The GWCT’s Andrew Gilruth writes about lead on the GWCT blog. First he reveals that only just over half (53%) of respondents to a GWCT survey agreed with moving away from lead shot. The reasons why people did and didn’t favour the move are interesting. Those not ready to move away from lead yet are…
Category: SHOOTERS
BASC is a hapless bystander
BASC is probably under considerable pressure from its membership to ‘do something’ about Wild Justice’s potential further legal challenges of the general licences and actual legal challenge to gamebird releases. But there’s not a lot they can do except huff and puff. BASC will tell DEFRA (that’ll go down well) that there is no need…
Raking over some embers
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I’ve been reading scientific papers about burning heather recently. They are a bit heavy going and there seems to be quite a lot of acrimony in this field of learned research – which does, in some ways, make it all the more interesting. I went back, almost four years, and re-read what I wrote about…
Moorland Association again – questions, questions, questions
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In the same response to DEFRA in which the Moorland Association set out their shopping list for stopping damaging upland areas, they asked DEFRA a number, in fact 14 is the number, of questions about what they call the policy context. The actual policy context for stopping burning peatlands is the damage to blanket bogs…
Moorland Association demands payment
The following is an extract from the Moorland Association response to a DEFRA consultation on burning of blanket bogs, peatlands and heather moors. Payments, payments, grants, payments, payments… What does the Moorland Association want? It’s pretty clear – they want either to be left alone to damage priority habitats as they have done for decades…
Opening the lid on Moorland Association pressure on DEFRA
I’ve praised Guy Shrubsole’s adroitness with the information request before – here are some more products of the information requester’s art. As a start, there is more to come, I’ll post here three letters between the Moorland Association and DEFRA from last late summer. They all relate to burning of heather as part of the…
Moorland Association challenges government policy to ban burning of heather
I’ll blog more about this but it’s difficult not to giggle all the time as I write about it. To see, as I have, the feeble letter from the Marquess of Downshire to DEFRA, dated 18 September 2019, is rather amusing. I’m surprised the letter didn’t include the phrase ‘Don’t you know who I am?’….
Amanda, Amanda, Amanda…
I’ve now had the chance to look at the Inside Out programme about Hen Harrier persecution. It’s good. Well done to the RSPB. And some really nice footage of Hen Harriers – live ones! Click here and it’s at the beginning of the programme for c10 minutes. Sorry Amanda, you looked cold and lonely on…
The world according to Tim Bonner
Yep, this all seems quite likely but not certain. Despite all the flim-flam over the general election, and before from the likes of Michael Gove, Tim Bonner clearly expects the new Secretary of State at DEFRA and the new government to slash and burn environmental protection. It really wouldn’t surprise me if they did –…
Grouse moor owner paid for PM’s holiday on Mustique – or maybe he didn’t
Whether or not David Ross of Carphone Warehouse fame did or didn’t pay for the PM’s £15,000 Christmas break (see here, here, here) there’s no getting away from the closeness of the grouse shooters to the government. This blog has written before about David Ross, his shooting lodge in the North York Moors and the…