Heather Cutting: Practical Innovation for Resilient Moorland Management – A Day with Dick Bartlett

Heather burning now faces increasing legal restrictions while climate change increases moorland fuel loads through longer growing seasons and warmer, wetter Summers. The annual number of burning days is decreasing due to more very windy days, and longer spells of wet weather, and also longer spells of dry weather making it too dangerous to burn. This all indicates an increasing role for cutting but how should it be done for the best results?

Dick Bartlett's management company British Moorlands Ltd has relied almost entirely on heather cutting for 7 grouse moors over the past 25 years in N E Scotland. Through good and bad grouse years these moors have shown consistently better grouse productivity than their neighbouring moors which have used traditional burning, and the grouse friendly cutting methods have been copied successfully from the Western Isles across to Aberdeenshire and down to the Peak District.