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Shooting Times understands that United Utilities, Britain’s biggest water company and also Britain’s largest corporate landowner, is going to end grouse shooting across its 56,000-hectare holding by way of not renewing any grouse shooting leases when they come to an end. Anti-grouse shooting campaigners, including Luke Steele, the executive director of Wild Moors, said that the news was “amazing” and claimed that it reflects the values of those who “believe wildlife and habitats should be protected and enhanced”. The shooting community and a suite of practical conservationists took a very different stance. Lindsay Waddell, veteran grousekeeper and former chairman of the National Gamekeepers’ Association, told ST that it is another sorry chapter “in the drip, drip, drip against the management of the uplands”. Mr Waddell said the decision will almost certainly see all keepers losing their jobs. When that happens, he continued, predator control will end and “the densit