I am a fan of Marks and Spencer (M&S) – but maybe that is going to change. I am signed up to their email newsletter (which only yesterday was telling me about offers on champagne and lingerie – how sadly they misread my lifestyle!), I tend to seek out their stores in London to buy…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Not so glorious… and what about BanGS?
It’s the Glorious 12th! Woohoo! And this year is the first year since the 1960s, according to the RSPB, that hen harriers have not nested successfully anywhere in England. Martin Harper, the RSPB’s Conservation Director said last week: “We are only a few days away from ‘the Glorious 12th’ – the traditional August start of…
National Trust – well done! Now hold your nerve, please.
I say again – well done National Trust! The long-awaited NT response to the responses to their consultation document on management of the High Peak is out (click here). Despite being under lots of pressure from men in tweed the NT have, so far, held their nerve and make a robust response to people’s views. …
Wuthering Moors 31
Blogs entitled ‘Wuthering Moors’ form a series of articles about the Walshaw Moor Estate and its relationship with Natural England and Defra. Regular readers of this blog may remember that I submitted a request for information to Defra about their response to the RSPB complaint to Europe over the Walshaw Moor affair. I received no…
It made me smile anyway…
I don’t know much about art but I know what I like – and I like giant hen harriers crushing rangerovers. Did you see this – it happened over a month ago while I was in upper New York state. Well, it made me smile anyway. Other coverage: more Guardian, BBC, dazeddigital, London Evening Standard….
Lancashire’s ‘Bowland Betty’ bites the Yorkshire dust
A female hen harrier raised in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, last year, and fitted with a satellite tag, was found dead on a grouse moor in the Yorkshire Dales in June this year. I hadn’t realised the trans-Pennine rivalry was so strong that the War of the Roses included shooting each other’s hen harriers….
Raptor round up
It would be perfectly possible to write about birds of prey, how wonderful they are and their troubled and shortened lives, every day on this blog. I try not to do that because there are other sites that do it so well (raptor politics and raptor persecution Scotland) and because there are other big issues…
More good news – unless you are a raptor hater
Today the Environmental Audit Committee publishes a report on Wildlife Crime. Amongst other useful findings it recommends that the government in England and Wales introduces an offence of vicarious liability for wildlife crime (as already exists in Scotland) and makes the possession of the banned pesticide carbofuran illegal (as it already is in Scotland). In…
A burning question for the National Trust
This blog has been a bit critical of the National Trust in the past, suggesting that it isn’t taking its nature conservation work sufficiently seriously, and so it gives me great pleasure to highlight an excellent piece of work, nearing fruition, by NT. It’s such good news it is worth being the second blog of…
Maybe that’s why
I didn’t see many eagles on my holiday in Scotland. I did travel down the A82 through Bridge of Orchy, and very pretty it was too. Last week a farm manager from Bridge of Orchy was convicted of possessing Carbofuran, an illegal poison whose use has been banned since 2001. A dead golden eagle had…