Heather Beetle
What is Heather Beetle?
Heather Beetle is a widespread and common insect species found across Britain. The larvae (and to a lesser extent the adult beetles) feed on the leaves of heather plants, stripping them bare and damaging the health of the heather. In a normal year, small patches of heather will be “beetled”, but it is usually the case that the plants recover in a few months.
Periodically, heather beetle populations expand into huge outbreaks, in which millions of beetle grubs can decimate hundreds of hectares of carefully managed heather. The Trust has long been concerned about the potential for heather beetle to devastate heather moorland on a wide scale.
In many areas, the Heather Trust believes that the heather beetle Lochmaea suturalis has been instrumental in driving the change from heather to grass dominated moorland. This is a particularly significant cause of moorland decline in the wetter areas, generally on the west side of the country where there is often greater competition from grasses. Purple moor-grass Molinia caerulea is often the chief competitor.
What is the Heather Trust doing to help?
We have recently completed multi-site research into post-attack management of heather so that we can improve our advice for those managing heather moorland.
In addition to this we ran a reporting service between 2006 and 2018. This was to see if we could identify any trends in beetle infestation events.
Our Members’ Briefing, which you can view and download below, updates on the outcomes from these areas of work.
Heather Beetle Research from The Heather Trust
The Peak District Heather Beetle Project
In December 2012, the Heather Trust identified two moors in the Peak District as sites for a scientific study into heather recovery after a beetle outbreak.
Combs Moss near Chapel en le Frith is traditionally a very wet moor with poor access but a history of good grouse productivity. Successive waves of beetle damage over several years threatened to make the moor unviable, culminating with a major outbreak in 2012 which killed much of the regenerating heather which had been treated after initial damage.
By comparison, Crag Estate is a very different moor, despite lying just a few miles south west of Combs above the Goyt reservoir. Dry and easily accessible from the main road between Buxton and Macclesfield, Crag also suffered serious but less sustained damage during 2012.
Within the restrictions caused by extreme weather, plots of beetle damage on both estates were cut and burnt and some plots were left untreated. Monitoring took place over the subsequent five years to assess the recovery of heather and other moorland vegetation post-treatment. The final conclusions of the study published in 2019 show that heather recovered equally well in all of the plots, which suggests that in many cases intervention is not necessary to enable heather to recover from beetle attack.
The Peak District Heather Beetle Project was funded by The Heather Trust, Natural England and the HDH Wills Charitable Trust.
You can access the full study below:
The Langholm Moor Heather Beetle Project
The Langholm Moor Demonstration Project suffered devastating damage from heather beetles during 2009 and 2010, just as the project was beginning to make progress.
Over 1,000 Ha of heather was lost from the Southern end of the moor, spanning a huge area either side of the road between Langholm and Newcastleton.
Fortunately, ease of access allowed for much of the damage to be reached with machinery, and a combination of burning, cutting and subsequent spraying to control invasive grasses has set much of this south end on the road to recovery.
Much of the damage could not be burnt, so the response hinged upon tractor mounted hammer flails which mulched up the large tussocks of moss and dead heather and created a fantastic seedbed for new heather plants. Langholm is lucky to have such amazing biodiversity amongst its plant life, and many of these restored areas showed resurging populations of sundew, bog rosemary and cranberry within a few months, along with a strong heather sward.
The Langholm Moor Demonstration Project was funded by a partnership of SNH, GWCT, Buccleugh Estates and the RSPB, but separate work was commissioned by the Heather Trust to monitor the heather's recovery on three different sites at the south end of the moor where the beetle damage was most devastating.
This work ended in 2025 and can be viewed or download below: