Standing up for Nature
Tim writes: the Mountain Hares in the Peak District were introduced from Scotland during the Nineteenth Century by the shooting fraternity after some diversity of things to kill. Ironically the gamekeepers are trying to get rid of them as unnecessary vectors of ticks that can pass the disease louping ill on to grouse. In Scotland…
If you missed Channel 4 News’s feature on wildlife crime associated with grouse shooting then you can see it, but only until about 8pm this evening, by following the link above. It’s worth a look (starts at 44 minutes and lasts 10 minutes). But here are some highlights: Inspector Matt Hagen of North Yorkshire Police…
It’s always interesting to see what the grouse shooting lobby say on social media, and who retweets it. Here’s an example from last week by the newly formed (‘independent’) Campaign for the Protection of Moorland Communities; This was retweeted by Amanda Anderson (as you can see above) the Director of the Moorland Association, by the…
… just a Pheasant feeder … … spicy though … could have consequences …
‘When a ‘sport’ becomes a crime wave’ This’ll be an interesting one for the Moorland Association to field. Will it be Amanda ‘If we let the hen harrier in, we will soon have nothing else‘ Anderson, or the new chair of the Moorland Association, that’s Mark William Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Lord Masham, the future Earl of…
In an open-access paper published this week, four biologists, one of whom is also a hunter, propose that as well as banning the use of lead ammunition for shooting game there should also be a legal Maximum Level (ML) set for lead in game meat. This seems entirely sensible since there is a ML for…
Legal killing of 1-in-5 Scottish beavers spotlights need for fresh approach across Britain The killing of 87 beavers in Scotland – one fifth of the country’s population – proves there is an urgent need for humans to live more sympathetically alongside beavers across Britain, the Beaver Trust said today. The Trust said lethal control of…
Mary Colwell is an award-winning radio, TV and internet producer winning 14 awards over the last 10 years, including a Sony Gold in 2009. She is also a radio presenter and feature writer for The Tablet. Mary has written five previous guest blogs here (A Natural History GCSE, 23 November 2012; Shared Planet, 15 January 2015;…
SNH are pretty helpful when it comes to answering questions of a media variety. Yesterday I asked them whether they had issued any licences for wild hacking in Scotland this year which they could have answered with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. I also said that I’d be interested in where they were with any…