I’m a rather inadequate council member of the World Land Trust and so I’m asking you to help make me look a bit better by helping them in one or more of these ways;
1. Be a World Land Trust Friend – give a regular donation of £5 per month
2. Follow the World Land Trust on Twitter (@worldlandtrust) and ‘like’ them on Facebook
3. Sponsor Chris Beard on his hitch from Wales to India or Blake Perkins and Vanessa Graham on their hitch from Leeds to Marrakech – I’ve given them both a fiver (plus the GiftAid)
4. If you’re in the vicinity, why not visit the WLT Art Gallery in Halesworth, Suffolk, where a new exhibition has just opened
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Hi Mark, I do already make a monthly donation to the WLT of more than £5/month
Apologies for going off-topic but I thought I would mention the reply I received to a letter I sent to my MP back in May. The letter concerned a list of conservation issues that I felt to be of concern, that I requested that she raise with the new government. One of these was the persecution of birds of prey and today, via the MP, I received a response from Rory Stewart, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at Defra:
“I agree with Mr Wallace that crimes against birds of prey are not acceptable; however I am content that the current regulatory framework and enforcement plan is sufficiently robust to provide a strong deterrent to those who might consider such activity and there are strong penalties for offenders…”.
It is nice to know that the Under-Secretary is “content” but where on earth has he been living if he can honestly reach the conclusion that the existing framework provides anything remotely approaching a strong deterrent? Given his well known views on defence spending I can only conclude that he has a rather different understanding of the verb ‘deter’ depending on whether the context is wildlife conservation or military strategy.