Ben Macdonald is a conservation writer and television producer. The paperback of his book Rebirding is now available from £8.70 here. Twitter: @Rebirding1 Imagine that you want to upgrade your car. You walk into a showroom. There are three models available – all with various degrees of rust. The showman explains at great length that…
Tag: golden eagle
Sign this petition today please
Tomorrow Scottish MSPs will vote on whether to make Mountain Hares a protected species. Mountain Hares are killed in large numbers on so-called sporting estates, largely grouse moors. The main reason, or excuse, is that Mountain Hares carry a tick which carries a virus which affects all sorts of other wildlife but including Red Grouse….
Tim Melling – Mountain Hare
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Tim writes: the Mountain Hares in the Peak District were introduced from Scotland during the Nineteenth Century by the shooting fraternity after some diversity of things to kill. Ironically the gamekeepers are trying to get rid of them as unnecessary vectors of ticks that can pass the disease louping ill on to grouse. In Scotland…
You won’t see this ReTweeted by grouse shooters
It’s always interesting to see what the grouse shooting lobby say on social media, and who retweets it. Here’s an example from last week by the newly formed (‘independent’) Campaign for the Protection of Moorland Communities; This was retweeted by Amanda Anderson (as you can see above) the Director of the Moorland Association, by the…
Press release – Trees for Life
Volunteers isolate at Highlands ‘lost world’ to save thousands of young trees A team of six people from Trees for Life have been voluntarily isolating themselves at the charity’s flagship Dundreggan rewilding estate in Glenmoriston, near Loch Ness in the Highlands since 23 March – to save more than 100,000 native young trees from being…
Guest blog – Peregrines and licences by Bob Elliot
Bob was the head of the investigations and species protection team for the RSPB for 14 years, fighting wildlife crime both in the UK and internationally. He is now the Director for OneKind, an animal welfare charity based in Edinburgh, that exposes cruelty and persecution to Scotland’s animals via investigations, research and campaigning. @onekindtweet OneKind…
Tim Melling – Steppe Eagle
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Tim writes: Steppe Eagles (Aquila nipalensis) are a bit smaller than Golden Eagles and breed across the desert steppes of Central Asia but migrate south to winter in sub-Saharan Africa, India and Southeast Asia. Huge numbers pass through certain places on migration, such as the Middle East and Nepal, and its name (nipalensis) refers to…
Are things getting better on raptor persecution?
Are things getting better – is raptor persecution decreasing? Let’s start from the basics. Killing birds of prey is illegal, and has been since 1954 (and partly before that). Most killing of birds of prey is carried out by people with jobs in the game management industries where birds of prey are seen, partly rightly,…
Wildlife crime on grouse moors so well-established that it features on TV quiz shows
On University Challenge (Christmas series) the other night there was a question about which species is ‘… said by the RSPB to be the UK’s most intensively persecuted bird, partly because of illegal killing by gamekeepers on grouse moors’. Neither team got Hen Harrier (even though the scientific name had been given and some other…
Tim Melling – the Sichuan Treecreeper
Tim writes: the Common Treecreeper was described new to science back in 1758, and even its near-identical cousin Short-toed Treecreeper was described back in 1820. But this Sichuan Treecreeper was described new to science from 14 collected specimens in 1995, when it was thought to be a subspecies of Common Treecreeper. But Common Treecreeper was…