Grouse shooting industry suspends burning season following major blaze on Meltham Moor Friday, 27 March 2020 Grouse moor burning season has prematurely ended from today after the Moorland Association requested its members stop the practice. It follows more than 200 hectares of rare blanket bog being damaged in a major blaze on Meltham Moor, West…
Tag: grouse shooting
Moorland Association and Scottish Land and Estates implore their members to cease heather burning
It’s difficult to hide a fire on open moorland – this is the recent controversial fire at Deer Hill – seen from about five miles away. Both Moorland Association and Scottish Land and Estates have asked their members to cease heather burning at this time in order not to fill peoples’ lungs with smoke at…
Moorland managers exhibit further lack of control
West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service has ordered landowners to stop heather burning with “immediate effect” after 15 (some reports say 20) fire vehicles, and crews, had to respond to a fire that got out of control. Nick Smith, assistant chief fire officer with West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, said; We are disappointed to…
A year ago
A year ago this very important paper looking at the fate of satellite-tagged Hen Harriers was published in Nature Communications. It’s open access and so you can read it but it does take quite a bit of reading. Here is my post from last year which explains what the paper found – several people have…
Two Hen Harrier arrests
Raptor Persecution UK does a fantastic job of keeping us all informed about raptor persecution, and their Twitter profile‘s words of ‘Think illegal raptor persecution is a thing of the past? Think again!‘ are just spot on. Last week and last night RPUK brought us all news of two alleged observed shootings of ‘protected’ Hen…
Brood meddling appeal
Two weeks today, we will be going back into the courts to appeal the judgment of Hon Justice Lang on brood meddling of Hen Harriers. We, and the RSPB, will be seeking to overturn her judgment that brood meddling of this threatened bird was legal because it was just, for now, research. Win or lose,…
Less burning, not moor burning (2)
Here is the response to the email from the previous blog post: Sorry for the delay in my response. I have been getting some advice on the issue from our environmental health team. As you are well aware heather burning is a legal activity subject to the Heather and Grass (Burning) Regulations (as amended) 1987….
Moorland Association again – questions, questions, questions
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In the same response to DEFRA in which the Moorland Association set out their shopping list for stopping damaging upland areas, they asked DEFRA a number, in fact 14 is the number, of questions about what they call the policy context. The actual policy context for stopping burning peatlands is the damage to blanket bogs…
DEFRA’s very clear explanation
This how DEFRA explains its position on legislation to end burning on deep peat – it should be on all peat, just as the Committee on Climate Change recommended. 54% of pre-existing consents to burn remain – that means that only about a half of landowners have agreed voluntarily to any change. You may remember…
Opening the lid on Moorland Association pressure on DEFRA
I’ve praised Guy Shrubsole’s adroitness with the information request before – here are some more products of the information requester’s art. As a start, there is more to come, I’ll post here three letters between the Moorland Association and DEFRA from last late summer. They all relate to burning of heather as part of the…