Should I blame gamekeepers for flooding my home?
Gareth Dockerty
Gareth Dockerty discusses the relationship between moorland managed for grouse and the flooding of nearby towns and villages.
I live next to a river in North Yorkshire and when it rains heavily particularly in a short space of time the river floods. This causes huge stress and anxiety for my family and can result in sleepless nights pumping water away from the house. The question is, can I blame gamekeepers for this flooding and if so, will banning grouse shooting make my family’s life easier?
I would love nothing more than a simple solution to this issue, a quick fix that meant I could enjoy the wonderful river and its wildlife without the fear of flooding. The cottage has been here for over 300 years, and a quick look at the local history suggests it has always been prone to flooding. It flooded a century before driven grouse shooting was invented, so can I realistically blame the grouse moors up stream for today’s flood events?
The simple answer is no. Flood events are complex and reducing the risk of flooding will take a holistic approach across the whole river catchment, however, this does not grab headlines or make for dramatic sound bites.
Reducing the flood risk
Truthfully, I am in a very fortunate position. Working for BASC and living in the uplands, I know the work that goes on upstream to reduce flood risks, namely thousands of miles of drainage grips being blocked over the last 40 years by the shooting community. This has helped to rewet the moors and counteract the effect of decades of government grants for agricultural drainage.
Don’t be fooled by what you may hear; a bone-dry moor does not benefit grouse, they need water and the chicks need insects hatching from wetter moors. Just ask why gamekeepers take up hundreds of gallons of water to the moors in dry spells.
Does controlled burning cause flooding?
But grouse keepers undertake controlled legal burns, so surely that makes my cottage flood? Not from my perspective, it reduces the risks of a catastrophic wildfire that would strip off all the vegetation and thus increase the risk of water runoff. Shooters also manage and plant hundreds of hectares of woodland, hedgerows and cover crops, all of which helps to slow the flow.
Yet every year extremists against sustainable grouse shooting look to capitalise on the misery of flood victims and suggest that gamekeepers are to blame for their house or businesses being flooded.
Communities like Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire or Doncaster are fed a simple message that banning grouse shooting will save their properties. Yet Doncaster has flood events dating back to 1536 and Hebden Bridge has been flooding for at least 400 hundred years.
The River Severn has a long history of floods as the residents of Gloucester and Tewkesbury know well, yet there are no grouse moors upstream, so why do these places flood? The main culprits of these events are rainfall and geography and the solutions to reducing the risks are very complicated.
There is no quick fix and we must all play our small part, thinking about floodplain developments, sustainable urban drainage systems, soft natural flood barriers and tree planting in key appropriate locations, and hard flood prevention engineering.
An end to grouse shooting will not solve flooding
The house insurance company knows my cottage is prone to flooding as does the Environment Agency. The local community also know, and yet none of them have suggested that stopping grouse shooting would be the magic answer.
The shooting community is a solution to reducing flood risks. We will continue to play our part and fingers crossed, rather than being made a political scapegoat, will be seen as a trusted partner in the coming years. For now, targeting and tapping into the misery of flood victims must stop.
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