Standing up for Nature
Mark writes: Hen Harriers too, can’t speak out, can’t hire lawyers, can’t vote – that why we have to do it for them. They also can’t sign this e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting but you can on their behalf.
April Birdwatch, in shops now, is a wildlife crime special with a guest editorial from Chris Packham, an article on wilful blindness by Ruth Tingay, an account of bird killing in the Lebanon by the Committee Against Bird Slaughter and an article on the work of Birders Against Wildlife Crime by Rob Sheldon. My monthly…
East Anglia is miles away from any grouse moors but has a strong Pheasant and partridge shooting tradition. It is also an essentially rural area with a few moderately sized urban areas such as Norwich, Ipswich, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. The breakdown of signatures in support of banning…
If driven grouse shooting were all it’s cracked up to be then you’d think that local people would be its greatest supporters. Well, they aren’t! It seems as though the inhabitants of Chelsea and Fulham are its strongest supporters – those who whizz in to a grouse moor for a while, shoot, and leave?…
I work as a Ranger in Aberdeenshire, where much of my time is spent delivering environmental education programmes in which I take school children out into semi-natural habitats (we don’t really have any natural habitats in the UK, hence we use the term semi-natural) and teach them about different aspects of Scotland’s ecology. In the…
Ruth Peacey, wildlife film maker who was voted Birdwatch magazine’s conservation hero of 2017 by readers, says: ‘I support the banning of driven grouse shooting because I am sick of hearing about the loss of so many birds of prey on or near these areas. These animals aren’t just “mysteriously disappearing”, they are being…
Dominic Dyer is CEO of the Badger Trust and says: ‘Driven grouse shooting involves huge cruelty to red grouse, has a significant negative impact on the environment and leads to the illegal persecution of endangered hen harriers and other raptors and the widespread killing of ground predators including badgers, foxes and stoats There can…
David Lindo, author and ‘urban birder’ says: ‘I think that it is a national embarrassment that driven grouse shooting is still being allowed to persist at the expense of our precious Hen Harriers. Please sign this new e-petition to ban this outdated and useless form of hunting.’ To join David Lindo, please sign Gavin…
Jon Dunn, birder and author, says: ‘There’s nothing I’d like more than to see a ban implemented on driven grouse shooting in Britain. Let’s not mince our words – it’s a blood-sport, where people kill wild animals for fun. But setting the immorality of that aside for a moment, it’s a rural industry with blood on…
Harry Huyton, Director of One Kind, says: ‘Predator control, prescribed burning, disease control… these professional-sounding terms are used to give credibility to intensive grouse moor management and to obfuscate the grim reality: legal and illegal killing of native wildlife, landscape-scale burning, and mass-medication as though the grouse were being intensively farmed. For the past two…