breeding pairs and in 2003 they were red-listed by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) as an endangered species.

Over a 10-year period from 1997, the owners of the sporting rights, Antrim Estates Ltd, carried out grouse counts on the 1,000- acre Glenwherry Hill, a once-productive moor near Ballymena in Northern Ireland. This demonstrated conclusively that the Irish grouse population remained static at only three to four breeding pairs and other ground-nesting moorland birds – pipits, skylarks, waders – and Irish hares were either nonexistent or drastically reduced.

TRUST FORMED

This tragic situation was replicated across the uplands of Ireland and in 2007 Lord Dunluce (Antrim Estates Ltd), Peter Mackie of Lissanoure Castle, Adrian Morrow (managing director of Antrim Estates) and other like-minded associates established the Irish Grouse Conservation Trust (IGCT). Based on Glenwherry Hill with an adjacent 6,000 acres of rough moorland over which Antrim Estates own the sporting rights, their key objective was to conserve the depleted grouse population and habitat of the natural uplands in Ireland, to raise awareness and create viable, successful and attainable conservation goals benefitting a wide range of species.