If you had a guess at how many signatures our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting will achieve before it closes on 21 January then your name should be on this list. If your name is in red, then I’m afraid events have already passed you by – but thank you for being a sport…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Debate on floods (updated with links and quotes)
I watched the opposition day debate on the floods with interest – every minute of it. There were quite a lot of MPs, of both main political parties, taking the time to praise their constituents and to ask for promises of government money. Fair enough. Some of them were more subtle and convincing than others….
You are an optimistic lot!
These are your guesses as to the number of signatures that will be attached to our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting when it closes on 21 January. Closest estimate gets a copy of one of my books – if the guess (or brilliantly worked out and thought through estimate) is exactly right then you…
Another chance to vote for the Hen Harrier
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…
Wuthering Moors 52
This is a map of Walshaw Moor which was used in the 2012 case against the estate which was mysteriously dropped by Natural England. You can make out the purple areas, which are made up of lots of purple lines, which the key tells us are artificial watercourses. Many of these would be known to…
Those New Year resolutions…
How are you getting on with whatever New Year resolutions you made? I went for a walk at Stanwick Lakes this morning and was rewarded with 53 species, the ‘best’ of which was a Bittern. I also had what seems, at the moment, to be a good idea. Today is a meat-free day for me…
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…
Almost forgot
We passed 26,000 signatures on our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting a few days ago. It is now much closer to 27,000 than 26,000. If we banned driven grouse shooting we would: have lower water bills have less climate change have less flooding have more wildlife have better blanket bogs have more Hen Harriers…
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…