I have a great affection for Birdwatch magazine. First, they pay me to sound off about whatever is on my mind at the time and that is just completely lovely of them! Second, they put a Hen Harrier on the cover of the August issue with the headline ‘Stop killing our harriers’ and have been…
Category: Grouse and harriers
GWCT at half-cock, shooting from the hip and mistaking its target
We all make mistakes but it would normally be expected that, when made, a more gracious acknowledgement of them might follow than that of the GWCT here. It is completely untrue to suggest that an earlier draft of the letter went as follows: Dear Sir William Langley’s comment piece on the RSPB had us rolling…
Join the online rally for nature
On 9 December, the day before the close of the grouse shooting season, some of us are going to gather together at a rally to ask politicians to do more for nature. One of the things that I will be asking my MP is ‘What will the Labour Party do, if it forms part of…
NERF
Yesterday I NERFed at the North of England Raptor Forum in Bakewell (whence come the tarts, or maybe puddings). I’ll tell you more about this excellent event later but the first, and, in a way, best, talk of the conference was that of Alan Fielding on the update of the Hen Harrier Conservation Framework. We…
Bullying doesn’t work
Yesterday the RSPB issued a toughly worded statement: The RSPB is (today) urging Defra to publish the workable elements of the Hen Harrier Action Plan, which we believe could bring about the recovery of one of England’s most beleaguered birds of prey. However, we’re also highlighting our rejection of one point of the six-point plan,…