The National Trust today advertises for a shooting tenant for its land in the Dark Peak from which its current tenant, Mark Osborne, will soon be exiting. This represents about 40% of the NT landholding in the High Peak and so is a substantial decision over the direction of land management on NT land….
Category: THE WILDLIFE NGOs – RSPB, Wildlife Trusts Wild Justice, BSBI etc
Scotland’s mountain hare shooting industry exposed in new report
Comments Off on Scotland’s mountain hare shooting industry exposed in new report
Press release from OneKind: OneKind, Scotland’s animal campaigns charity, will release a new report on the persecution of mountain hares in Scotland on Monday 31 July, a day before the open season on mountain hare killing begins. The report titled Mountain hare persecution in Scotland exposes the scale of mountain hare killing for recreational…
Questions must be asked of NE
The red arrow shows the location of the track which is just north of the public footpath and parallel. The surfacing starts just east of Highshaw Clough. This area is completely within the Special Area of Conservation as shown on the Magic system: Natural England, a few questions: did you receive an application for…
Pay day for conservationists
The disclosure of the salaries of some, not all, of the BBC’s ‘talent’ hit the headlines yesterday – we’re all interested in how underpaid we are and how overpaid ‘they’ are. Before the news came out, I thought about it a little, and I was expecting John Humphrys’s salary to be somewhere between £200k and…
Please support FoE, RSPB and Client Earth in this legal case
Comments Off on Please support FoE, RSPB and Client Earth in this legal case
Dear Mark If our government breaks the law, it’s essential that people can hold it to account. This is especially important when it comes to the environment where a decision, say to demolish a wood unlawfully, can cause damage that can never be undone. In February 2017, the government changed the rules. As a result…
RSPB calls on NE to act (Bowland Gull Cull 1)
RSPB press release: The RSPB has learned that large numbers of protected birds are being killed on a grouse moor in Lancashire. A RSPB staff member working in the Bowland area discovered two estate workers shooting nesting lesser black-backed gulls – on a grouse moor managed by the Abbeystead Estate – leaving their chicks to be…
RSPB, what’s the plan?
Martin Harper, the RSPB Conservation Director says, ‘The hen harrier, by contrast, has suffered a significant setback in its recovery according to the results of a recent UK survey. It is on the brink of extinction as a breeding bird in England…how do I explain their absence to my children? Well actually, Martin said that…
St Aidan’s nature reserve
I remember visiting St Aidan’s about 10 years ago – when it was a big hole in the ground which I was told would at some time in the future be full of birds. Well, I was keen to go and see whether this promise has been fulfilled – and it has! What an…
Spoonbills breeding in Yorkshire
Yesterday I visited Fairburn Ings and St Aidan’s (of which, more tomorrow) nature reserves in the Aire Valley. Where’s the Aire Valley? If you go up the A1, it’s on your left just after that clutch of cooling towers at Ferrybridge. Fairburn Ings is perhaps not the most promising sounding of locations with its Coal…
Concerns about the Lobbying Act – the letter
The Lobbying Act is really important and quite complicated so I’ll do my best to explain some things here. It’s worth saying upfront that I have spoken to various friends in NGOs about this issue and it is very clear that the Act is making many charities extremely nervous about speaking out about any…