“Conservation campaigners are set to bid for a “trashed” grouse moor near Sheffield to “restore it to its former glory.” So starts an article in Sheffield’s The Star, a local paper which Wikipedia says has a very respectable total average issue readership of 105,498.
Titled “Sheffield moors: Duke of Rutland urged to sell ‘trashed’ grouse moor ‘to people of Sheffield‘“, the article of course is looking at the ‘offer’ of £1 made to David Manners, the 11th Duke of Rutland by Reclaim Our Moors for the knackered and near-barren Moscar Moor, a grouse moor without grouse, which lies just to the west of Sheffield and from where smoke from deliberately set heather fires regularly blanket the city.
As we explained just a few days ago (see Moscar Moor: a blight on the Peak District), Reclaim Our Moors is a growing coalition of activists rapidly developing from a core of Bob Berzins, a long-time moorland monitor, author, and passionate moorland campaigner; ecologist David Botcherby from the Merry Earth Collective; singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Robin Grey; and renowned researcher, writer and campaigner Guy Shrubsole (fresh from a stunning win on Dartmoor and whose recent book, The Lie of the Land, is a blazing take-down of elite landowners like Manners and support for community land ownership).
Moscar Moor is indeed ‘trashed’. The Star writes that “Members say they walked across part of the 6,000-acre estate, between Stanage Edge and the A57, and found “almost no insect life, few birds and no grouse.” That’s entirely accurate. We took part in that walk and reported that we saw:
“…no Red Grouse, or Corvids, and while there were Skylarks and a few ‘parachuting’ Meadow Pipits, we saw no birds of prey at all. A solitary Lapwing and perhaps two pairs of Curlew will be used by Moscar’s management to ‘prove’ how destroying predators benefits ‘ground-nesting birds’ (a ridiculous line in greenwashing given that grouse – and pheasants – nest on the ground and are palpably why the eradication of foxes, mustelids, corvids, and raptors is so total on grouse moors)…The dessicated soil underfoot yielded little in the way of what ought to be a hugely biodiverse flora, either. Local ecologist David ‘Botch’ Botcherby pointed out a few sprigs of Cross-leaved Heath and the odd berry, but most areas are either mown flat or burnt to the roots.
No grouse, but plenty of benefits
For the shooting industry, the entire point of a site like Moscar is to make money selling Red Grouse to its clients. Moors are typically ‘overstocked’ with 10x the numbers of grouse found on unmanaged moorland, but grouse shooting hasn’t taken place at Moscar for the last two years and may not take place in 2025.
Apart from the peculiarly British form of bragging rights that comes with owning a grouse moor, if there is no shooting what might Manners get from hanging on to Moscar? That would be huge piles of taxpayer money. As The Star notes, figures from Natural England show Moscar has received an average annual subsidy of £175,400 since 2012 under the environmental stewardship scheme. The funding, which is managed by Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), allegedly aims “to secure environmental benefits, including habitat restoration and carbon sequestration.”
Does anyone – in Sheffield or beyond – believe that we are getting value for the money we are generously giving to a man who lives in Belvoir Castle and whose net worth in 2018 was reportedly £145 million? Especially when the habitats are in an appalling state, and the moor is regularly burnt exposing the carbon-storing peat below (as Guy Shrubsole details in Lie of the Land, thanks largely to mismanagement of grouse moors, “Instead of being a carbon sink, our upland peat is now a net source of carbon emissions, exacerbating climate breakdown”).
Benefits, no doubt, but not environmental ones…
Reclaim Our Moors: serious intentions
To quote The Star, who spoke with several members of the group for their article, Reclaim Our Moors is looking to use new powers under the Labour Government’s forthcoming ‘Community Right to Buy’ legislation.
Community groups can already seek to designate land and buildings as ‘Assets of Community Value’, subject to the approval of Sheffield City Council. Under the new laws, if designated assets come up for sale, the community group will be offered a right of first refusal to buy it.
At a meeting in Sheffield’s Canning Hall, Reclaim Our Moors made an opening offer for Moscar to the Duke using a token cheque for £1 signed by the people of Sheffield. A rather nice photo was taken at the time, which The Star has now published. It shows a sceptical ‘Duke’ (pleasingly played by Robin Grey in appropriately piss-taking attire) accepting the cheque from finger-pointing activists…
The newspaper approached the absentee landlord for a response to the offer, and writes that “A spokesperson for the duke said: “Many thanks for the opportunity to respond. Belvoir Castle do not wish to comment.”
Why now?
Given the taxpayer money flowing into the Duke’s bank account, he may not be keen to sell Moscar. It isn’t up for sale at the moment (as far as anyone knows anyway), so why would a group start a movement to buy the site now? Part of the answer lies in the concept of a ‘spoiling bid’ – a bid made not to win necessarily, but to deter competitors or reduce price expectations.
Spoiling bids are often made to drive prices up, but they can be used effectively to create uncertainty in the bidding process too. Moorland lobby groups don’t typically discuss the downsides of buying or owning a grouse moo, sop Reclaim Our Moors is doing it for them. Pointing out the environmental failings of grouse shooting, constantly referring to Moscar itself as ‘trashed’, and making sure that potential buyers know that there is a very determined (and pissed-off) group of local residents prepared to make strenuous efforts to take the Moor into public ownership, is all part of a longer-term strategy (starting now) to let potential buyers know what they will actually be getting into.
This is very much the opening shot in a much longer battle.
As The Star will know, the residents of Sheffield are well-known for their strong sense of community. No one should have any doubts at all that these particular residents are very serious about bringing Moscar into community ownership. Very serious indeed…
If you’d like to follow Reclaim Our Moors on social media the group can be found on:
- Blue Sky at @reclaimourmoors.bsky.social
- Facebook at Red Grouse
- Instagram at Reclaim Our Moors
