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…

The Moorland Imbalance (3)

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. The GWCT correctly identify this as an area of criticism ‘There is illegal persecution of raptors by grouse moor keepers‘ but go on to use the ‘few bad…

Heather Trust seeks new Director

Simon Thorp is standing down as Director of the Heather Trust after doing the job for 15 years. The fact that most readers of this blog won’t have heard of the Heather Trust is a testament to the fact that the Heather Trust hasn’t been anything like as daft as many other landownery shootingish uplandful…