Last night Bradford Council voted unanimously (9/9) to recognise the significant environmental harm caused by heather burning and to implement a heather cutting programme. Burning has been retained for circumstances where it can be clearly shown as the only option available, which will require a substantial cost/benefit analysis to prove – not easy at all….
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Dear Bradford Council – please ban the burn
Dear Councillor Love, I write to you because you are the chair of Bradford Council’s Environment & Waste Management Overview & Scrutiny Committee regarding the review of whether to allow burning to be included in the Ilkley Moor Management Plan. I am not a Bradford resident but I am a frequent visitor to the area….
Talks given
I’ve been talking to Yorkshire recently – has it been listening? I’ve never given exactly the same talk twice in my life – that’s partly because every talk is somewhat tailored to the audience (as best as one can – sometimes one doesn’t know that much about the audience) and they are usually of slightly…
#justiceforannie thunderclap
‘Annie‘ was a female Hen Harrier which was found shot on a grouse moor in Scotland. She has become the symbol for attracting people to sign up to a social media thunderclap tagged as #justiceforannie. This was the idea of the Moving Mountains Nature Network (@MMNNActionUK) and it will send out a message about our…
Autumnwatch – looking forward to the Hen Harrier update
When Springwatch ended (in the spring!) we were all trying to assimilate the fact that five male Hen Harriers had ‘disappeared’ from active nests in Lancashire and Cumbria. Since then a highly experienced nest photographer, Gordon Yates, has written a Guest Blog here explaining how unlikely this is to happen (and the photographs on this…
Don’t get too attached to Holly and Chance
Members of the public will be able to follow the movements of two female Hen Harriers tracked via satellite tags as part of the RSPB Hen Harrier LIFE+ Project. A new website will enable us all to follow the movements of Holly and Chance as they travel around the country. For security reasons, in other…
Intensification of grouse moor management in Scotland
Today the League Against Cruel Sports publish a report by Andy Wightman (land ownership expert) and Ruth Tingay (raptor expert) on Scottish grouse moors. It seems, to me, to be a bit of a departure for LACS as its full of rather dry facts – dry, that is, until you put them all together in…
Inaction speaks louder than words
The most remarkable aspect of the preliminary results of the 2014 national Peregrine survey (organised by the BTO but I read about it here) is that the UK population of this species has hardly changed in 12 years – a 3% increase since 2002. The last Peregrine I saw was a couple of weeks ago…
Two AGMs – RSPB
Ahead of today’s RSPB AGM, Martin Harper posted a very robust blog about the RSPB’s position on driven grouse shooting (click here). Just as I did yesterday, Martin asked the question whether there are any grouse moors out there that do all the right things. He clearly doesn’t know of any (which makes licensing a…
Two AGMs – H&OT
Today it is the Hawk and Owl Trust’s AGM. On the H&OT website is their annual report which has these interesting lines in it: ‘For the Hawk and Owl Trust positive habitat management away from the grouse moors will be one of the actions that will hold the key to the future of the hen…