Gamebirds victory (15) – the 500m buffer zone.

There is a narrative developed by DEFRA and Natural England that the Madden and Sage review, and the bits that they didn’t look at, all combine to mean that any impacts of gamebird releases are limited to, and are known to be limited to, 500m from release sites. This is not true. It’s not true…

Driven shooting ceases for a month in England

BASC is quite often ridiculous, but their guidance on shooting and explanation of what Lockdown2 means for shooting is quite clear and really very sensible (although if readers can spot exceptions to that then comment away here!). Driven shooting is off (and the grouse shooting season ends on 9 December anyway) but rough shooting and…

A new lockdown

Depending on where you live, today may mark the start of a new lockdown, but depending on your behaviour, it may not make very much difference to what you actually do. Because of caring duties for two mothers in their 90s our household hasn’t got out much since March and we have got accustomed to…

USA moves towards a Biden presidency?

I am very fond of the USA and of individual US citizens who, as a rule, on their home turf, I have found to be wonderful hosts and friendly people. But they do elections in a strange way, don’t they? The matter of selecting a President appears, as far as votes counted are concerned, to…

Gamebirds victory (14) – NE’s got some work to do

If you read the DEFRA witness statement (paras 11-21) you’ll find that Natural England has a lot of work to do checking sites before DEFRA can be sure that gamebird releases are not wrecking our best wildlife sites. If only there were a regular and frequent programme of assessing important wildlife sites which was properly…