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…