Countryside Alliance welcomes new Parliamentary report that confirms no link between moorland manage

The Countryside Alliance welcomes the report from the cross-party EFRA Committee into Future flood prevention:

The report recognises that "winter 2015-2016 broke rainfall records" and "more frequent, more intense storms resulting from climate change will in future put more people at risk and increase flood impacts."

For many communities the damage caused by the flooding last winter was the worst in living memory. The experience of witnessing homes, and even whole farms, under water rightly led people to ask why it happened and what can be done to mitigate and prevent it happening again. As such it was vital that the EFRA Committee enquiry that led to this report could be conducted without undue influence from lobby groups seeking to promote their own narrow agendas.

Many used the inquiry as an opportunity to advance an anti-shooting and, in some cases, anti-farming agenda. It was suggested by some that grouse moor management contributed to the flooding, an accusation that shows a lack of understanding of both the evidence and the work of grouse moor managers in conserving heather and peatland across our uplands, which is some of our most valuable habitat. The Countryside Alliance submitted evidence countering the claims that grouse moor management exacerbates flooding.

In the report the EFRA Committee recognised that there is no proven link between grouse shooting and flooding. Despite a number of written submissions which claimed that rotational heather burning carried out by grouse moor managers was responsible for the flood waters, the report contains no mention of grouse shooting. This acknowledgement that there is no proven link between rotational heather burning and flooding comes after a Natural England study in 2013 also found no direct evidence specifically relating to the effect of burning on watercourse flow or the risk of downstream flood events.

Following the report the Countryside Alliance have argued that the concerted efforts of grouse moor managers to block drains and re-vegetate bare peatland across the uplands contributes to the ability of the moorland to store and slow the flow of water through the catchment area, and this should be seen as part of any flood prevention strategy rather than a causal factor.

Head of Shooting at the Countryside Alliance, Liam Stokes, said:

"This report and the enquiry that produced it will be vital to protecting communities from future flooding. It was important that the EFRA committee could scrutinise this topic without being misled by campaigners seeking to use the enquiry to further their own agendas, so we were concerned to see that submissions were being made that went way beyond existing evidence in seeking to blame grouse moor management for flooding. We submitted evidence to the Committee highlighting these concerns, and I am very pleased that having considered the evidence the Committee's report contains no mention at all of grouse shooting. The report focuses on the true causes of flooding and contains some very sensible proposals, many of which we hope the Government takes forward."

In the Westminster Hall debate on grouse shooting on Monday 31 October, the Conservative MP Charles Walker (Broxbourne), stated:

"Today, I want to challenge the untruths being promoted by those who wish to ban grouse shooting—people who outside this place knowingly promote cod science in what I regard as a shameful attempt to set community against community and neighbour against neighbour. That wilful cynicism was no better exampled than by the reaction of Mr Mark Avery and Chris Packham to last December's floods when, at a time of disaster, they took to the airwaves and their blogs to blame that brutal act of nature on gamekeepers and grouse moors. That was a simply unforgivable act of premeditated malice, with two media savvy men using the suffering of real people and real communities to promote their narrow political objectives."

Our written evidence is available here: http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/environment-food-and-rural-affairs-committee/future-flood-prevention/written/30569.pdf