Walshaw Moor is owned by Richard Bannister who almost always seems to be described as ‘wealthy’ so I guess he must be. He lives near the estate and is a director of Walshaw Moor Estate alongside being an apparently successful businessman. As far as I can recall, he and I have never met but he…
Tag: shooting
Wuthering Moors 7
If you aren’t interested in what I am beginning to think of as the ‘Walshaw Moor affair’ then come back to this blog tomorrow – but if you are, then come back to this blog during the day to see a range of blogs on the subject. The story so far: the peculiarly British sport…
Wuthering moors 3
The Heather and Grass Burning Code of 2007 may have escaped your attention although it is a quite remarkable document carrying, as it does, the logos of Defra, Natural England, the Moorland Association, the CLA, the NFU, the Heather Trust and the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation. In paragraph 10 that document clearly states that: There should…
Wuthering moors 2
Last Wednesday all Natural England staff received an email entitled Natural England’s work in the uplands. It tried to explain why NE’s Chair, Poul Christensen, had been reported as saying that NE’s Vital Uplands document had ‘let his organisation down badly’. Because not everyone agreed with the NE vision, which you may have noticed was…
Wuthering moors
Last week Natural England ‘reached an agreement’ with the Walshaw Moor estate which is feared by some to be a euphemism for caving in to intense pressure from grouse shooting interests. The joint statement, which reads to me as though it were made through clenched teeth, from NE and the estate, reads as follows: “Walshaw…
Peregrines – moor is fewer.
I see peregrines quite often these days, but it’s usually in the middle of London (like this image is of one in the middle of Manchester) rather than in the uplands where I would only have expected to see them in my youth. This is good – I’m glad they have become commoner and more…
Last word from me on grouse and harriers – for a while – probably
I’d like to thank all the contributors to the lively debate here over the last week on the way forward in the conflict between grouse shooting interests and the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of our cherished raptors. But seriously, thank you for joining in, especially to those from the shooting community. Did we…
Quotas – has their time come?
Driven grouse shooting is not without its benefits to the economy and ecology of the uplands although we could argue for years (and have done!) over exactly what are those benefits. The trouble with it is that it is based on the illegal killing of several protected raptor species (most notably, but not exclusively, golden…
Coping with grouse shooting and coping with hen harriers
Given the scale of illegal killing of raptors associated with driven grouse shooting it would be fair enough, in my opinion, for conservation organisations to campaign for the abolition of grouse shooting – but none of them yet does. Instead, conservationists are putting their members’ money into trying to find a legal way out for…
How glorious? The illegality at the heart of grouse shooting.
Today is the traditional start of the grouse shooting season – the Glorious 12th. Few red grouse will be shot today, but between now and the 10 December the season will be on, and guns will be willing to pay upwards of £1500 a day for shooting their share of 200,000 red grouse shot in…