'Laughable' - Castle Bolton Estate manager's reaction to petition to ban grouse shooting

He believes the move led by naturalist Chris Packham to implement “immediate and meaningful measures to address what we see as an abhorrently destructive practice so that recovery of moorlands can progress” is ill-founded and totally misguided and would see some species become extinct in the Yorkshire Dales.

However, about 20,000 people have signed the Wild Justice petition, which claims grouse shooting is causing an environmental catastrophe. The volume of signatories ensures a government response and if the petition reaches 100,000 signatures, the issue must be considered for debate in Parliament.

The petition states the popular grouse moor practice of controlled heather burning contributes to climate breakdown and drainage of the land leads to flooding and erosion.

It adds “the wholesale extermination of predators has a disastrous impact on the ecology of these areas”, before adding “the criminal practice of raptor persecution has taken place”.

Last year David Butterworth, chief executive of Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, described the RSPB's annual Birdcrime report as "embarrassing" for the area, which was singled out as the worst in Britain for the persecution of birds of prey.

The petition also states “driven grouse shooting is bad for people, the environment and wildlife”, adding it is “economically insignificant when contrasted with other real and potential uses of the UK’s extensive uplands”, without stating what other potential uses might be.

However, Mr Sleightholm says the economic and social impact of a ban would “ripple through the communities of the Dales”, as well as being “massive” for Castle Bolton Estate, which employs 50 people for up to 35 shooting days annually.

Addressing the petition’s environmental claims, he says they are decades out of date. Mr Sleightholm said: “The moors were drained in the 1950s and 1960s as a government incentive to make the land more productive for agriculture.

"Landowners have filled a lot of them back in again and probably every moor in the north of England has been re-wetted and restored, with bare peat areas re-vegetated, natural watercourses have been dammed. We cannot get our moors any wetter or to hold any more water.

"We’ve got such an array of berry and moss species”, said Mr Sleightholm. “If you don’t manage the moor all you get is rank heather which dries out the peat which releases carbon. I can’t see the science behind the petition."

He said incidences of raptor persecution were “frustrating” and perpertrated by a minority, adding the petition’s claims over harm to wildlife were "laughable”.

The gamekeeper said managed grouse moors boasted the country’s greatest biodiversity as gamekeepers in the area were involved in numerous wildlife conservation schemes, boosting dormice, curlew and osprey and conserving the highest number of merlins in Europe.

Mr Sleightholm said threatened ground-nesting raptors, such as merlin, short-eared owls and hen harriers, all needed the protection gamekeepers gave.

He said: “We see the new fashion of re-wilding, but when the habitat and predator management is taken away, there have been countless studies showing biodiversity drops massively. With the biodiversity crisis that the country finds itself in, we should be looking to these estates. You will have species extinct if grouse shooting is banned. Ground-nesting species will become extinct within a very short period of time.

"It’s all about balance. Buzzard numbers are through the roof and are green listed [of low conservation concern] and we are pushing for licences to control them. We catch the same number of foxes, stoats and crows every year, we just create a level of predator-prey balance through legal predator control.

“We apply for licences to control seagulls, lesser black-backed gulls and herring gulls because if they are not managed we get big increases.

"We do lots of work with the farmers monitoring curlews in the sileage fields, find the nests and take them out the fields while they’re cutting and put them back in the fields, lots of work, just for the gulls or buzzards to come down and eat them.

“It’s a question of what people want to see. Do they want to see hundreds of buzzards, crows and red kites or do they want to see a balance with a plethora of species and greater biodiversity?"