Tim Bonner: Black grouse in Sussex?

Black grouse are usually thought of as a bird of the Northern uplands, but news that Natural England has funded a study into the feasibility of introducing them to the Ashdown Forest in Sussex is a reminder that that they were previously a bird of the lowland heath and Southern moors as well. They hung on to the second half of the 20^th century on places like Exmoor and Dartmoor, but are now confined to Scotland, the North of England, and North Wales.

It may seem a bit premature to opine on the likely success of an attempt to reintroduce black grouse to heathland in Sussex, Hampshire, Surrey, or any of the other lowland areas where they once bred, but I am afraid that any attempt will be doomed to failure. Finding an area with the correct habitat and sufficient predator control would be challenging, but perhaps not insurmountable. The problem that cannot be resolved, however, is people. Wildlife does not like people, and the wilder the wildlife the less it likes them. Ashdown Forest boasts that it has 1.5 million visitors a year, which certainly shows its value to the surrounding population, but it is also about 1.49 million more visitors than a black grouse would be comfortable with.

Sussex is nestled in a densely populated corner of our heavily populated island and whilst some wildlife can adapt to living with the mass and mess of human existence, plenty of species simply cannot. This truth raises a fundamental question about the impact of public access on biodiversity and highlights a glaring contradiction in the case for unfettered access to the countryside. Green MP Caroline Lucas introduced a 'Right to Roam' Bill to parliament last year and argued that it was needed because we were "in the midst of an ecological emergency". It is a perfectly reasonable argument (although not one with which I would agree) to make the case for unfettered access to the countryside, but it is not reasonable or logical to suggest that this would benefit the environment when the evidence shows that it would do the exact opposite.

Which brings us back to Dartmoor, the final resting place of the black grouse in Southern England and currently the centre of a fierce debate over access and camping. Neither the landowner whose lawyers persuaded the High Court to confirm that the historic acceptance of camping on the moor did not supplant the common law of trespass and the rights of landowners, nor the activists who have subsequently sought to weaponise the case to support a campaign for a right to roam, come out of that debate particularly well. What seems to have been forgotten by all of them is that if we are to restore lost wildlife and increase abundance of existing species, it will require common sense, collaboration, and compromise. Unfortunately those are also increasingly rare sightings in many areas of rural life.

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