Natural England restricts gamebird shooting on Thornton Moor. Fresh doubt has been cast over the future of the controversial game bird shoot on Yorkshire Water’s land at Thornton Moor after Natural England has refused permission for a significant part of the operation. The government’s habitats watchdog has said in a decision notice issued to Yorkshire…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
NEWS – Hen Harriers with Bird Flu on the moors
The impact of bird flu on wild birds is seen to be growing, even though the governments across the UK are proving to be pretty useless in having a view on this important conservation issue. Much of the impact this summer has been seen in seabird colonies such as gannetries and tern colonies (eg see…
Press release – Wild Moors
Peatland restoration value hits £470m, outpacing grouse shooting as an income source for landowners A new analysis has shown that trading carbon by restoring upland peatlands could be worth more than four times the economic value of grouse shooting. Amidst reports that grouse moors may face another uncertain season, new market analysis released by Terra…
That exemption from covid regulations for grouse shooting – remember?
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My mate Putin
A friend recently sent me a link with the pithy note saying that he was surprised that I was such mates with Vladimir Putin and that he hoped I would use my best endeavours to get him to pull the tanks out of Ukraine. Of course, I’ll do all I can on that front but…
Alternatives to driven grouse shooting
This paper is a mixture of the completely obvious and the quite important. It takes the oft-quoted suggestion by pro-grouse-shooting interests, that the only real alternative land uses to intensive driven grouse shooting are harmful agriculture and harmful afforestation, and says that isn’t true. It clearly isn’t, because what happens in terms of land use…
Interesting
This article in the 4 December Guardian, by highly respected wildlife journalist Patrick Barkham, raised a few eyebrows at the time and prompted an anonymous but clearly well-informed guest blog here, Natural England and the Hen Harriers 30 December, which raised a number of points including questioning how Natural England’s Stephen Murphy could possibly know…
Human Rights – #justiceforhenharriers
It was good to see this account of brood meddling in this legal blog – a bit of a surprise really! There are some mistakes in it, but of a biological nature. Very good to see this being talked about by lawyers, in a slightly jokey way, but bringing the issues to the fore. But…
This ‘track’ must go
Bob Berzins wrote about this track in February 2017 and again in January 2019. This planning case has now been settled with the landowner having to remove the track, reinstate the vegetation and pay costs. This is a good result, though a slow result – see here for details.
Brood meddling challenge – some more
Following on from this morning’s blog, here is the court order. I may get it framed and put it in the loo. You’ll see from this that the RSPB did not, in the end, apply for permission to appeal whereas I did and was turned down – this is entirely normal as one is asking…