This long read’ (not too long) in The Herald is well worth a few minutes of your time. It’s a refreshingly sane and well-informed account of illegal persecution of Hen Harriers in Scotland. Let’s hope Roseanna Cunningham has read it (she will have done). The SNP government is dragging its feet on its response to…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Independence Day lessons
This video is doing the rounds of social media and brought a smile to my face. An American friend sent it to me. It’s clever and funny, and I suspect it is sufficiently well produced that it will be seen by Republican voters as well as Democrats, and therefore might influence the Presidential election. Using…
An interesting study
Comments Off on An interesting study
This study is open access for 50 days so get in quickly and read and inwardly digest it. ‘Protected’ areas in the UK don’t differ from the rest of the uplands in their number (density of tracks) which is slightly surprising. Managed heather (grouse moor) landscapes have the highest densities of both surfaced and unsurfaced…
NEWS: Two rare hen harriers disappear in suspicious circumstances (RSPB press release)
RSPB Scotland is calling on the Scottish Government to move quickly to introduce the licensing of grouse shooting, following the disappearance of two more satellite-tagged hen harriers on moors in the Cairngorms National Park revealed on BBC Scotland’s Landward this evening. As detailed in the programme, Marlin, a young male, fledged from a nest at the National Trust for Scotland’s…
Cut and paste, and add more errors: wildlife reporting in the Daily Mail
The Daily Mail online have simply cut and pasted the Moorland Association’s news release – with all its errors and misrepresentations – see here. We are supposed to think that a dozen pairs of Hen Harriers on English grouse moors (some of which are not grouse moors) is a ‘high’ number whereas there should be…
Scottish gamekeeping party?
Reports of a new political party, the Scottish Gamekeeping Party seem to be exaggerated. That’s a shame. I had been planning to join and had jotted down a few points for the manifesto; free pints and chasers in all pubs for those wearing ridiculous amounts of tweed health warnings on all farmed meat ‘WARNING: does…
Brood meddling – you can’t make…
Dear Natural England You know that you’ve had to release the advice of the Scientific Advisory Group on brood-meddling under EIR regulations. That means that many with an interest in this project have seen the advice and are chatting about it between themselves. You should expect that some of this information will emerge over the…
Eye witness account of a Hen Harrier killing in Bowland
The RSPB has this evening published an eyewitness account of the killing of an adult Hen Harrier in Bowland last October. Read it and weep! I’ve known about this case for quite a while and I know the eyewitness as one of the many raptor enthusiasts in the Bowland area. By chance, the area where…
Reposting
The following was first posted on 3 July 2017 – in a way nothing has changed. It’s good to talk. But talking can also be used as a refuge from taking action. If there’s one thing that is likely to get me animatedly irritated (and friends have seen this happen a few times) is when…
What a mess!
The excellent Raptor Persecution UK revealed yesterday that all five of the brood-meddled Hen Harriers from last year are missing. Maybe one or two will spring back to life but it isn’t looking good. What a mess! Brood meddling is an idea cooked up by the grouse shooting industry and licensed by Natural England, but…