Government promoting William Powell Sporting Agency

The government website is promoting William Powell Sporting Agency through a link on their website to Snilesworth Moor. If you click on Snilesworth Moor in the above link you are taken to the William Powell website… Days of up to 250 brace can be shot here which, at £150/brace comes to a cool £37,500 for…

Please sign this petition at the Bird Fair

At the Bird Fair this weekend there will be a petition, on bits of paper for a change, asking the Icelandic Prime Minister, very politely, to do her best to end commercial whaling by her country. This is the wording of the petition: Dear Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Prime Minister of Iceland Each year the British Birdwatching…

Great timing!

Gove meets the Dukes (and see here) and NE meet the ‘keepers.   You couldn’t get a cosier relationship between the regulator and the regulated (ha! ha!) than that between Defra/NE and the industry responsible for large chunks of wildlife crime and unsustainable moorland management.  For an alternative view turn to yesterday’s statement from Sue…

Just a small plea (and a big table)

This table was produced by Raptor Persecution UK and it is a valuable resource because it’s quite difficult to find these figures all in one place anywhere else.  I assume it is correct – RPUK usually are – and it looks right to me, but I haven’t checked it (because it is a surprising amount…

Mountain Hares close to extinction on NE Scotland grouse moors

That paper on Mountain Hares summed up by its title, abstract and in two graphs: Title: ‘Seven decades of mountain hare counts show severe declines where high-yield recreational game bird hunting is practised‘ by Adam Watson and Jeremy Wilson, published in Journal of Applied Ecology. Abstract Recreational hunting is widespread and can benefit nature conservation…