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Bird/poultry flu update
Cases of bird/poultry flu in wildish birds are filling in the gaps on the map and creeping further north – to very near the Scottish Border in both Cumbria and Nortumberland. An excellent report in the Guardian makes slightly scary reading with Mute Swans spinning in cicles and bleeding from their nostrils. The quote from…
Ban on lead ammunition in EU wetlands may apply to UK too…
Raptor-killing, poison-shooting, bog-burning, hare-killing driven grouse shooting is not having a great week. The day before yesterday, the EU (remember the EU?) Parliament voted to ban the use of lead ammunition in wetlands where ‘wetlands’ include peatlands such as blanket bogs where much (by no means all) driven grouse shooting occurs in the UK. Now,…
Farming Today, today
Three weeks ago Miles King had a Guest Blog here to shine a light on the outrageous planting of trees on a peat bog at Berrier in Cumbria and today Farming Today had a good piece (first 6mins of programme) on that case and the wider issue that it (and Miles) raised, about how careful…
What now, DEFRA?
Yesterday’s announcement by the Scottish government makes DEFRA look like it is still run by throwbacks to the Edwardian era. No DEFRA minister with responsibility for wildlife conservation has ever condemned wildlife crime in the terms that we heard from the Scottish government yesterday; not Richard Benyon, not Rory Stewart, not Therese Coffey and not…