The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust blog is reeling. Yesterday they were in a complete spin over the Leeds University study showing impacts of heather burning on soils, waters, emissions and biota – a pretty clean sweep of physics, chemistry, biology and backed up by quite a lot of maths. They got themselves into a…
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A nation of raptor-haters? Not all of us.
Yesterday a gamekeeper in Norfolk was found guilty of poisoning 10 Buzzards and a Sparrowhawk. It’s hardly news except that this is England’s worst single case of bird of prey poisoning. But ‘Well done!’ to Norfolk Police and to the RSPB. And District Judge Peter Veits said some interesting things too. If this had been…
Disease implicated as a cause of Turtle Dove decline – a bit.
The Turtle Dove is a lovely bird but is declining dramatically in the UK but also in many other parts of Europe. Although one of the more dramatic problems it faces is being shot by hunters on migration, particularly unsportingly (and illegally) on spring migration, this has never seemed to me to be likely to…
A Question of Ivy
Yesterday was the last day of September and, as with most of September, it was a lovely sunny day. I made a point of sitting out in the garden to feel the warmth of the sun on my face. A Pied Wagtail sat on a nearby chimney and called. A Peacock butterfly whizzed past but…
And it’s not even worth a bean to the economy
The grouse shooting industry is having a torrid time of it – and I can assure them that there is more to come. Grouse shooting is a ‘sport’ or an ‘industry’. Over the years it has tried to justify itself on the grounds that it either doesn’t do any harm or it does do some…
An ecosystem disservice
The nature conservation case for driven grouse shooting is pretty much bankrupt and today’s significant report on the ecosystem disservices of rotational burning bangs home a wider point. If you live in a city or the country, shoot or don’t shoot, vote UKIP or Green, are vegan or live on raw meat, whoever you are…
Important new study on impacts of moorland burning on river catchments
The EMBER study by the University of Leeds (funded by NERC and Yorkshire Water) has been a five-year study of 10 river catchments – five that have lots of heather burning for driven grouse shooting and five that do not. The study area was the North Pennines. The British uplands collect and distribute rainwater, sequester…
That pile of postcards
Comments Off on That pile of postcards
There’s a big pile of postcards waiting to be delivered to HM The Queen – 20,000 of them, signed by LUSH customers. By the way, this morning I used one of the bath bombs I bought in the LUSH shop in Northampton in the days just before Hen Harrier Day (seems like a long time…
FoI request to Defra
Dear Defra Please supply me with copies of any communications (emails or letters dated April-September 2014) between Defra and the participants in the Defra Hen Harrier Sub-Group of the Uplands Stakeholder Forum concerning Hen Harriers and/or grouse shooting and/or the progress on the drafting of a joint report. Thank you, Dr Mark Avery (mark@markavery.info) …
It’s not very complicated…
…they kill our Stoats our Mountain Hares our Hen Harriers our Peregrines our Badgers our Goshawks our Ravens and much more… …so that they can kill our Red Grouse. And this is a ‘sport’ and a ‘business’? Show your abhorrence at the slaughter in our…