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Andrew Gilruth's appearance before the Environmental Audit Committee's Peatland Inquiry on 4th March was a masterclass in evidence-based advocacy — calm, authoritative, and grounded in the realities that Westminster too often ignores. As Chief Executive of the Moorland Association, representing those who manage one million acres of upland Britain, Gilruth arrived not just with a brief but with forensic command of the detail. From the physics of pyro-convection to the bureaucr

After only a few days of dry weather, the first moorland wildfire of the year has already been recorded in the Peak District . Thanks to the rapid response from crews at Slaithwaite Fire Station, the incident was quickly brought under control. But events like this should prompt a wider conversation about how our uplands are managed — and the consequences when practical land management is restricted or undervalued. Moorlands are living landscapes that require active stewardshi

Defra and Natural England have been lucky so far. It started raining just after they persuaded Minister Mary Creagh to stop rotational cool burning , and it has rained more or less continuously since. The downside is that all this time the vegetation is growing. When the hills dry out, there will be the devil to pay. One of our nation's greatest pieces of good fortune is that centuries of managing peatlands for pasturage and shooting have, almost by chance, kept our vast stor

Two gamekeepers from the Moscar Estate, part of the Peak District Moorland Group, are being praised for saving the life of a 17-year-old girl who collapsed in freezing blizzard conditions on Stanage Edge — one of the Peak District's most popular but exposed walking spots. Rheyah Rowe became unresponsive on Monday 17 February while on a family walk across the Moscar Estate. Her mother, Carla, and three children had set off at 8am in bright, freezing conditions with snow on the

The draft 2026–2031 Forest of Bowland National Landscape Management Plan is out for consultation. It closes on 2 March. At 191 pages across multiple documents, it represents a significant investment of time and public money. It also represents a significant missed opportunity — because the people who actually manage most of this landscape, the gamekeepers, appear to have been written out of it. The Forest of Bowland is one of England's most important upland landscapes. Its ch

A webinar hosted by the Friends of the Dales' ' Eyes on the Skies ' initiative featured Detective Inspector Mark Harrison making extraordinary claims about the moorland shooting community — claims that reveal more about the disconnect between urban-facing campaign policing and rural reality than they do about wildlife crime. When the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority quietly disbanded its Bird of Prey Partnership last summer — a cross-sector group that included Natural

The Moorland Association, Countryside Alliance, and National Gamekeepers Organisation have joined forces to get grouse conservation and shooting recognised in the UK's new Inventories of Living Heritage. The campaign, Our Upland Living Heritage , launched today with a simple but powerful argument: the traditions, skills, and community networks built around moorland management are as much a part of Britain's cultural fabric as bell-ringing, dry-stone walling, or Highland games

Ministers told Parliament a key burning report was rigorously peer-reviewed. Freedom of Information disclosures tell a very different story. Natural England's evidence review on managed burning — a document now shaping policy, stewardship conditions, and regulatory enforcement across England's uplands — was assured to Parliament as having undergone "rigorous peer review." It is a claim that, under the weight of the agency's own disclosed records, appears increasingly difficul

Packham with convicted terrorist bomb maker Mel Broughton Chris Packham’s shrills of hysteria get more ridiculous by the day. In his latest effort to demonise rural communities he wants you to believe that the Peak District is a ‘Raptor death zone’. Speaking about his time filming Springwatch, the BBC presenter claimed that during three weeks at the National Trust's Longshaw Estate, he did not see "a single Buzzard or a single Kite flying over," describing the managed moorla

Nobody enjoys snaring. Even those who do it for a living take no pleasure in it. Effective snaring demands considerable skill, good equipment, real commitment, and hard physical work. It is also a sitting duck for critics: if anything goes wrong, it will be front-page news; if nothing goes wrong, it is disturbingly easy to stage a shock-horror photograph with a roadkill badger or cat. Yet snaring, in its modern form, remains one of the most important tools available to conser

As was reported by the Yorkshire Dales Moorland Group , this is male hen harrier 'Frank' — arguably the most celebrated and productive breeding male hen harrier in recent English history. Ringed and fitted with a GPS tracker as a nestling in August 2018 in Cumbria, Frank went on to breed polygamously across managed grouse moors in the Yorkshire Dales from 2019 to 2025, fathering chicks well into double figures with multiple females. He was a conservation triumph by any measur

Last month we published 'RSPB Uncovered: the missing Birdcrime files' , exposing systematic failures in how the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) conducts wildlife crime investigations. The report, authored by international journalist Ben O'Rourke, examined 14 investigations spanning 1990 to 2025 and revealed how Britain's largest conservation charity has manufactured prosecutions and misled the public. Ben O'Rourke's report lifts the lid on decades of RSPB mis

A dispatch from the Peak District Moorland Group. As another shooting season draws to a close, it can be a time for reflection. Some days went well, others didn’t. The difference between red letter days and so-called poor days is often subjective. For those that are doing the shooting, being on top form or having an off day might determine their view of the day. For the staff that are turning out to help deliver the day, under the guidance of keepers and estate managers, othe

The dramatic rescue of stranded paramedics and a GP on Askrigg Moor during Storm Chandra has shone a spotlight on the essential role gamekeepers play in safeguarding remote communities. As was widely reported in today's media , Lewis, a gamekeeper from the Gunnerside Estate, didn't hesitate when he discovered an ambulance trapped in deep snow on the exposed moorland road, with a critically ill patient waiting for help and medical crews unable to reach them. Working with loca

The North Pennines National Landscape (NPNL) was the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The incoming Labour Government changed the name because that is what incoming Labour Governments do. It created a fleeting impression that they were interested, and the permanent impression that the 'Nation' owns the place. It doesn't of course. It mostly belongs to hard-pressed and hard-working private people, whose only contact with the state is to be endlessly messed abo

The RSPB's latest allegations regarding hen harriers at North Pennines represent more than poor investigative standards—they represent a systematic campaign of character assassination against gamekeepers and rural communities, built on satellite tag failures and presented as established fact to a credulous media. When the RSPB's Mark Thomas declares six tag failures "extremely concerning" and part of "a long trend," he's not presenting evidence to a court. He's issuing a pres

A damning new report examining three decades of wildlife crime investigations has exposed systematic failures at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, revealing how Britain's most trusted conservation charity has prioritised prosecutions over protection and funding over facts. 'RSPB Uncovered: the missing Birdcrime files', authored by international journalist Ben O’Rourke, draws on witness interviews, police reports, and freedom of information requests across 14 inv

A new report has exposed systematic failures in how the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) conducts wildlife crime investigations and reveals how the charity has abandoned its mission to protect Britain's birds in favour of harassing rural communities. The report, ‘RSPB Uncovered: the missing Birdcrime files’, examines 14 investigations by the charity between 1990 and 2025. By interviewing key witnesses, analysing police reports and scouring government records v

In 2025 England experienced its worst wildfire crisis on record, with over 27,000 grassland and woodland fires tackled, yet the government agency responsible for nature conservation has issued guidance that epitomises everything wrong with modern environmental bureaucracy: Natural England staff have been ordered not to tackle fires with flames exceeding 50cm in height. Let that sink in. Fifty centimetres. Less than two feet. The kind of fire that farmers and gamekeepers rout

The recent Parliamentary Questions on wildfire impacts have exposed something inexcusable: the Government is making sweeping land-management policy decisions without any consolidated assessment of wildfire consequences. This is not evidence-based policymaking—it is ideology masquerading as environmental protection. The Policy-Making Scandal When James Cartlidge MP asked for basic wildfire data—hectares burned, firefighting costs, health impacts—Defra's response was staggering