The Inglorious 12th

Intensive grouse shooting is in the news like never before: Natural England Chair, Tony Juniper, calls for vicarious liability for wildlife crimes (as did his predecessor of course – but this time it is at the beginning of his tenure and not at the end)(see Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times) Labour calls for review of…

Inglorious Debate by Gill Lewis

Gill Lewis is an author (see here and here) and spoke at yesterday’s Hen Harrier Day event (and see here). The Glorious Twelfth is the best day of the year. It just simply isn’t true to say  Driven grouse shooting is underpinned by wildlife crime And that the intensive burning of the moors is damaging…

Hen Harrier Day event tomorrow

The weather forecast (Saturday morning) is good for tomorrow – it’s going to be a bit windy today! We’ll be checking the forecast and suggest you do too! An update from Carsington at midday Saturday was that the weather then was ‘Very wet and not a little windy’ but that the forecast was better for…

Press release from Campaign for Freedom of Information

Government urged to drop post-Brexit prohibition on environmental disclosure Thirty six leading environmental, open government and other organisations have urged the government to drop a secrecy provision from draft legislation to improve environmental protection after Brexit. The organisations say the prohibition on disclosure “is wholly at odds with the public’s right to information” under existing…

SNH hands out non-toxic ammunition to goose shooters

This story about a Greylag Goose cull on Orkney caught my eye (largely because someone sent it to me – thank you!). I don’t know enough about the reasons behind the cull to comment on whether it is the least bit sensible but I was interested to see that the goose carcasses were to be…

Even more than you thought…

GWCT have just published a paper revising the number of released Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges released into the UK. Instead of there being roughly 50 million non-native gamebirds released into the UK countryside at this time of year, the figure has now (2016 estimates) risen to closer to 60 million (47m Pheasants and 10m Red-legged…