With today’s call for grouse moor licensing by the Labour Party the SNP needs to act to maintain its formerly leading position on grouse moor reform. In the race to be ‘top UK government’ on grouse shooting reform the SNP government is strolling down the straight, way out ahead of the Conservative Party in England…
Tag: grouse shooting
Labour calls for grouse shooting to be licensed
On the Inglorious 12th, the opening day of the Red Grouse shooting season, Luke Pollard, shadow DEFRA Secretary said: The government has failed to cut wildlife crime and a decade of austerity has left these birds [protected raptors] vulnerable to poaching, with fewer police preventing poaching and fewer officers able to catch those responsible. We…
The Inglorious 12th
Tomorrow is the Inglorious 12th – the traditional start of the grouse shooting season. There couldn’t be a better day to sign our e-action calling for change on the moors – click here to have a look. Many thanks! Over 24,000 e-actions so far (since Saturday).
Criminals show their backsides to Scottish government yet again
I’m sure that Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t personally read my email to her about the poisoned White-tailed Eagle found in the Cairngorms National Park (on a grouse moor) but if she had, I bet the bit that would have stuck in her mind would be the analogy that the shooting industry is showing her and the…
What is happening to the Moorland Association?
This is an email sent to Media House at, by chance, exactly 13:00 today. No response yet. I’m worried about Amanda. And it’s not like the Moorland Association to be so silent this close to the Inglorious 12th. Hi!My name is Dr Mark Avery, I am a blogger. This is a media enquiry about the…
GWCT fact-checking website – does it measure up?
The release of the GWCT fact-checking website is interesting. I wonder whether this marks a significant change in direction of GWCT or just a spasm. We’ll see as time passes. But I would give it a cautiously warm welcome at this stage and hope that it might represent a wish of GWCT to retrace their…
Let’s hope not
I hope this cartoon by Mr Carbo is unnecessarily pessimistic. It remains to be seen whether the SNP government is prepared to act on wildlife crime and unsustainable moorland management. They have acted on Mountain Hares but if they thought that was enough then they have not read the mood of the Scottish electorate nor…
It’s the silly season on the grouse moors
This piece in The National is a hoot. You can always spot dodgy pseudo-science when something is aiming to ‘prove’ something rather than to investigate it. And in this case gamekeepers are going to collect data on birds of prey on grouse moors. Quite what all this is about, who knows? We know birds of…
News from the grousers
Crispin Odey, grouse shooter and funder of You Forgot the Birds (logo any harrier except a Hen) seems like a lovely man. Craig Whitaker MP for Calder Valley whose constituency is often flooded by water pouring off grouse moors, and who spoke in favour of driven grouse shooting in the 2016 debate seems like a…
Inglorious without a doubt
A spreadeagled, poisoned White-tailed Eagle on the heather of a grouse moor surely tolls the death knell for driven grouse shooting. Politicians cannot continue wilfully to ignore the scale of crime against nature that is so closely associated with the niche hobby of shooting Red Grouse for fun. At least they cannot if we all…