FSA advice on eating game

Yesterday afternoon the Food Standards Agency (FSA)  published revised guidance on eating game shot with lead. It starts: ‘The Food Standards Agency is advising people that eating lead-shot game on a frequent basis can expose them to potentially harmful levels of lead. The FSA’s advice is that frequent consumers of lead-shot game should eat less…

Turtle doves under fire

I haven’t seen a turtle dove in Northamptonshire this year and it seems I am not the only one. This was a bird that I didn’t see in the north Somerset countryside where I grew up.  It was only when we came on holiday to East Anglia that I saw my first turtle dove –…

Guest Blog – response to Mark Avery by Magnus Linklater

Magnus Linklater is a former editor of The Scotsman and Scottish Editor of The Times. He is trustee of an estate in Perthshire, and a regular commentator on rural affairs.   I knew that taking on the RSPB would be nothing but trouble. But I was not quite prepared for the volume and ferocity of…

Wuthering Moors 27

Blogs entitled ‘Wuthering Moors’ form a series of articles about the Walshaw Moor Estate and its relationship with Natural England and Defra. The Observer published this letter from a sizeable group of Hebden Bridge residents who are concerned that the management of nearby grouse moors including Walshaw Moor has increased the risk of flooding for…