The end of April for me, and on this blog, was somewhat dominated by Wild Justice winning its case against Natural England on general licences. Here are just a few blogs on the subject Wild Justice wins its first legal challenge, Statement by Wild Justice, Wild Justice’s legal challenge – how the case progressed, Nice people, Not so nice people, What Wild Justice says about the General Licence issue, Admirer of Chris Packham donates auction lot to benefit Wild Justice.
May was a slightly quiet month as this blog was down for refurbishment for over two weeks – and I was in Poland some of that time which was very nice (see here and here) as was the stay in Berlin on the way back. Everyone needs a break – and breaks always do me good in allowing me to lift my gaze to the wider picture.
Chris Packham picked up his CBE for services to nature conservation this month.
Lest anyone should think that everything is going wrong in the world it was worth noting that there was to be no Fin whaling in Iceland in 2019 and no new ‘M4 relief road’ built to wreck the Gwent Levels. But note, both may be temporary reprieves and both were hard fought and hard won battles (see here for guest blog on the Welsh road scheme by Ian Rappel).
I had a review paper published in British Birds about Pheasants. People seemed to find it interesting. If you would like a copy then email [email protected] with PHEASANT as the title and you’ll be sent a copy. Later in July Wild Justice mounted a legal challenge to DEFRA calling for an assessment of the impacts of the release on Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges into the countryside in their tens of millions.
Cattle Egrets bred on the edge of my local patch in Northants – the first county record of nesting for this species – but they’ll be everywhere quite soon.
This blog passed 6 million lifetime pageviews.
The amazing Henry Morris ran around the north of England uplands joining the dots between places where Hen Harrier satellite tags had stopped transmitting. Henry was wearing a tag that worked very well as he ran the hills with friends. Henry is amazing and raised £13k for Wild Justice – and became a firm friend.
More good news – Waitrose announced that it was dropping lead-shot game meat from its stores; from next autumn any game meat sold by Waitrose will not have been shot with lead ammunition. And this season, Waitrose’s labelling caught up with the science. Will 2021 see other supermarkets taking a similar position?
We ended July with probably the biggest example of the shooting industry acting like utter prats – the Game Fair banned, at the last moment, Chris Packham and me from attending the event to be interviewed by the FieldsportsTV. This sent the strong signal that shooting lacked confidence in its place in the modern world and was intolerant of other moderately critical views. This was a PR disaster and the recriminations and fall out are still echoing around the shooting industry.
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