Category: Uncategorized

Cases of bird/poultry flu in wildish birds are filling in the gaps on the map and creeping further north – to very near the Scottish Border in both Cumbria and Nortumberland. An excellent report in the Guardian makes slightly scary reading with Mute Swans spinning in cicles and bleeding from their nostrils. The quote from…

Raptor-killing, poison-shooting, bog-burning, hare-killing driven grouse shooting is not having a great week. The day before yesterday, the EU (remember the EU?) Parliament voted to ban the use of lead ammunition in wetlands where ‘wetlands’ include peatlands such as blanket bogs where much (by no means all) driven grouse shooting occurs in the UK. Now,…

Three weeks ago Miles King had a Guest Blog here to shine a light on the outrageous planting of trees on a peat bog at Berrier in Cumbria and today Farming Today had a good piece (first 6mins of programme) on that case and the wider issue that it (and Miles) raised, about how careful…

Yesterday’s announcement by the Scottish government makes DEFRA look like it is still run by throwbacks to the Edwardian era. No DEFRA minister with responsibility for wildlife conservation has ever condemned wildlife crime in the terms that we heard from the Scottish government yesterday; not Richard Benyon, not Rory Stewart, not Therese Coffey and not…

Well, thank heavens for that! And let’s thank the SNP government for having the balls to move decisively (after a bit of a long wait) to announce that they will bring in regulation on driven grouse shooting, muirburn and the use of medicated grit. I was struck by the widespread support for this move from…