Standing up for Nature
Dear Mr Pursglove, Thank you for your replies to my two earlier letters on birds of prey and Badgers. I’m grateful to you for taking the time and for such full respones – see my blog. This letter is also about Badgers and follows the Westminster Hall debate on the subject at the end of…
I haven’t had time to read this carefully, but there is a bit more in it on energy efficiency than I expected from media reports – however, this is definitely an area of high priority. This government’s, and this Prime Minister’s, infatuation with big projects (which often don’t happen) means that I would be very…
Last week the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs announced details of its planned Badger cull. This week Wild Justice and the Northern Ireland Badger Group filed papers in the Royal Courts of Justice seeking permission for judicial review of that decision. Wild Justice, which is meeting all the costs of the…
April Fools’ Day can be a minefield. There’s a great story of a young reporter rushing to their editor having swallowed a brillient RSPB April Fool story of a Polar Bear being washed up in the Hebrides one year… But yesterday, did you pause for thought when you saw;
This afternoon the Wild Justice petition calling for an end to Badger shooting will be ‘debated’ in Westminster Hall by backbench MPs and will receive statements from Shadow and actual DEFRA ministers. No doubt the debate will wander all over the place with MPs spouting quite a lot of nonsense that makes them look foolish…
On Friday a new scientific analysis of the effectiveness of Badger culls on reducing bovine tuberculosis in cattle was published. I knew this paper was coming and knew that it would be greeted with acclaim by those who oppose the cull and derision by those who support it, and that has largely been true. The…
I like books that have clear titles, ones which tell you what they are about, provided the title actually does tell you what the book is about. And this one does. If you can’t work out what this book is about from the title then I can’t help you. But I can tell you that…
Wild Justice is raising money to challenge the lawfulness of a proposed cull of Badgers in Northern Ireland. We’ve got together with the Northern Ireland Badger Group. At nearly £24k in 10 days that’s pretty good going, and there is more cash arriving every day that we can transfer across, but there’s still a long…
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This is good news in that it looks as though Iceland will be crossed off the very short list of whaling countries but it isn’t particularly good news for whales as it seems to be driven by Japan being able to meet its whalemeat demand from its own whaling fleet. Still, it will mean, I…