Protecting land

John Shaw (Letters, 19 August) rightly questions whether it is right for the various damaging effects of grouse moor management over large areas of land to be allowed to continue.

Licensing of grouse moors to ensure minimum standards and taxation sufficient to compensate for the environmental damage they cause is desirable. But the new kid on the block that may sound the knell for grouse moors is that of carbon 
sequestration.

Grouse moors, by dint of burning the heather, drainage and preventing the return of woodland, minimise the potential for carbon sequestration.

In 2015, the Paris United 
Nations global warming conference should agree a price for 
carbon that is sequestered by vegetation.

Management systems, such as grouse moors and deer stalking estates that fail to optimise carbon sequestration, should be financially penalised.

It may be that international agreement over the imperative
of reducing carbon emissions 
will prove far more effective in ending this problem than decades of neglect by both the 
Westminster and Scottish 
governments.

Roy Turnbull

Nethy Bridge

Inverness-shire