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: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
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…
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…
2015 – a bad year for driven grouse shooting
Few Red Grouse were shot in the UK this year, mainly because of disease and bad weather. But regardless of grouse bags, this was a very bad year for driven grouse shooting and hastened the end of this worthless hobby. The case against driven grouse shooting is that it depends on intensive management that involves…
Dear Mr Trump
Comments Off on Dear Mr Trump
Dear Mr Trump Your environmental credentials in the UK set you apart from most other golfers standing for the Presidency of the USA. Please tell me that you are in favour of driven grouse shooting (I bet you are!). Nothing energises an online petition quite as much as being associated with you (see here and…