That other petition

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…

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…