George Eustice was right to suggest that we (for it is our money) should withdraw subsidies from grouse moors. Take a look at this fine crop of burned ground and realise that you are probably paying £56/ha to its owner every year. That £56/yr certainly pays for the matches needed to set this land alight….
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Burning issues
From the heather and grass burning code: Areas within 5 metres of watercourses. There can be an increased risk of soil erosion close to watercourses (e.g. once vegetation has been removed by burning, soil could be washed into a watercourse by rainwater, or the watercourse might flow with sufficient force that its banks could…
Hen Harrier InAction Plan
Sometimes something is so awful that you just hope it will go away – and that’s how I feel about the Defra Hen Harrier InAction Plan which fails to address the real problem for the Hen Harrier – that it is illegally killed by grouse shooting interests because it eats Red Grouse that they would…
Watching birds
As always, there is some good stuff in this month’s Birdwatch. As well as the good news of the guano award for YFTB and the ‘Campaign of the Year’ award for the Ban Driven Grouse Shooting e-petition, there is plenty of other good reading material. I enjoyed reading about the first Irish Harlequin Duck…
You are all winners – 123,077 of us
The campaign to ban driven grouse shooting was voted Birdwatch readers’ Campaign of the Year. Yes, I’ve noticed that driven grouse shooting is not yet banned, but 2016 saw a very big step in that direction because the public understanding of the issue grew enormously. Many people who knew little, and cared little, about what…
Delighted!
I’m delighted that You Forgot the Birds won the Birdwatch readers’ guano award for 2016. I expect the Badger cull was a close second but I don’t know for sure. Although the Badger cull has a much bigger and more harmful impact on wildlife the YFTB crew seem to me to encompass an awful lot…
Ho! ho! ho! HOT wishes you a meddling merry Christmas!
It’s so lovely that the Hawk and Owl Trust trustees have sent us all a Christmas message. And I see that the HOT have gained one Henry Robinson as a trustee. Could this be (I think it could) the past president of the Country Landowners Association? It’s a small world isn’t it? Remember the last…
A press release from the RSPB in Scotland
STARTS RSPB Scotland has dismissed a press release issued today by the “Gift of Grouse” campaign that attempts to draw a veil over the continued persecution of birds of prey on areas of land managed intensively for driven grouse shooting. The reports on which these assertions are based are not in the public domain, and…
The minister’s speech
On the last day of October our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting (123,077 signatures) was debated alongside another, so-called rival, e-petition to protect grouse shooting (which still languishes under 25,000 signatures despite being over half way through its allotted time). Having let a month pass I’ll now return to what was said on that…
It’s time for Ian Botham to be a winner again
Ian Botham deserves to be a winner again – and he deserves to win Birdwatch magazine’s guano award for environmental harm as part of the YFTB team. So please vote for him here. You’ll have to vote in each of the other categories too, but I bet you’ll find some familiar names and events to…