I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am the chairman of the Countryside Alliance. I will not repeat absolutely everything that has been said this afternoon, but I will compare two moorlands, and build on the excellent story that we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames).
I, too, spent a pleasant day on a moorland—not actually shooting—not that long ago. Many species have been mentioned, and I think I counted 44 in total that day, including mammals and birds. There were blackcock, golden plover, woodcock, snipe, jack snipe, greylag geese, teal, widgeon, mallard, gadwall, pintail and even, right out in the middle of the moor, miles from anywhere, a wild chicken. I am not sure whether there are wild chicken, but there was a chicken that was probably not born and brought up there. There were also a collection of corvids and a few raptors. Probably as important, to pick up on the comments made by my
hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), was the thriving school, the busy shop and a pub that did business not just during the tourist season, but throughout the winter. In other words, the place was a proper community built around the agriculture and shooting activity of the area.
Compare and contrast that with my other experience of a moorland in mid-Wales, where I used to live and where, something like 20 years ago, grouse shooting of any sort came to an end. Now, as we heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), lapwing have become extinct on those moors. The numbers of golden plover are down by 90% and curlew by 79%. The moors are dominated by crows and other corvids, as well as ground predators. Biodiversity has been damaged by a lack of investment and overgrazing. A new phenomenon —at this stage being reported anecdotally—is the uninterrupted rock climbing in some of the few cliff areas, which is deterring peregrine falcons from nesting. No malice is intended, but the pretty unlimited and unregulated disturbance each and every weekend is contributing to difficulties elsewhere.