Let’s take a step back and look at the idea of a brood management scheme for Hen Harriers. The idea of ‘doing something’ to Hen Harrier eggs, chicks and/or adults, to reduce their impacts on driven grouse shooting has been kicking around for years. If the shooting industry had not been so intransigent, and if…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
So, what is the Hawk and Owl Trust’s position on brood management?
Yesterday I speculated on what might be going on in Tory ministers’ minds to lead them to consider making a highly contentious move in the highly contentious issue of Hen Harrier persecution. Rather than Ministers being exercised about how they could live up to their pre-election promises on marine protected areas, or recovering farmland bird…
Mutch too complicated
The case of the convicted, and now imprisoned, gamekeeper, George Mutch has got many people wondering who was his boss, as Scotland, in their greater wisdom than England, has vicarious liability for wildlife crimes. Following the first successful case leading to a landowner being fined for his role in his gamekeeper’s misdemeanours (the Ninian Robert…
Guest Blog – The Good Intentions Paving Company by Tim Bidie (aka as ‘Monro’)
‘Monro’ posted over 100 comments on this blog between 11 October and 14 December on the subject of Hen Harriers and grouse shooting’. On 14 December, because I was getting a bit fed up with his repetitive comments, I offered him a Guest Blog to get it all off his chest in one go. I…
It’s a wasteland for Bowland Beth
David Harsent has won the prestigious TS Eliot prize for poetry for his collection of poems, Fire Songs. He is, the judges said, a poet ‘for dark and dangerous days’. This might seem a little off-subject for this blog, although I do try to maintain the appearance of having a thin veneer of culture. However,…
Hare today and gone tomorrow?
Just when the grouse shooters thought that things might get a bit quieter for them, another e-petition related to grouse shooting emerges that is bound to get a lot of support. This one is directed at the SNH Director of Policy and Advice, Ron Macdonald, and asks SNH to protect Mountain Hares from widespread unregulated…
Hen Harrier Day 2015 – thoughts?
It’s time to start thinking about what to do on Hen Harrier Day 2015 – which will be Sunday 9 August (the Sunday before the Inglorious 12th). Birders Against Wildlife Crime are organising a conference in Buxton in March and I’m sure that the subject will come up there. Here are some questions to…
2014 for Hen Harriers in pictures
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Langholm II
I’m not the only one who thinks that the GWCT hasn’t had a very good year according to the responses I’ve looked at in the readers’ survey for this blog (click here to enter your views). They are behaving so strangely that I wasn’t too surprised to read their rather odd account of the second…
Weak on crime, weak on the causes of crime
17 December: Andy Sawford (Shadow Minister (Communities and Local Government); Corby, Labour): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will publish a consultation on a licensing scheme for commercial game shooting. George Eustice (The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Camborne and Redruth, Conservative): Landowners…