Yesterday was, of course, St George’s Day, Shakespeare’s birthday and Shakespeare’s death day too. So what would be more appropriate than the quote above? Henry, and a group of close friends, gathered in the Peak District to celebrate the day, the achievement of 30,000 signatures for our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting, and the…
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
Press release issued yesterday
Government slammed for ignoring tax payers’ voices as it defends grouse shooting interests using dubious industry data The government’s response to a petition calling for driven grouse shooting to be banned is dismissive, poorly considered and influenced by vested commercial interests, say leading wildlife advocates Dr Mark Avery, Bill Oddie OBE and Chris Packham and…
Newsletters
Do you have a newsletter that would publish an article on driven grouse shooting before 20 September? Perhaps a Bird Club? A Natural History Society? A WI group? Whatever… I’d be happy to provide something in order to spread the word. What I need from you is: a deadline a word limit information about the…
A slap in the face from Defra to the public
In a breathtaking example of arrogance, Defra has merely cut and pasted their response to a previous e-petition as their response to our current e-petition calling for a ban on driven grouse shooting. All the things that were wrong with their previous response are wrong with their current response. We know that ministers sign off…
Month 1 – well done us!
At lunchtime today our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting will have been running for a month – and will have five months to go. We are only 20% of the way through and we are approaching 30,000 signatures (29,870 this morning). Fantastic! Thank you to everyone who has signed, shared and helped. The ‘100…
Ministers do sign off responses to e-petitions
Defra Press Office has been kind enough to come back to me and confirm that government ministers do, as one would expect, sign off departmental responses to e-petitions. So this one (and see here too), this one, this one and this one, were all signed off by a minister at the time. I’m looking forward,…
Bit of a round up
I’ll be at Housmans bookshop this evening at 7pm Fineshade Wood features in this week’s Private Eye the NFU voted to be pro Remain in the EU referendum the Defra Press Office has not got back to me with an answer on whether ministers sign off responses to e-petitions my MP has not yet got…
Looking forward to be at Housmans tomorrow evening
Housmans Bookshop describes itself as London’s premier radical bookshop and so I’m expecting to feel at home when I talk there tomorrow evening about why we should ban driven grouse shooting. 7pm, 5 Caledonian Road and entrance is £3 (redeemable against any purchases). And maybe we’ll get some new signatures on our e-petition to ban…
Guest blog – Red Kites 12 years on by Mick Render
I have spent almost 40 years working in engineering. My main interest away from work is monitoring and photographing red kites, these two go hand in hand and I often gain information from photographs that was missed in the field. I often go home to review my day and the photographs often identify birds, they…
28000+
28,000 signatures and we are still in the first month. Hmmm! Pretty good. Very encouraging indeed. The 10 most productive constituencies at the moment are as follows: Calder Valley 165 signatures – Craig Whittaker MP, CON Ross, Skye, Lochaber 149 signatures – Ian Blackford MP, SNP Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey 129 signatures…