The water utility company United Utilities, which owns a number of moors across northern England where it leases grouse shooting to ‘sporting tenants’, has quietly announced it will not be renewing grouse shoot leases on its moors once the current leases come to an end, according to Channel 4 journalist Alex Thomson.
Alex posted a series of tweets last night following the news from United Utilities’ AGM held yesterday:
It’s not clear when the current grouse shooting leases will expire but my understanding is that they are relatively short, so I don’t think we’re looking at a commitment that won’t take effect for another 50 odd years or so, it’ll be relatively soon.
It’s interesting that United Utilities hasn’t produced a press release about such a significant change of policy, especially when that change will be welcomed by the hundreds of thousands of people who want to see an end to driven grouse shooting (e.g. see here). I can’t help but be a little bit sceptical until the full details are revealed but for now, it seems an encouraging move and United Utilities should be applauded.
Let’s hope that UU’s commitment to improving water quality also extends to putting an end to its sewage dumping activities – according to the Good Law Project, UU was the ‘worst offender’ for dumping untreated sewage into rivers and coastal waters in 2022, whilst reporting operating profits of £610 million and paid out dividends of £296 million (see here).
UPDATE 24th July 2023: Countryside Alliance furious about United Utilities’ decision to stop grouse shooting leases (here)
UPDATE 28th July 2023: Emails of support for United Utilities’ decision not to renew shooting leases (here)
UPDATE 30th July 2023: United Utilities stands firm & explains its decision not to renew shooting licences (here)
Raptor Persecution UK 
It will be interesting to record the [hopefully] increase in Raptors after the leases run out. A great litmus test to place against shooting estates and other areas where shooting is allowed.
Until of course uncontrolled heather burning and decimation by predators wipes out the raptors and the curlew, lapwing, skylark etc etc – shame United utilities won’t be held to account!!
Bollocks.
Can you provide evidence that UU are planning to set fire to the land?
Can you f***!
Yes you are dead right there,but by the time this is realised.The damage will have been done a lot of it irreversible
“The damage” has, of course, been going on for centuries; all to facilitate the recreational abuse of wild animals, by those lacking the intellect to do anything positive with their time. Thankfully, the lies of the plastic “countryside” lobby have been exposed for all to see, and as each day passes, fewer and fewer are taken in by their pretences.
Where do you get centuries from?
19th, 20th, 21st.
That would have been started in 1760 in Great Britain and a little later in the States in 1790. That is the Industrial Revolution. Alone, that has killed animals and man in the end. The centuries I would count would be since time began or soon after it, man has been killing animals for fun at off time and after work for fun(sport) ever since man stood up. That, I think, would be centuries.
Hear hear. The general public do not understand that much of the lost of certain birds and small mammals is due to the uncontrolled growth in the raptor population since the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981.
Thankfully most of the general public are more intelligent than to believe your idiotic comment
Your comment is clearly lacking any of your namesake and just shows you to be one of the many pro shooters who are ecologically illiterate. There is NO EVIDENCE nor is there ever likely to be that raptors have caused the loss of any bird species or for that matter small mammals. It is unbelievable that with predator control for just a couple of centuries, it convinces the foolish and ignorant that it will be always needed, one wonders what was happening in the thousands and millions of years before it. Oh that’s right a natural dynamic balance.
I think you need a change of name to common nonsense.
Great news if true. There’s been new chief executive recently so maybe a change of direction.
Let them stop the pollution of rivers and there vast profits
Let us hope that this proves an excellent precedent. A pity United Utilities don’t own the North Pennines as well.
Good news. Lets hope this is the beginning of the end for grouse shooting aka bird of prey persecution on our uplands. Other landowners can now do the same with the precedent set
Ignorant of the facts, about nature and you would not know A grouse from a chicken birrani,I prefer a malt đŸ˜‚
Here are some of “the facts”…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320723001738#f0010
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09044-w
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2405296?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000632070300363X
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ibi.12356
https://www.nature.scot/snh-commissioned-report-982-analyses-fates-satellite-tracked-golden-eagles-scotland
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3597/grouse_moor_burning_causes_widespread_environmental_changes
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13708
Let’s hope this is the start of a trend and does not lead to more delinquency in the idiots that take part in this slaughter.
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
Stick to your concrete encampments and leave country sports alone. Cumbrian
Boo-de-hoo.
Excellent news, its about time someone stopped these shoots, let’s hope others follow suit, there is no place in modern society for such barbaric pastimes.
Well done united utilities water company, I Imagine the wildlife will also be thankful too.
No just more illegal stabbing ellegal shootings in this so called progressive society of yours.Perhaps if you people were to up your game and steer your aggression into helping the authorities by information and observation. And not cowering and saying I don’t want to get involved crap perhaps the amount of incidents would fall.What ever happened to the old hue and cry
“illegal stabbing”? Is there any other kind?
Bradford City Council leased Ilkley Moor to a syndicate for 10yrs very successfully no reports of any raptors shot or poisoned in that time, the lease was revoked.đŸ˜± anyone seen a grouse up there lately? They were not all shot, just stopped controlling foxes,stoats weasels and hedgehogs that raided the grouse nests and chicks
Yes. I suppose they are, however, a bit harder to spot when they approach a natural population level – controlled by their environment – rather that the mono-cultured, artificial, bloated population densities demanded by the sickos with guns and money.
Perhaps this is why?
And here is why your shower were rightly booted off…
Controlling Hedgehogs? Shush …Keep your voice down, Sean!
That is something you’re not supposed to talk about, or did you not know they’ve been (supposedly) protected in law for years and are now on the Red List as vulnerable to extinction?
Why is it that ‘you people’ think all those who do not condone wildlife persecution for fun, live in cities? Strange, especially when, I would think, most shooters, hunters are the wealthy who live & work in towns & cities.
Hear hear
And what makes you think we are not country folk ourselves Cumbrian. Oh your prejudices are showing.
This is fabulous news. I will probably start visiting the Forest of Bowland again (and spending some money with local businesses), which I’ve been avoiding for years due to the horrible grouse shooting going on.
Likewise Phil, this could be a real boost to the local tourist trade. And how good could your photo look if taken in twenty years time Ruth.
To be fair to UU their land is pretty much the only place in Bowland that hen harriers currently nest successfully. I’m pretty sure they only allow walk up shooting here, although it seems like they allow driven grouse shooting on some of their other land. The Duke of Westminster is the largest landowner in Bowland so I don’t expect any changes on his land in the foreseeable future.
Hmmnn are they quiet because they dont want to stir up a full glare of publicity reaction from the shooting lobby. Are they expecting pressure from certain quarters to reinstate it I wonder, who are the major shareholders of UU all sorts of ponderings but if right and the leases stop being renewed in the next few years can only be good.
This is amazing news but I am also sceptical. UU did state they won’t be renewing long term leases not all leases so I fear maybe they will continue with short term leases. I pray they don’t.
Yes, and they may put up the cost of short term leases. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
Having never been there but only read about & researched the area, I was for years under the happy illusion that several of those leases were to small-scale syndicates that only shot a few 30 – 60 brace days per season and were not intensively managed in the same way “proper” grouse moors usually are. A type of management I always reckoned as hitting (in my mind at least) the “sweet spot” i.e. unlikely to be systematically killing raptors but killing / controlling foxes and crows. Then I started reading more widely (inc following this blog & others) and hearing about the lengths the RSPB & volunteers were going to in protecting the harrier nests on these leases – that were the very ones lauded by the shooting industry as proof that all was well! You couldn’t make it up!
I find myself thinking about Churchill’s closing words to his statement to the House of Commons in November 1942, announcing the great British and Commonwealth army victory at El Alamein.
“This is not the end of the war. It is not even the beginning of the end of the war. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
They probably have a number of factors in doing this. Bad PR for water industries at the moment vs a quick low cost win. Makes sense from the water catchment point of view also, and they have probably sensed the way the nation is moving against the blood sport loving Tories.
That’s pretty much how I see it TBF. But we need to make the most of our gains when we get them. The task will be to ensure that ecologically good use of the land is made when the shoots go, and to get in tenants who are up to it
That’s really good news.Thank you for listening and taking action.xx
The Forest of Bowland is already a stronghold in England for Hen Harriers partly thanks to UU so hopefully this will extend their range further. Shame the Duke of Westminster can’t join them, I think he owns a considerable chunk of land adjacent/nearby
I wonder what “… to ensure the best possible outcomes for water quality…” will actually mean.
https://www.shootinguk.co.uk/news/grouse-shooting-leases-pulled-on-united-utilities-land-144823
It seems the shooters are worried. Great news!
Heaven above,the whole place will be overrun with hen harriers short eared owls and the like,the end of the uplands,Ican hear them moaning,the moors will implode as non shooters know nothing
This is fantastic news!
It will be interesting to see how the ground nesting Merlin’s and harriers fare with no predator control. If anything like Langholm they will decline quite quickly. Does nobody understand this? Curlew and lapwing too??
Hen Harriers do just fine without the tweed disease infesting our countryside….
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-2664.1999.00419.x
What about Curlew, Lapwing and Merlin?
What about them? Populations of all three sustained themselves perfectly well for millennia before the advent of killing for fun. They never have, and never will rely on gamekeeping/shooting for their existence; neither does evidence-based, specifically-targeted predator control for conservation reasons.
What about Curlew, Lapwing & Merlin? They did perfectly well for centuries before some greedy, ecologically illiterate landowners decided to move from walk up shooting to massively boosting the population of Red Grouse beyond the carrying capacity of the environment by slaughtering predators, producing heather deserts, medicating them, etc. so they could charge obscene sums for obscene individuals to sate their blood lust killing huge numbers of those grouse: no doubt leaving plenty of carcasses on the moors to help sustain populations of generalist predators.
Tarras Valley Nature Reserve, formerly Langholm grouse moor, is doing well. 7 HH chicks fledged this summer and if they escape shooting and poisoning- a big if – they too wll breed in future years. Massive landscape restoration is underway and it will become more biodiverse than a grouse moor by a long way.
Just as importantly, the community has thrown itself into this project because people know that it will enrich their lives economically, socially, culturally and become a go-to place for scientists and conservationists the world over. Watch this space!
There will inevitably be a political campaign to reverse this proposal. How might the parties respond, with a reported ‘tree-hugger-hater’ and an ‘animal-welfare-legislation-dumper’ in charge of the current main two during a febrile election atmosphere?
I would not be surprised to see legal challenges, too…
Water quality could be a decisive issue… and carefully chosen.
Hopefully this is the start we are all hoping for – the pressure must be kept up though. I was down there for 4 days recently with my Wife and we only spotted one buzzard!
I appreciate that modesty does not permit RPUK to blow its own trumpet but I’m sure I’m far from alone amongst readers of this blog in thinking that RPUK’s years of thoughtful, accurate and fact-based campaigning on this and related matters have played a significant, perhaps the single most significant, role in this change of heart.
Aye well said John!
That’s kind John, but way too generous! The lion’s share of the credit should go to Mark Avery, although there are many, many people who have campaigned against driven grouse shooting for many, many years now, and I’m just one of them, so credit is due to all of them.
The statements by the utilities are deliberately vague in my opinion. Let us see how it goes hopefully.
Meanwhile the landscape is dreadfully unnatural due to grouse killing management practices. Dire for nature and tourism. And water quality.
This is fantastic news and just a few weeks before August 12th too! There’s a big opportunity here to do some great ecological restoration and it would be brilliant if bringing back beavers is at the forefront of it. Their dams will create firebreaks to help get over a possible hump when there might be a build up of flammable heather before trees and peat bogs re-establish properly. Their dams would also reduce flood peaks and drought lows downstream as well as trap silt so improve water quality too. A bit of riparian tree planting and while it’s maturing bringing in supplementary food (unsold veg from supermarkets) and brash and logs from tree surgery operations for food and damming, then we could have beavers up on those moors surprisingly quickly. If they know this would reduce the chances homes and businesses get flooded and it will help wildlife return then the public would love getting involved I’m sure. This would be a big change from the highly restrictive and exclusive grouse moors which have definitely not been an asset for 99.9% of the population.
I think Ruth’s muted response speaks volumes here and it’s disappointing to see other posters failing to see the bigger picture. This is straight out of the greenwashing play book. You’re talking about an organisation that make the worst law breakers in the grouse shooting fraternity look like choir boys. Causing ecological damage, literally on an industrial scale, while charging you, the general public, for the privilege of doing so. The actual impact to active driven grouse moors will be minimal. Perhaps one beat in bowland and a couple of moors in the peak district. One of which until recently had arguably the most progressive grouse keeper in the UK on there. UU’s land holdings obviously extend far beyond those sites and so I’d ask people to look at exactly how much biodiversity exists across the UU portfolio and how well it’s managed as a whole. I think people would be saddened by the reality. Throwing tenants under the bus to try to deflect from their own failings doesn’t make UU the good guys. They might have a “new” CEO, but she’s been with the business over 20 years and look at the decline in service during that time. I don’t see this as good for anyone and it’s a shame some of the uninformed see it as such.
That is great news! Nice to see the ecologically illiterate getting their soiled knickers in an almighty twist!