Charlie Moores talks with Nicola Hodgins, Policy Manager at WDC (Whale and Dolphin Conservation). about the Grind – the killing of Pilot Whales and dolphins in the Faroe Islands. Our conversation was triggered of course by the unprecedented mass killing of more than 1400 Atlantic White-sided Dolphins by Faroese hunters on September 12th, and […]

  Charlie Moores in conversation with Dr Alex Lees, Senior Lecturer in Conservation Biology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Recently Alex and Dr Jack Shutt published a paper that was widely reported in the mainstream media titled “Killing with kindness: Does widespread generalised provisioning of wildlife help or hinder biodiversity conservation efforts?”  That’s quite a striking […]

A shortcast about fox cub hunting or cubbing from Charlie Moores. A version of this audio first appeared in an Off The Leash Podcast in August (link below) but with so many reports of cubbing on social media at the moment, we felt that it would be helpful to state again what cubbing is and […]

As part of The War on Wildlife Project we’ve been writing about the calls being made by the RSPB and councils across northern England to ban the deliberate setting of fires on grouse moors by the grouse shooting industry (see waronwildlife.co.uk/?s=burning). Recently Kirklees council joined Sheffield, York, Calderdale, and Wakefield Councils, plus the Mayor of […]

Welcome to a podcast made to support Wild Wellbeing week, a project being run as part of Let’s Notice Nature, a joint initiative of Scottish Badgers and the Scottish Wildlife Trust delivered as part of the National Lottery supported ‘Earn Your Stripes’ project – a skills development programme promoting diversity and social inclusion. To bring […]

Australian conservationist and scientist Dr Mike Bossley is famed for his work studying the dolphins that live in Adelaide’s Port River. He’s known many of them since they were young watching them grow up, form friendship groups and start their own families. Dedicated to helping the dolphins, Mike has tirelessly documented human impacts on their […]

This podcast, a conversation between Charlie Moores and marine conservationists Philippa Brakes and Carl Safina, is the fourth in a short series of posts on animal culture – which is perhaps most easily thought of as “if behaviour is what animals do, then culture is how they do it”: it’s about social learning, the passing […]

Wildlife persecution is a regrettable fact of life in parts of the countryside, particularly those areas managed for shooting. Much of it takes place just out of sight, but we can help tackle it if we know where to look and what to look out for. In this podcast, recorded ‘in the field’ in southern […]

While researching for a series of podcasts looking at how the Covid-19 pandemic was impacting conservation Charlie Moores was put in touch with Phillipa Brakes, a research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a charity dedicated to the protection of whales and dolphins. Philippa and Charlie had spoken before and at the time had prepped […]

17-year-old Mya-Rose Craig is a young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. Based near Bristol in the UK, she uses her Birdgirl blog to write posts about birding, conservation and environmental issues from around the world. But while Mya’s perhaps best known as a birdwatcher, she’s also a courageous advocate for […]

Dr Mark Avery is a conservationist, author, founding director of WildJustice, and a contributor to the People’s Manifesto for Wildlife as the Minister for Upland Ecology. Charlie Moores spoke with Mark in Buxton (on the edge of the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire) for the podcast series ‘The People’s Manifesto for Wildlife – Revisited’ […]

Hen Harriers are protected birds of prey, once widespread across the UK but now rare and more or less breeding only on moorland, where they are illegally killed because they take Red grouse chicks – the same grouse chicks that shooting estates are farming at ever-increasing densities to sell to clients for up to 120 […]

Hosted by Charlie Moores this is a conversation with two of the UK’s most knowledgeable campaigners against the badger cull – Dr Iain McGill who heads up the Brighton-based Prion Interest Group and Dominic Dyer chef-executive of the Badger Trust and author of ‘Badgered to Death – the People and Politics of the Badger Cull’. […]

Ban Bloodsports on Yorkshire’s Moors say on their website at stoptheshoot.com that their mission is “to end grouse shooting on Yorkshire’s moors, to free the way for these spaces to be managed in a way where their full potential can be reached. Through solid research, pro-active educational initiatives, investigations and legal advocacy. By educating the […]

Wild Justice is a not-for-profit company set up by three of the UK’s most renowned campaigners and conservationists: Dr Mark Avery, Chris Packham, and Dr Ruth Tingay. It launched on the 13th of February this year, with the aim of taking legal cases on behalf of wildlife against public bodies where they are failing to […]

Badgers are being killed in their tens of thousands under a government policy designed to combat btb or bovine tuberculosis, a disease of cattle the greatest impact of which is perhaps that the meat from animals that test positive for btb can not be sold overseas. Infected cattle are invariably killed as well. While farmers […]

[This podcast was originally published on Lush Player in May 2017] A writer, conservationist and producer at BBC Radio, Mary Colwell walked 500 miles in 2016 to raise awareness about the startling crash in the number of curlews breeding in Ireland and across the southern half of the UK. She recently launched a petition on […]

Since the start of the badger cull – the government-sanctioned killing of a protected species to control Bovine Tuberculosis, a disease of dairy cattle – tens of thousands of badgers have been shot: either cage trapped then shot at close range or shot at night as they move around their territories. The vast majority of […]

In September 2017 the Badger Trust wrote on their website that “DEFRA [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs] has announced the continuation and expansion of the killing of thousands of badgers across England. 11 new zones have been confirmed with a maximum number of 32,247 badgers to be killed in 2017 alone! This […]

In November 2016 Charlie Moores was invited to interview chief-executive of the Badger Trust and policy advisor to the Born Free Foundation, Dominic Dyer, about his new book ‘Badgered to Death’ in front of a small audience at Waterstone’s bookstore in Cambridge. ‘Badgered to Death’ looks unflinchingly at our somewhat chequered past with the UK’s […]

Most of us are aware now that biodiversity is in decline. Plant biodiversity here in the UK has especially suffered: wildflowers have been lost from huge areas of Britain, and so have the pollinators and other invertebrates that depend on them. Conservationists are having to look to protect what’s left of our wildlife in areas […]

The Lion: King of the Jungle, the Big Beast, star of the Lion King, one of the world’s best known and best-loved animals – or perhaps more accurately a wild cat of the open plains whose population, according to a 2015 statement by the IUCN, has declined approximately 42% over the past 21 years, and […]

Following a relatively short career as a vet, Gill Lewis took her love of wildlife and the natural world and became a strong and highly effective voice against wildlife persecution and environmental degradation. Now a multi-award-winning children’s author, her young heroes and heroines share the pages of her books with Moon Bears, gorillas, and – […]

Last year Chris Packham declared that there is a War on Wildlife in the UK, and conservationists and many scientists are convinced that there is indeed an ongoing war on our wildlife, especially where the targeting of birds of prey is concerned. It’s often said, though, that the first casualty of war is the truth. […]