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…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
No change here then…
Brood meddling – no news from the courts
I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m holding anything back from you – we have yet to hear about a new date for our appeal of the Hen Harrier brood-meddling decision. Here is the timeline of events: Natural England announce that they have issued a licence for eggs/chicks of Hen Harriers to be removed…
Countryfile last night
Last night’s Countryfile programme was great on butterflies and better than usual on crimes against birds of prey. You can watch the whole entertaining programme here and the raptor slot started at about 10:20 into the show (the butterflies before were really great!). Tom Heap was the presenter of this item and he’s pretty good,…
Channel 4 News, yesterday evening
If you missed Channel 4 News’s feature on wildlife crime associated with grouse shooting then you can see it, but only until about 8pm this evening, by following the link above. It’s worth a look (starts at 44 minutes and lasts 10 minutes). But here are some highlights: Inspector Matt Hagen of North Yorkshire Police…
This looks interesting…
‘When a ‘sport’ becomes a crime wave’ This’ll be an interesting one for the Moorland Association to field. Will it be Amanda ‘If we let the hen harrier in, we will soon have nothing else‘ Anderson, or the new chair of the Moorland Association, that’s Mark William Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Lord Masham, the future Earl of…
Brood meddling doomed for 2020?
Natural England is expected soon to bow to the almost inevitable and drop any plans for brood meddling of Hen Harriers in 2020. All Natural England fieldwork is suspended at the moment in line with government instructions on non-essential travel. Natural England is re-allocating staff resources to priority areas in an attempt to ensure that…
Prospects for the shooting season
When I first started asking contacts in the shooting industry about the prospects for shooting and how it would be affected by coronavirus they all sounded surprised to be asked and expressed no doubt that all would be much as normal. This round up on the William Powell site tells a very different story. Confidence…
Brood-meddling – not much of an update
We went back to court, to the Court of Appeal, to appeal against the judgment against us (and the RSPB) over our judicial review of brood meddling. If you recall, one of the three judges, Sir Patrick Elias, was taken ill at lunchtime and so the case was … well I’m not quite sure what…
Heather burning banned by three large landowners
The Guardian website is running this story ahead of tomorrow’s Observer. It states that the National Trust, Yorkshire Water and United Utilities have all put major restrictions on routine heather burning as practised by grouse shooting interests, and not just for this year. It is of course notable that these three landowners have the public…