If we are all to see Hen Harriers (like the female above) in the English uplands then we need a better plan than that of the hapless Defra. And we do… …here it is… Ban driven grouse shooting! – please sign this e-petition now! E-petition closes at 23:59, today, Thursday.
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
This is a damaged landscape
No-one could look across this landscape and see a natural one. It is burned to bits! This management is solely carried out so that there are lots of Red Grouse that rich people can shoot. Grouse moor management leads to increased flood risk, reduced aquatic life, higher water treatment costs, damage to protected habitats and…
News: West Pennine Moors heading for notification
Natural England is taking forward the West Pennine Moors for SSSI notification in the coming financial year. Hooray! It’s obviously not a done-deal, just an almost done-deal, but it is the freeing up of a log jam that never should have happened. This is very pleasing news and the next time i see someone senior…
Two days to go
Just two days to go before our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting closes at midnight on Thursday. After that I’ll write about something else, here, for a while! But it’s clear that this campaign is going out with a bang and not a whimper. Yesterday we added 700 signatures which if we maintained that…
That was another milestone
22,399 was the total of signatures we achieved last year on an e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting – I thought that was pretty good in the ten months that were allowed for it. That was over 2000 signatures a month – c75 a day – not bad at all, I thought. Today, our similar…
Six counties
It is completely understandable, that on the other side of the Irish Sea, and in an area with almost no grouse shooting, participation in this Westminster government e-petition would be low. However, my e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting has been signed and the breakdown of signatures must give more clued-up commentators something to say:…
32,000!
Wow! That surprised me. Our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting, which will close at midnight on Thursday (so only three days left to get your friends to sign) raced past 32,000 signatures at 22:32 last night. And it was racing along. Makes me wonder whether 35,000 might be possible – probably not, I…
Running out of names
Thank you all for your support for the e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting! There have been c1000 signatures in the last 48 hours. Please keep tweeting on Twitter and sharing on Facebook. Just the rest of today, Tuesday, Wednesday and all of Thursday to go! Then we can all have a rest – for…
Looking forward to talking!
I have a few gigs on over the next couple of weeks; On Wednesday (20 Jan) I am talking to what will probably be mostly a bunch of undergraduates in Cambridge – the Cambridge Nature Society – in the new David Attenborough Building, Room 1.25 A+B at 7pm (about life in general and driven grouse…
You Forgot the Birds
Do you remember You Forgot the Birds? I bet some of you do – they spent quite a lot of time, and I expect money too, attacking the RSPB for its … well, actually it was difficult to tell exactly what it was getting at. The YFTB campaign looked to many of us like an…