Stephen Murphy of Natural England is backing up the Moorland Association’s nonsense that having brood meddling is turning gamekeepers into good guys according to a report in the Lancashire Post. I’m looking forward to writing in some detail about brood meddling again when we receive judgement from Ms Justice Lang but as we said when…
Tag: hen harrier
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…
RPPDG thoughts
The non-attendance of the pro-shooting organisations at last week’s Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (RPPDG) meeting (you read about it first here but see also my further blog, the coverage in RPUK here, here and here and The Times) was a big miscalculation on their parts, and one from which their reputations are unlikely to…
Our days in court
It’s a bit difficult to know what to say about our three days in court (5 and 6 December and 17 January) challenging the decision of Natural England to license brood meddling of Hen Harriers. The judge, is considering the cases made by our side and the RSPB that the licensing was unlawful, and the…
Another nail
River – a female Hen Harrier fledged in Bowland in 2018. Photo: RSPB The loss of yet another Hen Harrier is another nail in driven grouse shooting’s coffin. We don’t know much about River except she went to Yorkshire and disappeared on a driven grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB. She was tagged in Bowland…
Helping the police with their enquiries…?
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/wildlife-and-the-law/wild-bird-crime/the-birdcrime-report/ The walk-out of shooting organisations from the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (revealed by this blog on Friday) is very much to be welcomed. They have played an almost entirely negative role in this group. In my opinion, justice, birds of prey and the group’s work are all better off without their presence. We…
Guest blog series, A Break from Humanity (8) by Ian Carter.
Comments Off on Guest blog series, A Break from Humanity (8) by Ian Carter.
Continued from last Saturday If you read anything about the island of Colonsay you probably won’t get far without a reference to ‘the Scottish Highlands and Islands in miniature’. A cursory assessment from the deck of the ferry, followed by a twenty-minute drive around the island’s only single-track loop road showed why it had earned…
Gilruth in The Field
There is a ridiculous article in The Field, penned by Andrew Gilruth of GWCT, which starts with the sentence ‘Our raptors arguably live in a golden age’ which sets a new standard for nonsense, even from the once rather impressive, and now rather irrelevant folk in Fordingbridge. Chipping in, in the race for the most…
A year ago
It is appropriate, perhaps, that a year ago today Natural England issued a licence for the brood meddling of Hen Harriers. Tomorrow will see the third and final day of the court hearing of my legal challenge, and a similar but separate one by the RSPB, against that decision. We will not hear the judge’s…
You reckon?
RaptorPersecutionUK wrote about this letter in the Shooting Gazette recently (see here). Mr Davis’s main point, that shooting organisations need to get together and make a plan of attack (an interesting choice of words), just isn’t going to happen any more than it does at the moment. I’d say that the shooting organisations do quite…