SIR – Fiona Pereira of Animal Aid (Letters, July 31) needs to get her facts right.

The aim of the grouse moor managers is to encourage and promote the conservation and enhancement of the ecology and natural beauty of heather moorland.

We take great pride in the flora and fauna that are doing well under the careful management of our members - the black grouse, ring ouzel, merlin, lapwing, golden plover and curlew are just a few amber or red listed birds that have refuges on driven grouse moors.

All are benefitting directly from grouse moor gamekeepers undertaking legal predator control and habitat management funded by grouse shooting.

As red grouse are wild, sympathetic management of the moors is all our members can do to safeguard the population and encourage a viable surplus to then be harvested by shooting. It makes no sense to deliberately ‘damage or destroy’ the very habitat on which the grouse depend.

Over 70% of grouse moors are designated as SSSI for flora and fauna largely delivered by the way grouse moors have been managed so well over the last 200 years, with 96 per cent in favourable recovering condition exceeding Government 2010 targets.

With designation comes regulation and the Moorland Association feels that a further regulatory framework is at least unnecessary red tape and at worst could be damaging to the huge progress now being made with statutory and other bodies on peatland restoration on grouse moors.

Any public money received by grouse moor managers is a fraction of private investment and sits within CAP rules for delivering public good.

Amanda Anderson, Director, The Moorland Association, Well Spring Barn, Austwick, Lancaster