Dear Natural England I understand from a member of NE staff that the blanket bog overlay on the MAGIC system is not the most accurate or up to date dataset which NE has on blanket bog extent – can you confirm whether this is true? what plans does NE have to make the more accurate…
Category: THE STATUTORY AGENCIES: NE, EA, FE etc
Defra/NE dragging their feet again on wildlife crime
If you are aware of the MoU between NE, NRW, the CPS and the National Police Chiefs’ Council then I doff my cap to you. I’ve only recently been pointed in its direction. The document deals with how these organisations should and will work together covering the following areas: purpose of the agreement the parties…
An alternative narrative
Natural England’s answers to some questions about the failure of two Hen Harrier nests on a Yorkshire grouse moor this season were published on this blog this morning. To be fair to NE, they only responded to the questions I posed, rather than giving a full account of events on this grouse moor over the…
Strathbraan Raven cull
Comments Off on Strathbraan Raven cull
An extract from the agreed minutes of the SNH Board meeting held on 20 June. Interesting that the Board pointed to the reputational risk of delaying the publication of the damning SAC report on the lack of science behind the misjudged Raven cull. ‘Towards the end of July’ couldn’t have been much later, it was…
Natural England in a new mess with Hen Harrier data
Natural England published a skeletal version of its Hen Harrier tracking dataset back in September 2017, after years of pressure from this blog and others. Last Saturday it updated that dataset by adding one extra column – of grid references of the last good fixes of Hen Harriers that were known to be dead or…
Our Hen Harrier data
We are going to have to wait a little while or a long while to see the results and findings of the long-awaited analysis of the Hen Harrier satellite-tagging study that you and I (as taxpayers) have funded for many years. However, it already looks as though the findings could be the dynamite to blow…
SNH spin
I’ve been sent this passage from two SNH staff (the versions differ by a few letters and commas – I’ll put that down to transcription errors) – that they say was put out on the internal SNH intranet by their Director of Operations, Nick Halfhide, following the withdrawal by the Scottish Raptor Study Group of…
Bowland Gull Cull 23
Received from Natural England this afternoon. So this confirms that someone called ‘Trustee of 4th Duke of Westminster 1964 Settlement’, which I take to mean the Abbeystead Estate in this instance, committed offences in late June and early July 2017 in the Bowland Fells SSSI, to wit the bumping off of juvenile Lesser Black-backed Gulls…
Bowland Gull Cull 22
Dear Mr Mark Avery, Thank you for your complaint of Sunday the 5th of August 2018, regarding RFI 3929. We are committed to fully investigating all complaints from our customers and you will receive a response at stage 1 of the complaints process no later than Tuesday the 28th of August 2018. Our complaints procedure…
Bowland Gull Cull 21
Many thanks to the reader of this blog who pointed me in this direction (click here) where we find this table… …which goes back as far as 2012 but only appears to have 12 cases in it, but the two at the end of the list are as follows; So, Bowland is in the news…