Dear Natural England In 2008 Natural England published an excellent, interim, report on its Hen Harrier study entitled ‘A future for the Hen Harrier in England?‘. In that report you state that ‘In three incidents nests had been destroyed by illegal burning‘. Please tell me: In which county/ies did these incidents occur? Were these incidents…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Natural England EIR request – Hen Harrier Mick
Dear Natural England, You issued a press release about a Hen Harrier called Mick on 7 February 2017 in which you stated that Mick’s disappearance had been reported to the North Yorkshire Police. Your director, Rob Cooke, said ‘The disappearance of a hen harrier is deeply concerning to all who appreciate these rare and impressive…
Upside down and inside out.
Yesterday evening the BBC regional programme Inside Out for the East Midlands and Yorkshire featured a very good piece on driven grouse shooting. Well done them! Here is the link and the piece is the first one after the general introductions. You’ll hear some familiar voices and see some familiar faces: Tim Birch from Derbyshire…
HH Day in Boat of Garten – the movie!
The Boat of Garten HHDay event was well worth the journey to the fairly far north – but if you couldn’t make it there then here is a short video that gives you a flavour of it. Thank you to Andrea Goddard who organised the day and to all attendees, speakers etc. This film was…
Ban the burn on bogs
While I was swanning around in Yorkshire on holiday there was an important conference event held in Edale talking about the future of blanket bogs in the South Pennines (although its findings seem equally to apply to the North Pennines and other areas I guess). Interesting reports reached me of unlikely events such as plates…
This is interesting!
Somebody, Gavin Gamble, has set up a new e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting which is being considered by the Petitions Committee! Looks quite classy!
Those NE Hen Harrier data
Even with the minimal amount of data disclosed by NE on their Hen Harrier study, it’s possible to start making some initial explorations of the data. Here are some initial thoughts which must be accompanied by the massive caveat that this is based on a few minutes playing around, and away from my home computer,…
The Moorland Imbalance (5)
In their little booklet, the GWCT address five areas that they say are commonly-heard criticisms of driven grouse shooting. This week I’ll deal with each of them. GWCT say that a commonly-heard criticism is that ‘Heather burning on grouse moors increases flooding’ and attempt to sidestep this in the same way that they attempted to…
The Moorland Imbalance (4)
In their little booklet, the GWCT address five areas that they say are commonly heard criticisms of driven grouse shooting. This week I’ll deal with each of them. In their booklet GWCT state that a commonly-heard criticism is that ‘This rich man’s hobby damages the environment and society‘ and their defence is that there are…
Another amazing Hen Harrier image from Gordon Yates
Just superb! A superb image of superb birds. Who’d want to kill these? And it reminded me of ‘Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.’.