Why Are People Trying to Ban Grouse Shooting This Year?
The Scottish Green Party has called for a ban on the start of the grouse shooting season, known as the Glorious Twelfth, which falls on 12 August each year. They say the way land is managed for grouse shooting makes wildfires worse, and point to the fires that burned across UK moorlands in the summer of 2026 as evidence (The Guardian).
This summer, wildfires tore through UK moors, destroying habitats and killing wildlife after extreme heat turned the countryside into a tinderbox. The late-June 2026 heatwave was the most severe ever recorded in Europe. Scientists said it was caused by human-caused global heating and would not have happened without it (The Guardian).
To understand the debate, it helps to know what grouse moors are and how they are managed. Grouse are small game birds, and landowners prepare areas of countryside, called moors, to keep their numbers high for shooting. Part of that preparation involves draining peatland. Peat is a type of soil, found across much of Britain's uplands, that is naturally wet and packed with carbon. When it is drained, it dries out and acts like fuel. It can smoulder underground for days, making wildfires almost impossible to put out. Landowners also burn the vegetation on top of the peat to encourage new growth that grouse feed on (The Guardian).
The UK government has already taken some action. It has banned the burning of vegetation on deep peat to protect wildlife habitats. From September 2026, a stricter system will mean landowners need a licence, or official permission, to burn moorland (RSPB). But conservation groups say this is not enough. The RSPB, a major wildlife charity, wants an immediate ban on burning blanket bog, a type of peatland, in England (RSPB). It also wants grouse shooting itself to be licensed, pointing to harm done to raptors, or birds of prey, to peatlands, and to upland wildlife. The RSPB has warned that if reforms do not work, it will call for a full ban on driven grouse shooting, where birds are flushed out toward people waiting with guns (RSPB) (RSPB).
The UK government is not convinced. During a debate in Parliament, Defra Minister Daniel Zeichner said the government has no plans to ban grouse shooting (RSPB). This is despite growing pressure. A petition in 2016 gathered more than 80,000 signatures calling for a ban (BBC News), and a conservation group has previously suggested a green tax on grouse estates to encourage landowners to repair peatlands, restore woodlands, and cut carbon emissions (The Guardian).
The 2026 shooting season is already struggling. Chef Richard Corrigan, who owns Corrigan's and Bentley's restaurants in Mayfair, said grouse were hard to find this year. The season started about a week and a half late, and the birds were smaller and fewer. Corrigan also refuses to buy grouse from any moor linked to raptor persecution, which is the illegal shooting or poisoning of birds of prey to keep grouse numbers artificially high (The Guardian).
The broader context here is about more than one bad summer. The wildfires that triggered the Greens' call connect to a debate about how land is used that has been going on for years. Peatlands are the UK's largest carbon sink, meaning they store more carbon than any other type of habitat. Scientists have long argued they should be restored to help fight climate change. What is changing now is the political pressure. The new licensing rules starting in September 2026 will place limits on landowners, but they fall well short of the full bans the RSPB and the Scottish Greens want. The RSPB has said it will push for a total ban on driven grouse shooting if the licensing system does not deliver results, which puts an informal deadline on the whole approach.
For landowners and the shooting industry, the pressures are piling up. Climate change is reducing bird numbers, delaying seasons, and producing smaller grouse. At the same time, regulation is tightening. For conservationists, the 2026 wildfires are proof that warnings about draining and burning peatlands were not just theory. The question now is whether the new licensing rules will be seen as enough, or as just a stepping stone to something much stricter.
