I’m sure the Scottish government, the SNP, the Scottish Gamekeepers Organisation and Scottish Land and Estates wish that these images would go away – but we should make sure that they are kept in the public domain. They illustrate the failure of wildlife protection in Scotland. The bird that flies through this video and then…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Nature being let down by the system
I’m not entirely sure which shocks me the most – the deed itself or the inability of the conservation, political and legal systems to deal with it. The video released today by the RSPB is nearly four years old. It seems to show a Hen Harrier being flushed off the nest and shot. The RSPB…
Bad Defra; bad grouse moors.
There is dancing in the streets of El Rocio this morning as news spreads of the reprimand given to the UK government (esp Defra) by the EU over the poor job done by the UK to protect blanket bogs from burning. Blanket bogs don’t prosper under a scorched earth strategy and all this crap about…
Heather burning and health
I definitely wasn’t awake at this time so I am grateful to a reader of this blog for pointing me in this direction. On Radio 5 Up All Night on Thursday 30 March at 2hr 21min 19 secs into the programme, there was a discussion about the smoke from heather burning and its potential health…
The RSPB on driven grouse shooting
Martin Harper has penned (or keyboarded) an interesting BB eye in this month’s British Birds magazine. It is entitled ‘Why it is in the driven grouse industry’s interest to clean up its own act’ and it rehearses the long list of ills with intensive management of driven grouse moors with which so many of us…
Scottish Land and Estates statement on North Glenbuchat eagle
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Scottish Land and Estates which represents rural businesses across Scotland has issued a lame statement ‘supporting’ the appeal for information after the disappearance on yet another tagged eagle in a very small area near Strathdon in the Cairngorms National Park. Here is their statement: ‘Scottish Land & Estates, which represents rural businesses across Scotland, today…
Mine’s a pint of Hen Harrier
Get your Hen Harrier here from the excellent Bowland Brewery. And what might Prince Charles have said when necking a Hen Harrier?
Merlins in the Lammermuirs
In the current issue of British Birds there is a paper on a long-term study of Merlins on grouse moors in the Lammermuirs which makes an interesting read (as do many other pages in the journal). Data were collected over a span of 31 seasons (with that break in data for the Foot-and-Mouth year…
An article by me in British Birds
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British Birds kindly asked me to write one of their guest editorials and Driven grouse shooting – where next? has recently been published on their website.
Last day to support this thunderclap
Birder, ringer, blogger and campaigner Findlay Wilde set up this thunderclap which will spread its message tomorrow. A thunderclap is a social media tool that spreads messages. If you are on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr and you sign up to Findlay’s thunderclap then at 11am on 21 March all your social media contacts will be…