An open letter to the RSPB Chairman Professor Steve Ormerod

Dear Steve Hi!  Happy 60th anniversary of the Protection of Birds Act! It must be around now that you are heading off to Conservation Committee to discuss the RSPB’s conservation work.  And then, in July, there will be a Council meeting, I guess, unless things have changed a lot in the last three years (which…

Wuthering Moors 43

This is the fourth blog today on the subject of burning of blanket bog (see here, here, and here).  These were sparked (!) by the RSPB releasing data on the scale of the issue and calling for an end to the burning of blanket bog.  There has been a little media coverage of this –…

Wuthering Moors 42

The scale of burning of English blanket bogs revealed by the latest RSPB work is scary. There are 127 separate consents (mostly through HLS agreements – ie we taxpayers are paying for it too) for burning on blanket bogs. These affect these seven  Special Areas of Conservation (SACs)(Border Mires, Kielder-Butterburn; Ingleborough Complex; Moor House –…

Wuthering Moors 41

Following my blog ‘first’ thing this morning here is some more information on the damage that burning does to blanket bogs. Martin Harper’s blog today expands on the RSPB’s thinking about burning of blanket bog. More details of the RSPB’s complaint to the EU over the management (they clearly regard it as mis-management, as did…