For our second example of a case of illegal raptor persecution that did not make it to the courts I’ll take you back to the ‘Sandringham harriers case’. This is an extract from Fighting for Birds (pp196-98): Mark writes in Fighting for Birds: I was on a train to London on 24 October 2007 when…
Tag: hen harrier
Four interesting cases – #1
At the BAWC conference I read out some accounts of illegal persecution that had not resulted in court cases, let alone convictions. They illustrate what is apparently happening, and also how difficult it is to get a conviction because of the circumstances of these crimes. This is the first of four such accounts I’ll publish…
Excellent BAWC conference
The second BAWC conference was even better than the excellent first one. Many thanks to the organisers and the sponsors (RSPB, Rare Bird Alert and League Against Cruel Sports) for doing such a great job. Henry is pictured above on board the SS Great Britain as the conference venue was right next to Brunel’s iron…
Sunday book review – An Unreliable History of Tattoos by Paul Thomas
You might be wondering what a book with this title is doing on this website. Well spotted! This is a book which uses the wacky idea that historical characters were tattooed, to tell some jokes. Some of the jokes are ones which you might not want to tell your grandma or your children as they…
Country strife from HoT
We all know that Philip Merricks loves the Hen Harrier as he has been photographed in London cuddling up to one, and so it comes as no surprise that he descibes the bird as ‘magnificent’ in his article in Country Life praising the feckless Defra Hen Harrier non-plan (Is this the glorious solution? 2 March,…
Book review – Raptor by James Macdonald Lockhart
This book was a disappointment. The basic structure is a chapter by chapter account of 15 species of UK raptor, each described in a different place, stretching from Hen Harriers on Orkney in Chapter 1 to Devon Sparrowhawks in Chapter 15. Wrapped into this structure is a tale of the life, and a previous journey,…
Great day
I spent Saturday – a lovely sunny day – inside the SNH conference centre at Battleby – at a Scottish Raptor Study Groups’ conference. It was a great day. I was speaking, which always takes the shine off my day (and perhaps others’ too), but the other speakers were a very impressive line-up. We…
Awful of Natural England, and confused of RSPB
BBC Wildlife Magazine has a good article about the Hen Harrier plan (welcomed by the RSPB) which will do nothing for the Hen Harrier. I am quoted as saying that neither the RSPB nor Natural England should have agreed a plan which does not have targets in it. What is a plan without a…
Politician does something – SHOCK!
They do things differently in Scotland (I’m told – and I will be over the border this weekend so I will be keen to find out for myself). In November 2015 (yes! that recently!), the Wildlife Crime Penalties Review Group published its findings on how wildlife crime in Scotland is dealt with by the criminal…
Liz Truss – why are you suppressing the scientific evidence on lead?
It wouldn’t surprise me if Defra made a shockingly bad decision and failed to reduce the environmental risks of lead ammunition – they have been subject to energetic lobbying from the shooting industry and rather limp pleas from the two environmental NGOs who should be making the running (WWT and RSPB). It is clear that…