Natural England has just published some of its data (that I believe we paid for – as taxpayers) on satellite-tagged Hen Harriers. This is to be welcomed as what can possibly be gained by keeping secret data that in some cases are seven years old? It’s not exactly data of the quality of those published…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Guest Blog – There is nothing Green about these Country ‘Sports’ by Caroline Allen of the Green Party
Caroline Allen is a practising vet and the Green Party Spokesperson on Animals as well as Co-Chair of London Green Party. Caroline has worked on many animal-protection issues, most recently campaigning against the badger cull, expansion of factory farming and the overuse of antibiotics in animal farming. Shooting birds such as grouse and pheasants is…
A few things
Here are a few things in brief: the farmland bird index declined in 2013 (as predicted here) – and to their lowest level ever. You are living in a country with fewer farmland birds than at any time in your life. Doesn’t it make you feel good? I’ll blog in more detail on this next…
Margate and more
Yesterday I went to Margate. I went to other places too, but I went to Margate. It was a funny day in a way – it had elements of looking backwards as well as living in the moment and a bit of looking forward. I woke early, I often do, and that made the rest…
Hen Harriers in the RSPB magazine
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…
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…