Gove meets the Dukes (and see here) and NE meet the ‘keepers.
You couldn’t get a cosier relationship between the regulator and the regulated (ha! ha!) than that between Defra/NE and the industry responsible for large chunks of wildlife crime and unsustainable moorland management. For an alternative view turn to yesterday’s statement from Sue Hayman, who might just be the next Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
[registration_form]
Presumably the insight into day to day management didn’t involved insight into the considerable time these gamekeepers must spend on raptor persecution.
Snilesworth estate should ring alarm bells in terms of raptor persecution and successful prosecution [small segment removed]. Same NE person who organised the so called Merlin Monitoring involving Keepers {small segment removed] in Swaledale and Wensleydale.
Words fail me and that’s not easy! WTF
Paul – btw, that’s your 901st comment here. Thank you.
It’s not often I ‘dislike’ one of Mark’s posts, but I have done with this one.
I always advise younger staff in NRW that ‘time spent talking to landowners is rarely wasted’. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything they say, but it’s important that you understand their motivation, and the pressures they face.
If I was managing an NE team in an upland area, I would have insisted they attend this training – and I yield to no one in my contempt for those involved in raptor persecution, and the need to stop it with new legislation if required.
Fine.
Name one NE officer who will take a successful case through the courts other than the Freshwater pearl mussel SAC / felling case a few years ago.
No one in NE understands enforcement, no one knows the legal system, no one has any experience. Hopeless.
Landowners and others who damage habs and spp just walk past NE with two fingers in the air.
Refreshing comment from Andrew Lucas. Have the argument, robustly, respectfully, in the field face to face rather than shout from twitter’s faceless touchlines.
Rob – you must be about to shut down your blog and Twitter account and call for newspapers to be banned.