Despite the soggy weather, beacons have been lit across the UK to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. Spare a thought for the inhabitants of Tristan da Cunha and their Jubilee beacon. When the most remote Jubilee beacon in the world was lit, its flames were fuelled by the bodies of invasive species of plants. Work to…
Tag: Defra
Buzzards – where next?
Yesterday Defra did a U-turn on their proposals to investigate buzzard control for the benefit of pheasants. It’s not easy for governments to do U-turns, although this one is getting the hang of it, and we should thank Defra Minister, Richard Benyon for his re-think. Thank you! The RSPB did a good job, after being…
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I still await Defra’s response to my FOI/EIR request (too busy buzzard bothering?). There are various interesting parts of NE’s response to my request. As I read the NE response there is no hint that they ceased legal action because they found they were mistaken or their evidence was weak – they certainly don’t say…
Pheasants, buzzards and Defra
Yesterday, I was supposed to be thinking about pheasants as I am writing a fantastically interesting article about them for a well-known and excellent wildlife magazine. And following the disclosure of Defra’s wrong-headed plans to pour £375k of taxpayers’ money into a study of how to allow more pheasants to be shot and fewer to…
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Here is the full response which I have received from Natural England in response to my request for information about the ‘Walshaw Moor Affair’ (see 15 previous blogs, all tagged with ‘wuthering’, the first of which is listed here). I will comment on this later in the week. But there are some very interesting passages…
Maybe no harriers in England? Lead poisoning suspected. And a bit of wuthering.
The news that there may be no hen harriers nesting in England this year is sad but this day, if it has come, was going to come soon. Of course, extinction in England is a bit of an odd thing as England is ‘just’ a line on a map and on other sides of that…
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Defra, as Natural England, say that they need more time to answer my questions. I don’t accept that they do. But it would obviously be rather strange if after all this time, and extra time, I don’t get some very detailed and full answers to my questions.
A song for Guy
Guy Smith, NFU environment spokesperson asked for the details of species I saw on my BBS visit. I wonder why. I’ll do better than that Guy, I’ll list the species seen on my visit last Saturday and compare them with those seen on my first visit to this BBS square almost exactly seven years ago…
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My Freedom of Information requests which were posted on this blog on 2 April (for example, this one) should have been answered this week since they were electronically transmitted to Natural England and Defra on that day. I followed up by posting letters to Defra and Natural England. Yesterday, at 1637, I received an email…
Fair enough Minister
On Monday I did an interview for the BBC Farming Today programme, with the NFU’s Guy Smith. If you want to listen to that interview you can but you won’t learn anything new from it as the NFU is still in denial over the loss of farmland wildlife and the role that farming has played…