Red grouse hunting is now underway in the Angus and Perthshire glens, but not everyone is excited to see the start of the season. On Monday members of the Dundee Extinction Rebellion (XR) group, Scottish Greens and others demonstrated against the Glorious Twelfth at Dundee Airport. This is at least the third time they have gathered at the entrance to the airport on August 12.
This is the iconic date that marks the official start of the red grouse shooting season. It runs until December 10 and Scottish Government agency NatureScot estimates that it But environmental campaigners, like XR Dundee’s Kate Treharne say it “encapsulates everything that is wrong” and are angry about private jets carrying shooting tourists landing at the airport. “It is about the rich taking advantage, exploiting, polluting and destroying our ecosystems”, says Kate, who is a council worker from Lochee.
“And the way the land is managed is destructive. “The ecosystems are absolutely ravaged, birds of prey persecuted and everything is vandalised to support a massively unnatural population of grouse.” The protesters argue that the small airport is an arrival point for those participating in Tayside and Central Scotland shoots.
A 2021 European Federation for Transport and Environment report found that private planes are between 5 and 14 times “Grouse shooters use Dundee Airport as their entry point to the moors up in the glens”, adds Kate. “They dump all their pollution in Dundee and t.