- Michael Gove has not, as far as I have heard, got back to Chris Packham to suggest a chat about the Manifesto for Wildlife – I think we’ll soon have to take that as very strong evidence that the Conservative government is not in listening mode as far as wildlife conservation is concerned, although of course Mr Gove did sit on a panel with the CEO of the Countryside Alliance at the Tory Party Conference.
- My Birdwatch column for October spells out the financial difficulties of the RSPB. The RSPB AGM is on 20 October.
- There is a rather disturbing piece in today’s Times newspaper about the League Against Cruel Sports and a response on the LACS website. I hear rumours about what is going on here but it’s rather difficult to make head or tail of the situation. This statement by Labour MP Chris Williamson is certainly worth a read.
- I’m reading through the entries for this blog’s writing competition. I expect to have made some decisons this weekend and to be tell you the results next weekend.
- Andrew Langley’s fundraising is going well – he is already 25% of his way to his target of £5k raised for World Land Trust – which will actually be worth £20k if you help him to get there. Please do.
- Next week I’ll be travelling around South West Wales, the Durham Moors and the Peak District, although not necessarily in that order (although not necessarily not in that order either).
…and penultimately, here’s an interesting blog and video from the RSPB Skydancer team…
…and lastly, some good news…
- it appears that the Mortimer Forest development will not be going ahead. Congratulations to the Save Mortimer Forest group (see Guest Blog here back in April). And interestingly Therese Coffey has said something on this subject – not the slickest out of the blocks though…
Yes Mark I’ve been hearing some very disturbing things about LACS south of the border too – as ever LACS Scotland have been excellent which has really underlined that something odd is going on down south. I believe only one of the current trustees has been voted in by the membership and the AGM this year was somewhat lively, in addition people getting sacked and cold shouldered – and I get the impression if they had a track record of fighting fox hunting that was more likely to happen. The statement from LACS sounded Bonnerish, certainly wasn’t the mature, eloquent response I’d expect from them, far more like something from the other side……
They mention that they’ve supported the petition to ban grouse shooting on Yorkshire Water properties why then have they totally failed to support the YouGov petition to get an independent economic analysis of driven grouse shooting carried out which is inconsistent and nonsensical given that it actually compliments the Yorkshire Water one that highlights the probable economic damage grouse shooting is inflicting on top of environmental damage and wildlife loss? As the petitioner I might sound a bit churlish at their lack of support, but can anyone provide a genuine reason why LACS Scotland has supported it and they haven’t? All I’ve had so far was lot of ‘management’ speak re strategies etc and my challenge to that has been totally ignored, they know that the RSPB endorsed the petition on their Skydancer Community post too. Without LACS support getting to the 10,000 signatures needed for the revealing government response will be a lot, lot harder. The question might be worth asking – if the petition to ban driven grouse shooting had been on the go with the current lot at LACS would they have promoted it or treated it as they’ve done the petition about DGS ‘economics’? Chris Williamson is right to be worried, it’s not as if strange things haven’t happened before – https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/hunting/former-league-against-cruel-sports-director-joins-countryside-alliance-277214
Very strange and worrying indeed. They are certainly not responding to emails, even gently put ones.
Time to look at that monthly donation again.
Mark, thanks once again for highlighting this.
I was involved in the opening of the FC’s second forest cabin site at Keldy in North Yorkshire in 1979. An informative experience: we’d anticipated the cabins would be used as a self catering base for people to tour the area and were quite taken aback by how keen visitors were on the forest – with 80% completing the longest waymarked walk and frequently over 100 people on Head ranger Charles Critchley’s ‘walk with the ranger’. Conservation mags are full of re-connecting us with nature – but when it comes to the crunch how do we react to townies having the opportunity to really get out into the wilds ? Environmentalists have always been rather equivocal in what could be seen as a rather classist way – still there strong hints that only people who can identify the birds are really welcome and, on the landscape side, I was told by a Lakes planning officer that ideally people should have to walk in from Penrith or Kendal !
A further dimension is the vexed and difficult question of how we maintain rural communities – remember, it isn’t just the people who change the bedding, but the plumbers, electricians, carpenters, local shops etc that all suffer from lack of activity and find it harder and harder to stay in business.
Learning from cases like Fineshade, the site proposed at Mortimer was Douglas Fir planted on farmland in the 1980s and, from my own experience in Yorkshire, the tranquillity of the forest would not even be touched by the numbers of people brought into the forest by the cabin scheme.
I have to say I think the Conservative party is a waste of space as far as wildlife protection and conservation is concerned. In fact I would go further, they are only concerned in their own vested interests and if wildlife protection gets in their way in this respect they will just sweep it aside. I am very concerned about leaving the EU as I am sure they will seize the opportunity to get rid of all the wildlife protection the EU priovides
I’m sure if you ring the League Against Cruel Sports office on Monday they’ll tell what you want to know. Meanwhile, you could ask Chris Williamson how many board meetings he attended over the past 4 years and what he actually did as a trustee to help the League in its fight against cruel sports.
Ask Chris what proof he has to support his allegation about someone supposedly planning to hack Bonner’s emails – he won’t have any because it’s completely untrue. Ask him why he placed his ‘story’ (after he was expelled) with a pro-hunt newspaper, thus provoking a rabid feeding-frenzy by the wretched Countryside Alliance. Why would someone who had the League’s interests at heart do such a thing? What was he seeking to achieve?
The League is in very good hands – I urge people to support its hardworking staff and all that is being done by them to stop animals being hurt and killed for ‘sport’, both here in the UK and abroad.
is that comment from Steve Harris, Head of Enforcement and Legal Services at LACS, or another Steve Harris? I think we should be told.
Sorry Steve that’s what I’ve been doing for years now and not happy at all with what’s happening at Godalming – don’t see much evidence of even basically competent staff there at the moment. I’ve certainly waved the flag for LACS in the past, telling FoE Scotland members at its AGM LACS was showing them up in its work against driven grouse shooting, I’ve volunteered for it. From what I’ve heard – from someone involved with LACS – a lot of people have been getting inexplicably cold shouldered. Not least of all for the sake of the hard working staff that are still there we need to get to the bottom of this ASAP. LACS once managed to have a director who ‘converted’ to support fox hunting so its record in senior management is hardly blemish free is it? Something like that just can’t be brushed aside I’m afraid. I’ve been a member for years and my most recent dealings with it have made me feel something’s wrong – others who’ve seen the responses I got concur. That was all before the Times feature. Doesn’t all this business call for an Emergency General Meeting to try and weed out who and what really is at fault, not having one may now be more damaging? As a long term member I am certainly concerned due to past history and current experience and that was before Chris Williamson’s public statements – fair enough?