The Inglorious 12th

Intensive grouse shooting is in the news like never before: Natural England Chair, Tony Juniper, calls for vicarious liability for wildlife crimes (as did his predecessor of course – but this time it is at the beginning of his tenure and not at the end)(see Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times) Labour calls for review of…

Inglorious Debate by Gill Lewis

Gill Lewis is an author (see here and here) and spoke at yesterday’s Hen Harrier Day event (and see here). The Glorious Twelfth is the best day of the year. It just simply isn’t true to say  Driven grouse shooting is underpinned by wildlife crime And that the intensive burning of the moors is damaging…

Country Life makes a lot of sense

This is a very well-written and fairly accurate editorial in Country Life magazine. You’ll see that it says many of the things that I have said myself in the blog post before this one. I’d written all of that blog before I saw the Country Life editorial so I was interested to see how similar…

Hen Harriers in the news

The RSPB has announced that 22 Hen Harriers have fledged from five successful nests in the Forest of Bowland – all on land owned and managed by United Utilities where they own land to protect their water catchments. This land has a few days grouse shooting on it but, despite the fact that it comprises…

River

River, a Hen Harrier from Lancashire disappeared in an area of grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB (a notorious raptor-persecution hotspot) in North Yorkshire in November 2018. She was one of several young tagged Hen Harriers that didn’t even make it to Christmas, yet alone to their first birthday, let alone to raising eggs and…

Henry Morris – a Hen Harrier hero

The three dots on the second horizon are Henry Morris and chums a few minutes into their amazing four-day run across the grouse moors of northern England – the killing fields for protected wildlife. Henry started his run in the Forest of Bowland AONB and ends it today in Nidderdale AONB – both wildlife crime…