This is a slightly odd one! Countryfile magazine has one of those readers’ votes running on subjects such as ‘Nature reserve of the year’, and ‘Pub of the year’ which includes ‘Conservation success of the year’. Now you wouldn’t necessarily expect a species whose English population should be over 300 pairs, but was actually 12…
Category: Grouse and harriers
Implausible deniability
This time last year I was finishing writing Inglorious. As I wrote it, it became clearer to me that the game really was already up for driven grouse shooting – it was on its last legs but it might keep stumbling along for a decade or more because of the power of the vested interests…
Floods and land use
Although dominated by talk of whether the flood defences were expensive enough, high enough, built quickly enough or in the right places, there has been more discussion than usual about the role of land use and flooding in the media and on this blog. In case you missed them, here is a list of…
2015 – the Hen Harrier year in pictures
The conflict between driven grouse shooting and Hen Harriers like Henry (or rather, not very like Henry) is a real one. Hen Harriers eat enough grouse seriously to reduce grouse bags when they are shot for fun. Grouse shooting interests illegally kill enough Hen Harriers in the UK to reduce their population to c6-800 pairs…
I will lift up my eyes unto the hills…
‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my floods’ As the Moorland Association brags, 70% of the UK’s drinking water comes from the uplands – so do 70% of the UK’s floods, for water has the habit of flowing downhill. The River Ouse flowing through York, or over York, is…