Raptor Persecution UK lift the lid on a can of worms in two blogs today (here and here). It’s all about the puzzling tale of Rowan who was ‘likely to have been shot’ (see RPUK blog of 7 November, and my own of 11 November) – and now we know, as if we didn’t before…
Tag: grouse shooting
Moorland Management Plans in England
It’s a long time now since I worked in nature conservation and so increasingly I find that the jargon has moved on from that with which I used to be entirely comfortable. When Moorland Management Plans came up in a conversation with an old friend I had to admit to being unaware of what they…
Burning issues 2
George Eustice was right to suggest that we (for it is our money) should withdraw subsidies from grouse moors. Take a look at this fine crop of burned ground and realise that you are probably paying £56/ha to its owner every year. That £56/yr certainly pays for the matches needed to set this land alight….
Monbiot, Batters on the Vine
I very rarely listen to Radio2 – I am so firmly a Radio4 stick-in-the-mud – so I am grateful to a reader of this blog for pointing me in the direction of the Jeremy Vine show this lunch time (although I feel rather bad about temporarily deserting Martha Kearney) where there was what passes for…
If only…
David Mitchell, or David Mitchell Coren as we might call him, wrote an excellent column on telling the truth yesterday. One of his points, with which I agree, is that the good guys need to be squeaky-clean in this so-called post-truth age. We will only live in a post-truth age if we allow truth to…
Hen Harrier InAction Plan
Sometimes something is so awful that you just hope it will go away – and that’s how I feel about the Defra Hen Harrier InAction Plan which fails to address the real problem for the Hen Harrier – that it is illegally killed by grouse shooting interests because it eats Red Grouse that they would…
Brexit, CAP and grouse moors 2
The disappearance of income support for grouse moors in a post-Brexit world is apparently on the cards – and is a sound policy route to follow as a small aspect of making our money work better for taxpayers, consumers and farmers alike. But the other side of the coin is that more money should be…
Brexit, CAP and grouse shooting
Sometimes several streams of argument begin to run together and form a river. This week there have been signs that we are at standing at the headwaters of a river – let’s hope it doesn’t trickle into the sands. The biggest political game on the block is undoubtedly Brexit – and we all know what…
Ho! ho! ho! HOT wishes you a meddling merry Christmas!
It’s so lovely that the Hawk and Owl Trust trustees have sent us all a Christmas message. And I see that the HOT have gained one Henry Robinson as a trustee. Could this be (I think it could) the past president of the Country Landowners Association? It’s a small world isn’t it? Remember the last…
A press release from the RSPB in Scotland
STARTS RSPB Scotland has dismissed a press release issued today by the “Gift of Grouse” campaign that attempts to draw a veil over the continued persecution of birds of prey on areas of land managed intensively for driven grouse shooting. The reports on which these assertions are based are not in the public domain, and…