AMONG those for whom the annual flowering of our northern heather is a highlight of the year there is general agreement that it has put on only a modest show this summer. The vistas have been as extensive as ever, with the North York Moors, which contains England’s largest expanses of heather, the prime place to enjoy them. But my opinion is that if you had driven a stranger across the moors to show them this glorious spectacle they would have wondered what all the fuss was about. Though the purple cloak presented its customary vibrancy here and there, most was patchy and dowdy. Probably the excessive heat and the drought had checked the flowering. Anyway, certainly not a vintage display.

Ah well, we must patiently await next summer. But to what do we owe this greatly-loved spectacle? Awkward question for those of us not keen on spilt blood. For those seemingly wild tracts of heather are as much a managed environment as farmed fields. And they are maintained to support grouse shooting, on which pressure for a ban is mounting.

Pitching up at Whitby over the Bank Holiday, a joint campaign by the League Against Cruel Sports and Ban Bloodsports on Yorkshire’s Moors is initially targeting Yorkshire Water, which it is urging to stop leasing its moorlands for grouse shooting. A spokesman says: “Huge sections of uplands are being purged of native wildlife and having peatland degraded to increase game bird numbers for shooting.”

But the red grouse itself is native. Remarkably it is Britain’s only native bird exclusive to these islands – a bird to be particularly prized therefore. It can’t be reared artificially, so its moorland habitat is managed to give it the best chance to thrive. This is done principally by providing a range of heather, for food, nesting sites and shelter.

That birds of prey, which can take young grouse, are also killed in this endeavour, is a deplorable fact, about which not sufficient is done. Last week a Yorkshire Dales gamekeeper who had been caught red handed killing two short-eared owls was heavily fined. But prosecuting even this apparently open-and-shut case had proved difficult. And there was a deafening silence, at least in public, from the estate on which the keeper worked. Did it sanction his illegal activities? Had he been dismissed?

Estates need to be more in the firing line themselves if persecution of protected birds is proved. But to get back to the open moor. If shooting ceased so would the heather management. The cherished heather vistas would yield to scrub, in turn replaced, after centuries, by oak forest. Heather with a few grouse would cling on somewhere, but nowhere as a major feature of our landscape and wildlife.

The thrust of change today is against killing creatures for pleasure. It’s hard to quarrel with that, and I wouldn’t do so. But shooting, which brings instant, or near-instant death, is a long, long way from hunting. And if grouse shooting were banned more would vanish with it than the heather. Where would the hen harrier, iconic focus of campaigns against bird-of-prey persecution, hunt? It would disappear as certainly as if blasted from the sky by guns.