An ex-gamekeeper writes…

Having just finished reading your book ‘Inglorious’ I’m prompted, and indeed inspired, to write to you. I’d like to begin by telling you something about my background. Since childhood I have been passionately interested in wildlife, with birdwatching at the fore. I was brought up in the conurbations of Manchester where I was born in…

The end of grouse shooting for another year

The open season on Red Grouse ends today and reopens on the Inglorious 12 August 2016. What better day to add your name to an e-petition to get the Westminster parliament to debate the future of grouse shooting? Grouse shooting is a pointless and environmentally damaging hobby for people with guns. this would be fine…

Legal clarification from Natural England

I’m grateful to Natural England for getting in touch today over the issue of medication of Red Grouse raised in Ruth Tingay’s Guest Blog of Monday. Here is what NE wrote: ‘In the recent guest contribution to your Blog, Dr Ruth Tingay asked for clarification from Natural England and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) regarding the…

Guest blog – GWCT confused by Dr Ruth Tingay

Dr Ruth Tingay is a raptor conservationist with field experience from North & Central America, Europe, Africa, Central and SE Asia. She studied the critically endangered Madagascar Fish Eagle for a PhD at Nottingham University and is a past president of the Raptor Research Foundation. She’s currently researching the illegal persecution of raptors & its…

If I can…

I get quite a lot of people who want stuff from me – they don’t all get it. Some of them are students and some of them seem, almost, to want me to write their essays or projects for them!  But on the whole, I try to be helpful, particularly if they approach me in…

Single Pheasant costs United Utilities £25m

Correction: Hi Mark. Andy Carter here from the United Utilities press office. Did you see that the Times had apologised for getting this wrong (Mark – no I didn’t)? A dead pheasant in a pipe was one of the various rumours circulating during the time we had customers on a boil water notice in Lancashire….

Thank you for the tweetstorm and thunderclap

Yesterday evening #justiceforannie and #bandrivengrouseshooting were trending on Twitter – that was fun! Those tweets will be read by people over the next few days and will certainly take our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting past 25,000 signatures some time soon. It looks like 25,000 signatures will be an early Christmas present. Thank you…

In two hours’ time…

At 8pm the following message will go out to over 6.1 million social media accounts: “Please SIGN/SHARE this petition to #BanDrivenGrouseShooting. The illegal shooting of “Annie” warrants a debate! http://thndr.it/1La6m8y” Will we see a massive, a moderate, or a miniscule rise in the number of signatures on the e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting? I…

Wildlife Trusts in a muddle – in their own words

I was very disappointed to read this from the respected CEO of my local wildlife trust.  It’s quite likely that the very few words at his disposal made the views of the Beds, Cambs and Northants WT sound sillier than they actually are – but they are his and their chosen words! The Wildlife Trusts…