This is the sixth Defra response to an e-petition attempting to press them into action on wildlife crime and unsustainable upland management associated with grouse shooting. And this is the sixth response in Defra which has failed to admit the scale of the problem of wildlife crime and failed to bring forward any sensible response….
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Guest blog – Ireland’s Harrier crisis Ryan Wilson-Parr
Ryan has studied Hen Harrier for over 20 years as a researcher, an accredited ecological consultant and as a contracted Raptor Expert to the National Parks & Wildlife Service. Ryan is Chairman of the Irish Raptor Study Group, Director at the Golden Eagle Trust and Project Scientist for the Hen Harrier Project, a new results-based…
Paul Leyland – Tansy Beetle
The Tansy Beetle Chrysolina graminis is a wonderfully iridescent leaf beetle about 1cm long. It was once widespread in the UK but now has a severely limited range. The main site is along the banks of the River Ouse as it flows through York, with a much smaller, recently discovered, population at Woodwalton Fen. There…
The Defra response – a few comments
The biggest problem with the Defra response is that it still ducks the issue of wildlife crime – and how can a government turn its back on crime? I’ll come back to that tomorrow morning. But for now, let us thank Gavin Gamble (and 9,999 others) for flushing out these comments. It’s always enlightening to…
Tim Melling – Northern Harrier
Tim writes: this is a wild Northern Harrier giving me eye-to-eye contact as it flew right over my head at Reifel Bird Sanctuary near Vancouver. It is a youngster, hatched this year and identifiable by the rufous wash on its underparts. I can also identify this as a juvenile male because it has greenish eyes. …