Following the RSPB’s and WWT’s witty open letter to shooting organisations to join them in a call for a ban on the use of toxic lead shotgun ammunition in the UK, the Countryside Alliance have rapidly responded. Their response isn’t quite so joke-laden, and amounts to a leaden ‘No, won’t!’. Quelle surprise! The Countryside Alliance…
Category: SHOOTERS
WWT and RSPB call out failed shooting organisations, and government, on lead ammunition (at last)
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WWT and RSPB have written an open letter to ‘shooting organisations’ (BASC, BGA, CA, CLA, GWCT, MA, NGO, SACS, SLE – but apparently not SGO) calling for them to join in a call for a statutory end to the use and sale of lead shotgun ammunition. The letter has two fine jokes in it where…
My mate Putin
A friend recently sent me a link with the pithy note saying that he was surprised that I was such mates with Vladimir Putin and that he hoped I would use my best endeavours to get him to pull the tanks out of Ukraine. Of course, I’ll do all I can on that front but…
Bonner
The Countryside Alliance boss, Tim Bonner, joins Chris Loder in the worst-judged recent tweet competition with this offering… … which suggests that my mate Chris Packham has broken the law by having a dead Badger temporarily in his possession. This isn’t misjudged simply because I don’t agree with it – there are plenty of clever…
A normal couple of days for my friend, Chris?
Yesterday my mate Chris Packham was handing in a petition to Buckingham Palace asking the Royal Family to rewild their extensive land holdings as a tangible and visible token of their support for UK nature conservation. It’s the type of thing Chris does – he’s a campaigner, he’s an advocate and he puts himself about…
Pondering some shooting issues
The partridge shooting season opened on 1 September for both our native Grey Partridge and the non-native Red-legged Partridge. Nearly 12 million RLPs are released normally for recreational shooting puposes which is a phenomenal number and would attract far more attention if it weren’t a figure swamped and dwarfed by the 51 million Pheasants that…
This week
No book review this week as I have been writing a book more than reading a book, although I am confident of publishing at least one book review next Sunday. In other news: I saw my first Gatekeeper of the year but butterfly numbers are very low this year I saw my second Hen Harrier…
A potentially interesting paper
BASC bailing out GWCT
BASC is leaping to prop up GWCT in these difficult times – it seems that the ordinary shooter has to bail out the organisation which probably has more millionaire donors than almost any other in the rural area. Meanwhile, GWCT is relying on selling snoods to escape financial difficulties – click here.
Where are we in the league table?
How many birds are killed by ‘hunters’ in each km2 of the UK each year, and how does that compare with other European countries? Have you ever wondered? Neither had I until a reader of this blog put me in touch with the data with which one can work it out. Well it depends what…