Standing up for Nature
Farmers weekly, online, published a slightly irritating article on Wild Justice’s legal challenge over the General Licences last week. We sent them the following letter early today, and had a nice chat with them, and they’ve changed the article in response to our letter. Here’s the letter; Your article on Wild Justice’s legal challenge of…
Our big brother blog, Raptor Persecution UK, has done a great job in documenting responses to last week’s damning scientific indictment of the role of driven grouse shooting in causing the near-absence of the Hen Harrier from the English uplands. Here are the links to the various blogs so far and some additions from me;…
A week ago we launched our crowdfunder on the crowdjustice page to fund a judicial review of Natural England’s decision to issue the general Licences GL04-06. Now we have raised over £30,700 of the £36,000 we need to cover our lawyers’ (highly discounted) fees, court costs and the possibility that we may lose the case…
I asked United Utilities for some information on two subjects on 2 March and got my first reply on 19 March – that’s a hell of a lot quicker than Natural England usually manage. Thank you United Utilities. This question was about lead levels in water. This subject came up in questions after my talk…
Yesterday, Wild Justice’s lawyers issued the claim form seeking permission for judicial review of Natural England’s decision to issue the General Licences GL04-06 on 1 January 2019. We haven’t yet got a nice court seal on our claim form as there is a backlog, apparently. We have notified Natural England of our application for judicial…
Yesterday’s devastating scientific description of the impact of grouse shooting on the threatened Hen Harrier (the original paper, my blog on its findings) was greeted by Natural England Director, Rob Cooke with the following: This research identifies the scale of the problem hen harriers have faced on grouse moors. It makes for sobering reading and…
It’s been a long time coming but the paper published today in Nature Communications is crushing proof that grouse moor management is overwhelmingly the source of wildlife crime against Hen Harriers. The open-access paper by Megan Murgatroyd, Stephen Redpath, Stephen Murphy, David Douglas, Richard Saunders and Arjun Amar is entitled: Patterns of satellite tagged hen…
This blog by Dr Paul Sterry follows three earlier ones; Toad Rage, Toad Rage 2 and Toad Rage 3. Paul Sterry has an academic background in freshwater biology and is a passionate conservationist. He has been writing about natural history and photographing wildlife for the last 40 years, with an emphasis on the British scene….
Have you ever read the General Licences? Help yourself, here they are: GL04, GL05 and GL06. So the reasons why you might be able to kill birds under these licences are quite sensible. They include serious damage to crops and livestock. They include the prevention of disease. And they include the conservation of fauna and…
This screenshot was taken (at half time in Wales v Ireland) when the amount of money raised by Wild Justice to challenge the legality of the General Licences reached £14,400. Why was that significant? Because in the first 24 hours of this crowdfunder Wild Justice raised £10/minute every minute through the day and night on…