Tag: habitats directive

Wuthering Moors 36 – FoI/EIR to NE on Appropriate Assessments for Walshaw Moor

Mark Comments Off on Wuthering Moors 36 – FoI/EIR to NE on Appropriate Assessments for Walshaw Moor

Dear Natural England This is a request under the EI Regs and/or Freedom of Information Act.  It is a simple request for copies of three documents.  It is not a difficult request to fulfill.  Please send me the information within 10 working days of this request, ie by 20 September 2013. This request refers to…

Wuthering Moors 35 – response to Defra’s case

Mark 18 Comments

Here are a few points on Defra’s response to the RSPB’s complaint to the EU Commission in the Walshaw Moor affair (see blog of 12 noon today). 1. Five tracks, five car parks, two ponds dug out of the peat, earthworks? 2.  Some of the alleged damage may not ultimately be restored. 3. NE has…

Wuthering Moors 34 – the Defra response to the EU Commission

Mark 13 Comments

Further to this morning’s post, here is the information levered out of Defra on their response to the EU Commission regarding the RSPB complaint to the EU over the Walshaw Moor affair and its implications. WMEL below refers to the Walshaw Moor Estate Limited. I will post my early thoughts on this, here, at 1500…

Wuthering Moors 31

Mark 17 Comments

Blogs entitled ‘Wuthering Moors’ form a series of articles about the Walshaw Moor Estate and its relationship with Natural England and Defra. Regular readers of this blog may remember that I submitted a request for information to Defra about their response to the RSPB complaint to Europe over the Walshaw Moor affair. I received no…

Guest Blog – ‘Muzzled Watchdog’ to ‘Toothless Terrier’? by Helen Kirk

Mark 26 Comments

Helen Kirk has been described as ‘an indefatigable and tenacious environmental campaigner and amateur naturalist’.  For more than 30 years she has championed and helped safeguard the Humberhead peatlands, and the special plants and creatures that depend on them. She is the executive secretary of the Thorne and Hatfield Moors Conservation Forum and has recently…

Wuthering Moors – 29 The bigger picture

Mark 13 Comments

The Walshaw Moor Estate case is important in itself, and we commend again the RSPB for taking a firm stand on it, but it is also indicative of a much wider and deeper Defra malaise. If Defra is not now acting merely as the Rural Jobs and Fieldsports Department then it needs to get its…

Wuthering Moors 28

Mark 57 Comments

In a move that will be highly embarrassing for the UK government, particularly for Defra and the Defra Minister Richard Benyon, the RSPB today launched a complaint to the European Commission over the Walshaw Moor affair. The RSPB is ‘Stepping up for Nature’ by suggesting that Natural England, the delivery agency of Defra, contravened European…

Wuthering Moors 23

Mark 19 Comments

Natural England spent over £1m of your money pursuing legal action against the Walshaw Moor Estate for alleged breaches (but a mere 43 of them) of the Wildlife and Countryside Act and the Habitats Directive.  The alleged offences related to the building of tracks, paths, car parks, grips, ponds, butts and other associated infrastructure for…

Wuthering Moors 22

Mark 25 Comments

This email exchange shows that the cost of the abandoned legal proceedings by Natural England against the Walshaw Moor Estate were over £1m of taxpayers’ money.  This is your money and you have been given no satisfactory explanation for why the case was dropped when a few months earlier NE had been pursuing the Walshaw…

Wuthering Moors 21

Mark 14 Comments

This email between Natural England’s Andrew Wood and others (including some recipients whose names have been withheld) contains several matters of interest; Its title – this is the first time the the Secretary of State’s, Caroline Spelman’s, name has appeared to my knowledge in this case. It appears that back in December 2011 this case…