The country’s largest corporate landowner, United Utilities, announced last week, just days before the start of the shooting season, that it will not renew shooting licenses on its land. One of the many catastrophic consequences of this decision is that it will dramatically increase the risk of wild fires. The Telegraph has more.
“I dread to think what will happen if we are not here,” Andrew Chadwick said as he looked out across the purple and green patchwork of moorland he manages. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
He has been a gamekeeper in the Peak District for the last 37 years, just as his father was before him. But his post could soon be lost as the water company that owns the land is effectively banning shooting.
United Utilities (UU), the country’s largest corporate landowner, announced just weeks before Saturday’s Glorious Twelfth that it will not be renewing shooting licences on its land.
The company has in recent years focused on rewilding, and it has said it will allow it to “accelerate the restoration and rewetting of our peatlands”.
“I just don’t think that the people who have made this decision know what we do up here or understand the moors,” Mr. Chadwick said. “I think that they will regret the decision.”
