Grouse moors owners threatened government with legal action

Ministers were planning to ban environmentally harmful practice of burning old heather

Owners of large grouse moors threatened to take legal action against government ministers who had started developing plans to ban repeated heather burning, Whitehall documents have disclosed.

The landowners issued the threat after ministers started working on producing a law to ban them from carrying out the environmentally damaging practice on their moorland estates. The old heather is burned to expose new shoots - a source of food for grouse, whose numbers are boosted. The estates then charge people who want to shoot grouse.