Chamber and committees

Petitioner submission of 25 August 2021

PE1850/B - Natural Flood Prevention on Grouse Moors

The economic, environmental and human cost of flooding are astronomical. The 2007 Gloucestershire flood cost more than two billion pounds in damages to homes and businesses. The 2005 Carlisle flood likewise cost more than four hundred million pounds – part of the watershed which caused this happens to lie in Scotland. These are just two of the more prominent incidents, in Scotland we could point to Perth as one of many areas that has been hit heavily by flooding. The human cost, up to and including loss of life, is similarly enormous – homes and businesses seriously damaged or totally lost along with personal possessions. The disruption and emotional hardship involved is nearly unimaginable.

The environmental cost is usually overlooked, flood waters washing soil, chemical pollutants and solid waste into our rivers and ultimately estuaries and seas. Whether or not projected climate change leads to an increase in rainfall, increasing urbanisation will ensure future flood events will affect more and more people.

What is new is the realisation that natural flood management which involves targeted tree planting, use of natural floodplains etc rather than traditional hard engineering work can be a more effective and cheaper way of reducing the severity of floods by retaining water for longer periods. In addition, they provide additional benefits such as restoring biodiversity and the creation of recreational opportunities. Although much progress is being made in this field, a glaring and disastrous omission is what I believe to be a lack of either a national Scottish or UK plan to implement natural flood prevention methods across our uplands as policy.

Our uplands make a disproportionately large contribution towards flooding. Their altitude tends to induce the highest rainfall levels and their topography means water can flow from them very quickly. The nature of our uplands also means there is far more scope to implement effective, large scale natural flood prevention without compromising genuinely economic activity, in fact much of the ‘economic’ activity that takes place there only does so because of public subsidy. This means that as long as the various activities in our uplands are not required to incorporate natural flood prevention – such as the sheep farmers of Pontbren have pioneered – then members of the public can be paying for subsidies to upland businesses that increase the flood risk to their own homes. It is my view that this is not only an economic insanity it is a moral obscenity.

Similarly, the presence of the beaver in Scotland should be leading to wonderful opportunities to complement targeted tree planting in the uplands to not only create much needed firebreaks, but significantly reduce the speed with which water pours from them to flood houses, businesses, and better-quality farmland downhill. Instead of highlighting possibilities for beavers to significantly reduce the number of homes that might need to be mopped out and emptied after heavy rain, their damage to farmland real, imagined or exaggerated has been stressed. The beaver’s potential role in the former in terms of avoided damage and human misery should far outweigh the costs for compensation and mitigation caused where there is genuine conflict. I believe that it has not been the potential for the beaver to prevent families from losing their homes to floodwaters that’s been recognised, it is possible damage to the corners of fields which is failing the public.

Making the inclusion of comprehensive natural flood prevention on grouse moors a requirement of their obtaining an operator’s licence is not singling them out. The proposed licencing of grouse moors has created an opportunity to establish what should also become a consideration for upland sheep farming, forestry and deer stalking among others. It should not be regarded as an anomaly, but a first step, an example for changing the way our uplands are managed that is currently placing many of those that live below them under unnecessarily high flood risk. NOT adding natural flood prevention to the stipulations for running a grouse moor would be the real anomaly, continuing to ignore the greater public interest.