Heather moorlands that are sometimes regarded as an iconic part of the Scottish landscape are, in reality, highly modified habitats managed to encourage high populations of one species, red grouse, so they can be killed for fun in the course of recreational shooting.
To try to encourage a consistently high population density of grouse available to kill, one of the intensification methods adopted since the 1980s has been the use of outdoor medication on a massive scale to reduce the incidence of parasitic worm and thus ‘override’ the red grouse’s natural and cyclical ‘boom and bust’ population crashes.
Off-road constructed vehicle tracks (often referred to as ‘hilltracks’) can ease access for land management purposes but can also have major visual and environmental impacts, particularly on the wilder landscapes for which Scotland is so highly-regarded.
Almost a fifth of Scotland has been made into a grouse moor. Estimates vary from 12% to over 18% but nobody really knows because there is not enough meaningful data on what land is used for.