Standing up for Nature
Still waiting for white smoke as to if, and when, our case will be heard (and the RSPB’s too), but it is very unlikely to be before October. But it seems that the risk of any activation of the licence is almost passed for this year.
The National Trust has announced that a nest of Hen Harriers with four chicks is on their land, on a grouse moor. They sound quite surprised by this: ‘We’re delighted to learn of this nest.‘ said Jon Stewart, the National Trust’s General Manager for the Peak District. ‘The hen harrier has been one of…
A while ago I let NE know what I thought of them and asked a few questions of them. Fair dos, they have come up with a decent-ish response. We learn that the long-running and long overrunning NE Hen Harrier research project will get an airing in Vancouver in August, that the southern reintroduction project…
Michael Gove has done nothing visible to me to deal with the many ills and misdemeanors of driven grouse shooting. In fact, he is said to have told representatives of grouse shooting that he was seeking to ‘protect their vulnerable flank’, whatever that might mean (grouse shooting has enough exposed flanks to be spherical). Crispin Odey is a…
The Forest of Bowland AONB is consulting on its next 5-year plan for 2019-24. They would like your views by a week today, 25 May. It’s easy to fill in the short consultation form – takes about 5 minutes. Have a look at their last plan with its images of Hen Harriers and talk of…
Many of us have had this standard letter from the chair of SNH: Thank you for your recent correspondence on the subject of the issue of a research licence to the Strathbraan Community Collaboration for Waders. I welcome that so many people in this country care passionately about the welfare of all our wildlife…
Things are moving, though not incredibly quickly, with our legal challenge to brood meddling. I’ll be getting a full update from our lawyers today. Another snippet from my witness statement:
The story so far: Defra FoI fail, 25 April Defra FoI continued fail, 26 April Defra FoI – less of a fail, 26 April This morning I received this response (or at least this is the bit that I am revealing at the moment): Thank you to Defra for apparently pulling out the stops once…
As predicted, there was a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing over the final details of our application for judicial review of Natural England’s daft decision to license brood meddling (occasionally known as brood management) of Hen Harriers but the dream-team of lawyers submitted our application with no problem at all. Which is just as…
Today is the day when we submit our application for judicial review of NE’s foolish licensing of brood meddling. Our legal team has been working hard and I’ve been working quite hard too – sending them information, drafting witness statements, commenting on the legal matters and answering searching questions. There will no doubt be a…