Search Results for: national park

Poisoned Golden Eagle WAS found on a grouse moor

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Of course it was, but how do we know for certain? Because thanks to Ian Thomson, a man who knows more about ‘sorting fact from fiction’ when it comes to raptor persecution than probably anyone else on the planet (the inevitable result of a career spent investigating the endless crimes committed by Scotland’s grouse estates), there is unequivocal clarification that the Golden Eagle found dead on the notorious Invercauld Estate in the so-called Cairngorms National Park in March was indeed found on a grouse moor – and not on tenanted farmland, which was how estate manager Angus McNicol appeared to be trying to spin the story a few days ago (to quote from newspapers covering the discovery, “The area where the bird was found is on a let farm in an area which is managed for sheep farming and is on the edge of an area of native woodland regeneration. It is not managed for driven grouse shooting”). Ian, who is directly involved in the investigation and would not risk his reputation and integrity by simply making things up (in stark contrast with the grouse shooting industry of course), left a comment on the Raptor Persecution UK blog which firmly contradicted Mr McNicol’s ‘assertion’.

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Scotland | Golden Eagle found poisoned on Invercauld Estate

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Police Scotland have launched an appeal for information (good luck with that, wildlife criminals make the mafia seem like blabbermouths) after a Golden Eagle was found dead on a shooting estate in a so-called ‘national park’ that – how can we put this without being sued – has long been linked with wildlife crime and raptor persecution: the Cairngorms. There are very few details but apparently the bird ‘contained pesticide’. To ordinary folk, a pesticide might seem an odd thing to find in a Golden Eagle, but these extremely toxic chemicals (most of which are banned) are routinely used to eradicate native wildlife. We’ve covered numerous examples on this website involving everything from Buzzards, Sparrowhawks, Peregrines, White-tailed Eagles, Red Kites, Hen Harriers, and of course Golden Eagles. Most occur on or near shooting estates.

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Snaring in the news again

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Literally every week more examples of poor snaring practice are highlighted in the media. Two such examples have been highlighted across social media this weekend by the Hunt Investigation Team and Moorland Monitors. In the first, a badger was found trapped in a snare which was “wrapped around its neck”. In the second, a dog was caught on in a snare set on Access Land on Kinder – National Trust land in the infamous wildlife crime hotspot of the Peak District ‘national park’. Incidents like this are understandably always upsetting for the owners of companion animals, but let’s also acknowledge that the snare was set to do exactly what it did: trap an animal. Dogs and foxes are closely related. they share the same capacity for sentience, for fear, for feeling pain. Unlike a pet that is (under most circumstances) fed and looked after by an owner, a wild animal has no choice but to hunt to feed itself and its family though. Countless thousands of foxes are being trapped and are suffering in snares like this every week, drawn to the overabundance of prey that shoots ‘provide’.

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Another Peregrine poisoned on a Peak District grouse moor

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Another day, and the RSPB are having to write yet another press-release (posted below) describing yet another dead Peregrine found poisoned inside one of our so-called ‘national parks’ – the notorious ‘Dark Peak’ region of the Peak District National Park, a raptor persecution hotspot dominated by grouse farms and patrolled by gamekeepers. This particular Peregrine was found next to a baited Wood Pigeon by a fell runner nine months ago, and the toxicology results have only just been released. Not Carbofuran this time, but another favourite of the ‘professional poisoner’: bendiocarb, a constituent of the infamous ‘Nidderdale Cocktail’. Why the delay in letting the public know about highly potent illegal poisons being used in an open area with public access is not currently known. Let’s hope it’s a Covid-related issue and not ‘shielding’ of a more sinister type…If you would like to help stop this in the future, please learn to Recognise incidents of wildlife crime, learn how to Record them properly, and always Report them: even if nothing seems to be done immediately, it does help establish a pattern and help to ensure that the ‘professionals’ know we’re out there watching them.

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North Yorkshire | Yet another Buzzard found shot

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Another day, another dead Buzzard. Hard to believe that all birds of prey have been protected for more than sixty years. How have we come to this? We live in a denuded country with such small wildlife populations they should be a national embarrassment but where killing wildlife is still an everyday event. Law enforcement is spotty and convictions are extremely rare. On the huge grouse farms in our so-called ‘national parks’ wildlife crime underpins driven grouse shooting (it’s unprofitable if birds of prey aren’t illegally stopped from taking Red Grouse). Pheasant shoots routinely complain about the ‘explosion’ in raptor numbers. Even our major nature charities won’t condemn the very same shooting industry that wants licences to remove ‘nuisance’ Buzzards…

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RPUK | FOI request reveals more ‘missing’ Hen Harriers

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The always excellent Raptor Persecution UK (RPUK) website has posted two blogs (today and yesterday) based on Freedom of Information (FOI) requests made to Natural England, nominally “the government’s adviser for the natural environment in England” but a department which has been so ‘stripped to the bone’ by successive governments that it now appears toothless and ineffective in the face of the rising tide of wildlife crime impacting many of our mammals and birds (and in some examples actually appears to be facilitating the very shooting industry it ought to be monitoring – see Natural England protects shoot from ‘disturbance’). According to the information released by Natural England under FoI regs, a number of satellite-tagged Hen Harriers have gone ‘missing’ since September 2020 including a brood-meddled male whose tag’s last known fix was on 20th September 2020, right next to a grouse moor in North Yorkshire, and another young bird whose last tag’s fix was inside the Yorkshire Dales National park.

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Peterborough Council bans foxhunting

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Reverberations from the secretly-recorded Hunting Office webinars released by the Hunt Saboteurs Association in November continue to be felt. While the police investigate their contents (presumably to check for conspiracy to break the law or misconduct in a public office), major landowning organisations and charities from the National Trust and Forestry England to United Utilities and the Lake District National Park have suspended the issuance of licences for so-called ‘trail hunting’ on their land. Now in a decision that will hopefully be picked up in the same way that northern councils have increasingly banned moorland burning by gamekeepers, last night Peterborough City Council voted on a motion submitted by Labour and Cooperative member for North ward Cllr Ansar Ali to ban hunting on their land.

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Kirklees council backs plans to stop grouse moor burning

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In what is starting to look like a flood (one, ironically, caused just like the downstream floods in eg Hebden Bridge by gamekeepers), yet another council in northern England has backed plans to ban the burn – the routine destruction of the uplands to engineer habitats to allow shooters to kill more grouse. Kirklees, a local government district of West Yorkshire on the edge of the Peak District ‘national park’ (a notorious raptor persecution hotspot), joins Wakefield, Sheffield, York, Doncaster and Calderdale Councils in calling for a ban. The call comes as the grouse moor burning ‘season’ opens again, with a considerable area of grouse moors in the Wessenden Valley expected to begin being set on fire by shoots. Yesterday the RSPB again renewed its own call for peatland burning to stop to protect scarce habitats and wildlife.

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