The eve of the Inglorious 12th

Tomorrow is the Inglorious 12th – the start of the Red Grouse shooting season. Since the first Hen Harrier Day events on 10 August 2014 in Derbyshire, Northumberland, Dorset and Northern Ireland we have come a long way, together. Driven grouse shooting is on its knees and cannot survive long. That’s partly because of the…

Press release – Wild Moors and League Against Cruel Sports

Natural England restricts gamebird shooting on Thornton Moor. Fresh doubt has been cast over the future of the controversial game bird shoot on Yorkshire Water’s land at Thornton Moor after Natural England has refused permission for a significant part of the operation. The government’s habitats watchdog has said in a decision notice issued to Yorkshire…

Alternatives to driven grouse shooting

This paper is a mixture of the completely obvious and the quite important. It takes the oft-quoted suggestion by pro-grouse-shooting interests, that the only real alternative land uses to intensive driven grouse shooting are harmful agriculture and harmful afforestation, and says that isn’t true. It clearly isn’t, because what happens in terms of land use…

Hen Harriers

Hen harriers are nesting in the hills, and the persecution and the brood meddling go on. Here are three items of news, although the first of them is an ongoing item of non-news that may soon be of itself newsworthy. 1. Brood meddling legal challenge The story so far; 2018 – Natural England issue licences…