The war of words over Hen Harriers reached a new low this week with Natural England feeding a minister, Rebecca Pow, inaccurate information which she passed on to Parliament, if the RSPB is to be believed – and I am sure they are to be believed. In yesterday’s statement from RSPB which laid out the…
Category: THE STATUTORY AGENCIES: NE, EA, FE etc
RSPB spills the beans on Natural England Hen Harrier cover up
Last week Natural England released the ‘results’ of ‘their’ monitoring of Hen Harriers in England in 2020. Their press release was a bit confused and a bit in error and was packed out with quotes from Natural England’s mates in the shooting industry about what a great thing brood meddling of Hen Harrier nests is,…
England tree strategy – respond this week
You can have your say on the England Tree Strategy by filling in all or part of an online form by the end of Friday this week. Click here for link. This is an important issue – though I can’t promise the DEFRA will take any notice of your response – though I can promise…
Natural England’s Hen Harrier numbers were wrong
RSPB has just sent me this; Just seen your blog. Many apologies for the confusion. To clarify, 24 nests were monitored in total and 19 were successful. Hope that clears things up. That’s what I guessed but there is no reason for RSPB to apologise, it is Natural England which has sent out an ambiguous…
Natural NoMates England and Hen Harriers
I bent over backwards, in my usual fair way, to see the good in Natural England’s press release about Hen Harrier breeding numbers in England this morning. And it does seem to be a good year for the birds, and that is the most important thing, and it does look like vole-fuelled and weather-assisted progress…
How many Hen Harriers?
There’s a clash, a discrepancy, a difference between the number of Hen Harrier nests in England this year between the Natural England figures and the RSPB figures. The discrepancy is only five nests but that is 5 nests out of 19 or 24 nests. Some physicists and chemists I know would say that level of…
Natural England/DEFRA press release – Hen Harriers have record-breaking year (in England)
A record-breaking year for hen harrier breeding Natural England has recorded the best year for hen harrier breeding in England since Natural England’s Hen Harrier Recovery Project was established in 2002, with 60 chicks fledged from 19 nests across Northumberland, Yorkshire Dales, Cumbria and Lancashire in early summer 2020. The success has been down to…
NE and BASC are friends
In the database there are 82 agreements listed. I’m not copying a spreadsheet for you here but I’m sure that Natural England would be happy to provide information to you as they have to me. One wonders why they don’t list them somewhere – 82 in two and a bit years isn’t so many. But…
Natural England and crowdfunding
Last year I wrote about Natural England asking you for your money, through crowdfunding, to carry out a mixture of tasks which ranged from the daft to what seemed to me to be Natural England’s statutory duties (and therefore what I was paying for through my taxes). Tony Juniper responded to the ENDS report with…
Natural England’s specific general licences from 2019
Recap: Bob Berzins discovered that Natural England had issued what amounted to a general licence for conservation purposes after they had stopped issuing general licences for conservation purposes (sounds odd doesn’t it – see Bob’s guest blogs Natural England licences; a cover up? Part 1 and Natural England licences; a cover up? Part 2). And…