The Scottish Raptor Study Group petition to the Scottish parliament to bring in licensing of gamebird shooting is in its last few days (it closes next Monday). It has gathered nearly 5000 signatures online and there are more that have been collected on old-fashioned pieces of paper. That’s pretty good by the standards of these…
Author: Mark
Born Bristol, UK
Educated: Cleeve House School Bristol, Bristol Grammar School and Downing College Cambridge
Ph.D. University of Aberdeen, Winter activity of pipistrelle bats.
NERC post-doctoral Research Fellow, Edward Grey Institute, Oxford University
Former Conservation Director of the RSPB, 1989-2011
Bird Fair debate on future of grouse shooting
We’re in the run-up to the Bird Fair (btw weather forecast suggests some rain) and one of the stand-out events on Day 1 is the ‘debate’ on the future of grouse shooting chaired by Rob Lambert and featuring Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party (who spoke brilliantly at the Peak District Hen Harrier…
Lead duck paper now free to view
Remember that science showing a link between ingested lead levels and population level impacts in wildfowl that Defra knew about but which Liz Truss ignored in her response to the Lead Ammunition Group report? If not see Truss misleads over waterfowl science 14 July, The science about which Truss misled us 20 July and Truss…
Over 109,000
The scores have changed quite a lot since the last update! We are over 109,000 signatures – and our e-petition closes at midnight in five weeks’ time! We expect that the Petitions Committee will consider our petition at a meeting on 6 September, and are very hopeful that we will be given a debate. We…
Countryfile last night
I didn’t watch Countryfile live last night as I was doing some work – but I caught up with it in the evening. I thought Bob Elliot from the RSPB was great (as always) and I also thought that the edit was fair. It was filmed on 28 July at Geltsdale in Cumbria (and the…
Words are important
Just a minor quibble. I did several radio interviews last week and I noticed that I kept being introduced with the same words – later I discovered that they came, basically from this BBC news story by Claire Marshall. The introduction on a series of BBC local radio stations often started by saying that animal…
A strange thing happened last night
I know many of you have spent months refreshing your browsers to check on the progress of our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting. So have I. We can all do it a little less often now as we have crossed the magic 100,000 signature barrier which should deliver us a debate in the Westminster…
Leaflets at the Bird Fair
Just because we have passed the 100,000 signature mark doesn’t mean that handing out leaflets to friends and family and work colleagues, or putting them through letterboxes, isn’t still worthwhile. If anything, knowing that the Petitions Committee will sit on 6 September makes that our new deadline for maximising the number of signatures. If you…
House of Commons Petitions Committee
These are the MPs who will decide whether or not our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting, which passed 100,000 signatures yesterday, the 13 August (the day after the Inglorious 12th), will be debated. They next meet on 6 September so the more signatures we can amass by then, the better. Are any of you…
Those awkward Hen Harriers
OK let’s get back to Hen Harriers. Aren’t they lovely? Those who have been defending or promoting driven grouse shooting find Hen Harriers difficult to talk about. It will be interesting to see how much utter tripe some MPs may come up with in the debate we expect to see over the future of driven…