Yorkshire Water Owes Much to Grouse Moor Management

A recent letter to the Yorkshire Post

Sir – It is entirely logical that any responsible landowner, such as Yorkshire Water, should review a shooting lease before issuing a new one. What would be irresponsible would be to lose the globally rare heather moorland and the species that thrive on it. When driven grouse shooting has been abandoned in Wales, after the second world war, that is what happened. For 150 years driven grouse shooting has best protected and maintained our precious heather moorlands. Grouse moor management supports over a dozen plant communities that are either only found in the UK, or are better developed here than elsewhere. This open landscape also supports a unique collection of bird species which contains eighteen species of European or international importance. Yorkshire Water must remember to thank the teams of moorland gamekeepers for ensuring these wonderful places, so important they were ratified in the Rio Convention on Biodiversity, still exist at all.

Andrew Gilruth

Regional Moorland Groups - Spokesman