Standing up for Nature
The supporters of a ban on driven grouse shooting, are now 23,000 signatures ahead of the forces of conservatism who wish this unsustainable hobby of shooting birds for fun and profit to continue. We’ve pushed on by another 1400 signatures in the last week. But it’s not quite as simple as that, as there are…
Dominic Mitchell, Managing Editor of Birdwatch magazine and BirdGuides.com, says: ‘The negative impacts of driven grouse shooting have become alarmingly clear in recent years, and the end is surely nigh for this archaic pastime of shooting birds for fun and profit. Britain is home to most of the world’s heather moorlands but this unique ecosystem…
Iolo Williams, naturalist and TV presenter, says: ‘I am not, and never have been, anti-shooting but over the past decade, it has become patently obvious that the levels of bird of prey persecution associated with driven grouse shooting are sending some iconic species to the brink of extinction in many areas. This is totally…
Charlie Moores, a founder of Birders Against Wildlife Crime, birder, ace podcaster and audio-producer for Lush, says: ‘The ‘glorious’ ritualised slaughter of hundreds of thousands of wild birds can’t be defended from any moral or ethical position. It takes a wrecking ball to precious moorland habitats and is underpinned by wildlife crime. Let’s get…
Paul writes: This is one of my favourite bees, mainly because it’s one of the first solitary bees to emerge in Spring. This is a freshly emerged female and is wonderfully striking with its rich orange fur and dark black legs. Its common name is the Tawny Mining Bee. It’s very easily spotted in late…
Reviewed by Ian Carter There are plenty of books about wild food these days, describing how to find it and how to make best use of it. This one deals with a comprehensive selection of plants, including seaweeds. It also includes a handful of fungi (just 7 species) but, rather oddly I thought, it ignores…
Tim writes: This will be a familiar bird to anyone who has spent time near a river in SE Asia. They are noisy, bold, and very photogenic. They were once placed in a genus (Chaimarrornis) but molecular studies have shown it is definitely a typical redstart, in the same genus as our two British species. …
Due to circumstances beyond Paul’s control he was not able to add the usual header this week – but I guess you can all live without it, can’t you? Just a teaser, Paul has provided a cracking cartoon for a series of blogs which will appear here next week.
Ralph writes ‘This toon is from the Framing Nature Toolkit to be launched on the 28th of March. You can buy a hard copy or download it for free here.‘.
I’ve been at Cheltenham racecourse this week, and it was just before the last race on Wednesday that our lawyer, Tessa Gregory, phoned me to say that we had had a response from Natural England to our pre-action protocol letter. It wasn’t a very interesting response as NE said that because they were dealing with…