I paid a visit to Wicken Fen on Friday evening – it was such a lovely day I wanted to get out and away from a computer for a while. And with my NTS membership card it’s free to get in. Let’s cut to the punchline – we saw a male Hen Harrier twice. Twice,…
Tag: grouse moor
Government response: not so much poor as awful.
Les Wallace’s epetition, having secured over 10,000 signatures, was entitled to an honest, serious and lucid response from Defra but it failed to get one. We know that these responses are signed off by government ministers and we assume that this one was signed off by the minister responsible for the areas covered by the…
NEWS: bad news for grouse shooting
It seems we have another five weeks or so to wait until the long, long, long awaited analysis of NE’s Hen Harrier tagging data is published. But the title of the paper ‘Patterns of satellite tagged hen harrier disappearances suggest widespread illegal killing on British grouse moors’ is somewhat revealing. No doubt Michael Gove and…
Minor update to NE Hen Harrier data (with a new error?)
Natural England has recently, but I’ve only just noticed, published an update to its Hen Harrier data to include data from this year (and some from a little earlier too). The update shows that 5 Hen Harrier chicks were satellite-tagged in England by NE in 2018: 3 have gone missing in the North Pennines (Mabel,…
Guest blog – Blanket bog burning: what’s planned? by Bob Berzins
Natural England has outlined proposals for the restriction of burning but what difference will we see in our uplands? A Freedom of Information request has revealed the following: There is a complicated series of consents which currently allow burning to take place on blanket bog. NE say “The consents will be individually modified or revoked….
Edging closer to 10,000 signatures
Les Wallace’s epetition calling for an economic study of grouse shooting is close to 9,500 signatures. When, I think we can say ‘when’ not ‘if’ now, it gets to 10,000 signatures then it will trigger an inadequate response from Defra. I’ll look forward to reading that in due course. The map of signatures shows the…
Looking good for Les Wallace – petition nears 10,000 signatures
It’s looking good for Les Wallace’s epetition calling for a proper economic study of the costs and benefits of driven grouse shooting – but there’s still some way to go. Another 700 signatures will mean that Defra has to respond to this epetition. My guess is that they will say ‘no’ because the last thing…
GWCT plumbs new depths
Here are some quotes from a press release from Abzed’s Ian Gregory which was released yesterday morning: From: Ian Gregory <ig@abzed.com>Sent: 27 January 2019 09:58Subject: Official Figures Reveal RSPB’s “Increasing Failure” To Protect Endangered Birds Embargo 00.01 Monday 28 January 2019 Government data shows the RSPB is four times less successful with hen harriers…
Adam Watson 1930-2019
Adam Watson. Photo: Ronofcam, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7303182 Adam Watson died on Wednesday. We have lost one of the grand old men of UK ecology and a towering figure in upland ecology. From his doctoral thesis on the life cycle of the Ptarmigan through to his long-term monitoring of Mountain Hares, Adam Watson was a…
Various
I went to the pictures last night – to see Mary Queen of Scots. Good film! I recommend it. She had her head lopped off down the road from here at Fotheringhay. The anniversary comes up on 8 February. It’s impossible for me to watch a film without noticing the bird noises. There were some…