Environmental campaigners to set up Ban the Burn in response to the support now being given to Walshaw Moor following the collapse of the public inquiry. See the The Northerner Blog post in The Guardian article for more information.The tenuous link is made between grouse shooting, burning and flooding and this appears to be at the root of the campaign. I have every sympathy with the residents of Hebden Bridge who have been flooded out, but I do not think that grouse shooting is the problem. The analogy of the uplands being a sponge is now seen as old hat: when the uplands are saturated with water, as happens in summers like this one, they will behave like saturated sponges and water will run off them. Fast.
What we need is carefully balanced management of our upland areas and yes that takes money and the biggest source of this in many parts of our uplands is grouse shooting. Grouse moor owners and their employees are the most experienced people for moorland management.
Some people may not like the concept of grouse shooting, but maybe the residents of Hebden Bridge, and in other similar places, would be better advised to tolerate this, if not actively support it, in the interests of getting the moorland that surrounds their homes properly managed and therefore better able to reduce the risk of downstream flooding. Unmanaged moorland is an accident waiting to happen - wildfires and flooding being two of the biggest risks.
