The simple vision of rewilded uplands painted yesterday prompted a question from a reader (Ezra Lucas) that is answered, or at least discussed, here. The question is how do we get from where we are to a more rewilded upland situation, and how do we get from a post-grouse shooting world to rewilded uplands? First,…
Category: Grouse and harriers
Slim Chance of survival of Hen Harriers
Yet another satellite-tagged Hen Harrier, this one called Chance, has disappeared – her last known location (when transmitting a strong signal) was on a south Lanarkshire grouse moor. This sounds as though it must be in the same general area where Annie (pictured above) died. Add in Highlander whose satellite tag stopped transmitting…
Rewild our trashed hills
I think anyone looking at the landscape above would be hard-pressed to call it ‘natural’. It is drained and burned – and it has tracks running all the way through it. It’s the burning that creates that patchwork of different colours – patches of heather that were burned in different years according to a…
You can’t have both – you have to choose.
Let’s just stick with Hen Harriers for a while – I’ll come back to wider environmental issues next week. And as far as Hen Harriers and driven grouse shooting go – you can’t have both, you have to choose. Ever since the results of the first Langholm study (see Chapter 3 of Inglorious and here)…
Where are they?
Birdtrack provides this interesting facility where one can look at the reporting rates of any species this year compared with the long term average. Reporting rates are the proportion of complete bird lists (for a visit to a location) that contain the relevant species. The data from this year ought to be comparable with the…