Not Just About Water Quality: UU Launches Probe Into Social, Economic Effects of Shooting Ban
Earlier this month, United Utilities announced that it was enlisting the services of Charles Cowap, chartered surveyor and founder of Natural Capital Consortium, to carry out an external assessment of the water company’s decision not to renew licenses for game shooting on land that it owns.
Cowap will investigate the economic, environmental, and social impacts of UU’s decision to no longer allow tenant farmers and others to host game shooting on land they lease from the utility.
This seems rather curious since when United Utilities first announced this move back in August 2023, the company said it was solely aimed at improving water quality.
“We made the decision some time ago not to issue or renew any leases on a long-term basis on our catchment land where we own the sporting rights. This followed a review into the management of the land we own to ensure the best possible outcomes for water quality and we have been communicating this with stakeholders,” a spokesperson for United Utilities said last year.
A 2021 study found that uplands managed for shooting are more sustainable across a variety of factors than land used for other purposes.
So why even bother looking into the social and economic effects of banning game shooting if UU only care about improving water quality? And if – by some miracle – they do care about the economic and social wellbeing of their tenants, why only look into these effects now rather than before they announced their decision?
Perhaps it has something to do with the water company’s disastrous record on pollution, with figures released last week showing that United Utilities was the worst offender for discharging sewage into our nation’s lakes and rivers. In 2023, UU spent a cumulative 656,990 hours discharging raw sewage into waterways, a 54% increase on the record it had previously set only the year before.
With such staggering figures burned onto the public imagination, it seems difficult to believe that fiddling about with shooting licenses will make much difference to the overall quality of water UU provides, or indeed its impact on the local environment.
Much better, therefore, for UU to be seen to be making a holistic decision, based on a variety of competing factors.
Mr Cowap needn’t bother with his investigation, however. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear: moorland managed for game shooting (including grouse shooting, which is popular in the upland areas that UU owns) provides greater environmental, social, and economic benefits than any alternative use.
This was the conclusion of a 2021 report by Professor Simon Denny and reviewed by Professor James Crabbe of Oxford University, entitled ‘Is driven grouse shooting sustainable?’.
“Compared with upland areas where grouse shooting does not take place, the biodiversity of ‘grouse moors’ seems to be at least as rich, if not richer,” Denny said. “The biodiversity impacts of integrated moorland management… are sustainable and should be maintained.”
The report further observed that shooting brings substantial economic and social benefits to upland communities that would likely be lost were the sport not allowed to continue.
According to Denny, “[It is] unlikely that the alternative uses… for the moorlands would deliver the same positive economic impacts at least for a number of generations.”
This chimes well with the response of local communities following UU’s initial announcement last year, with farmers and countryside groups warning of the increased risk of wildfires and collapse of the rural economy were shooting licenses to be suspended.
“If the moor was left alone then it would be completely covered in heather, it would be a disaster waiting to happen,” local farmer and shoot tenant Richard May told The Telegraph. “I am much more worried about a fire than I am about getting a day’s shooting.”
To give an idea of the impact of this destruction, in 2018 a fire on Saddleworth Moor (which is managed by the RSPB and not used for shooting) released half a million tons of carbon from the peat below and led to the evacuation of parts of Manchester.
A study by the University of Leeds later estimated that the fire exposed 4.5 million people across Northwest England to dangerous levels of pollution and will increase premature deaths by 165%.
We could go on but we’re sure Mr Cowap is quite capable of finding this kind of evidence for himself. Hopefully the review process will be mercifully short, with the inevitable conclusion being that game shooting provides sustainable conservation practices, economic enrichment, and social cohesion to the land that United Utilities has been entrusted with safeguarding. Better to leave this well alone.