I was beginning to wonder whether my ‘A magazine formerly known as BIRDS‘ had gone astray. My mum had received hers, my daughter had hers, the lady in the Post Office mentioned that she had had hers too. I know the RSPB was founded by a group of women but I don’t remember the magazine…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
The resolution of conflict or what’s right and wrong?
Shared Planet is a stimulating programme and many people were stimulated to express their irritation over the latest programme about conflict resolution in nature conservation. The Hen Harrier/grouse shooting conflict was used as an example and was discussed by a variety of people – not a very wide variety of people however. It’s well worth…
New disease spreading through Red Grouse population
Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust scientists have published a paper which says that ‘Respiratory cryptosporidiosis is a new and rapidly spreading disease in red grouse.’. This is a disease normally found in captive birds but the first case in the ‘wild’ was found in the North Pennines in 2010. Worryingly, this paper also states that…
Visit to Aberdeen
It was great fun talking to a packed lecture theatre in the Zoology Department in Aberdeen about Passenger Pigeons and Hen Harriers on Tuesday evening. We also all had the opportunity to look at a stuffed Passenger Pigeon in the adjacent museum – which I always find is a rather poignant experience. I was talking…
Letter to my MP
To Andy Sawford MP Dear Andy I hope this finds you well. I am writing to enlist your support in getting some information out of Defra – in fact, I wonder whether you could check whether anyone is at home in that department. I have made several FOI requests to Defra via my…
Plenty of life in e-petition 65627
I just happened to make a note a couple of weeks ago of the number of signatures attached to our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting and the e-petition for the non-joint non-plan. Ours stood at 17,608 signatures whereas the GWCT effort was at 10,414. Now, we were off the mark a while before the…
And now the video…
And here’s the video – click here! And please sign this e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting.
Postcards for the Queen
20,132 postcards for the Queen! This morning, Paul and Hilary from LUSH, and myself (since Chris Packham is out of the country) delivered a couple of boxes of postcards (the rest will follow later) to the Queen. Well, no, not directly to HM The Queen but to her house. And no, not to the front…
Two months on
It is only two months since 10 August and Hen Harrier day, when hundreds of hardy folk gathered together to protest at the illegal killing of Hen Harriers (and it has taken this long for some of them to dry out!). It is now two months until the end of the grouse shooting…
The non-joint non-plan is a non-joint non-plan says Defra
The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust launched an e-petition in mid July asking Defra to publish a plan developed by a group of stakeholders (as I believe we should call them – I loathe that term) to aid the recovery of the Hen Harrier. This e-petition has been enthusiastically promoted by GWCT, the Moorland Association,…