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It’s the burning season in our National Parks. This scene is from the Peak District National Park, on an SSSI and in a Special Protection Area for Birds and is upstream of the Rivelin Reservoir where Yorkshire Water is spending £24m to improve Sheffield’s water quality (see here and here).  Much of the catchment draining…

I emailed Defra a month ago to ask them some questions ahead of the grouse shooting inquiry. There were quite a lot of questions and Defra were clearly rattled by them as they waited until the very last minute before replying yesterday (see below) with the biggest ‘no comment’ I’ve ever seen. As I have…

A week today, between 215pm and 245pm, I’ll be giving evidence to a joint inquiry into grouse shooting by the Petitions Committee and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. It’s not a long time, but we’ll see how it goes. You can see how it goes by attending in person or by watching on…

A You Gov opinion poll (2033 respondents questioned on 19 & 20 Sept) commissioned by Animal Aid shows that 48% of people would ban driven grouse shooting – only 28% oppose a ban. So when you take out the undecideds that’s 63% in favour of a ban and 37% against it. Since 52% is enough…

There is a pro-grouse-shooting e-petition which is stumbling forward – it has almost reached 19,000 signatures after 7 weeks (in comparison, our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting got there in under half the time – who said driven grouse shooting is popular?). Defra has just published its response to this e-petition which is as…