Last week the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs announced details of its planned Badger cull. This week Wild Justice and the Northern Ireland Badger Group filed papers in the Royal Courts of Justice seeking permission for judicial review of that decision. Wild Justice, which is meeting all the costs of the…
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The shooting of Woodcock
Woodcock shooting is a somewhat hidden activity – few birders, I think, realise the scale of shooting with something like 160,000 birds being shot each year. The UK population is around 110,000 birds in spring (based on there being c55,000 males) and so if all Woodcock shot in the UK were UK-bred the population wouldn’t…
Were you fooled at all…?
April Fools’ Day can be a minefield. There’s a great story of a young reporter rushing to their editor having swallowed a brillient RSPB April Fool story of a Polar Bear being washed up in the Hebrides one year… But yesterday, did you pause for thought when you saw;
Still earning after all the years
I occasionally tell you about the huge wealth that comes from writing books – well, my books anyway. I’ve just had a royalty payment from Bloomsbury for Birds and Forestry (1989, with Roderick Leslie), A Message from Martha (2014) and Inglorious (2015, 2nd edition 2016). In 2022 these three books, but basically Inglorious, earned me…
RSPB press release
RSPB Scotland launches UK’s first eagle nest camera feed at Loch Garten Nature Centre In what has been hailed as a first for the UK, a new live camera feed at RSPB Scotland’s Loch Garten Nature Centre is giving visitors an up-close look at Scotland’s largest bird of prey. A pair of white-tailed eagles, Shona…