NATURE: Our famous grouse are worth protecting

Cold, crisp and clear, our little mountain stream tumbles with near-effervescent vigour, bouncing over boulders, washing at banks of till and carving mysterious depths where it finds folds in the underlying rock.

Like so many more of its kind it has followed the same course for thousands of years, providing a playground for many a wild hill child, a refreshing draught for the shepherd, a cooling footbath for those who take opportunity to scramble and clamber the hills.

There is more, for we find the germ of mountain life within the stream. Beyond those heathered banks the slopes are nearly bare, for too many generations of ragged mountain sheep have nibbled every hint of green before it’s even grown. Only here, at the water’s edge, we find it authentic.

If we could turn back the clock we would find a different world, one where heather grew waist high, where red grouse were still a part of the landscape. ‘Go back! Go back!’ they cried, as if portending their own demise.

It is rare now, to hear those calls in Mayo, for the birds cling to existence only in wildest, most out of the way places, with the greatest concentration of Cearc fhraoigh, to use the proper Irish name, within the protective boundaries of Wild Nephin National Park.

Even there they are scarce, although the progressive reclamation of land by native vegetation makes room for more year on year. Official estimates made by our National Parks and Wildlife Service suggest the local population may have doubled over a recent ten-year period, with the recovery of previously overgrazed vegetation a critical factor.

In the UK vast tracts of moorland are managed especially to provide a home for red grouse for the sole purpose of providing quarry for the recreational shooting industry, within which many bones of contention can be found.

Proponents of grouse shooting are quick to highlight the benefits of careful predator control, not just for grouse but also for other ground-nesting birds such as curlew, golden plover and lapwing, while those in opposition note the unnatural near-absence of hen harrier and other raptors in grouse habitat, due to the illegal actions of overzealous keepers. With an annual bag in excess of 200,000 birds (many times the entire Irish red grouse population), grouse shooting is big business and not something we want to emulate.

Here, even within the protective confines of our National Park, grouse numbers remain precariously low. With frequent bad weather during the breeding season a limiting factor there might never be enough for the hunting man, though they could become a realistic tourist draw. Spring of 2025 has been generous, and those birds that have already bred will likely have good numbers of offspring to care for.

Wild Nephin National Park is about rewilding in nature’s own way; it is unlikely that part of Mayo will ever be known as a hinterland for grouse. The best we can hope for is that the resident population will prosper to the point that an overspill of birds will occur, and slowly repopulate the surrounding area – if we could let that all-important heather grow.

Some twenty years ago I encountered a pair of red grouse close to Newport town. Conversations with an old friend further informed me that the odd one might previously be seen high in the Partry Hills and even on the upper slopes of Croagh Patrick, which is where we started this story.

Continued overstocking and overgrazing by sheep in those areas has depleted the heather and left any prospective grouse population hopelessly short of the main component of their diet. That said, there are some places where grazing has been restricted and in these a slow but determined regrowth of native vegetation has taken place. We see all is not lost, yet the road ahead is long and not without obstacle.

Surely there is more value to be had in wilderness tourism than in the continued overstocking of upland areas with sheep, the bones of which still litter the hills.

What price might we pay for the stockman’s draught of cool, clear water straight from the mountain stream? Though we dare not drink today, perhaps one day we will. It might be time to care better for the land and let the fragments that remain prosper as they may. That mountain stream, the barometer of environmental health, holds the key.

Imagine, a joyous explosion of Cearc fhraoigh from new-heathered hills. It’s there if we want it.