Tag: North Yorkshire

North Yorkshire | Peregrine found shot at Selby Abbey

Posted on May 21, 2021May 21, 2021 by Charlie Moores

North Yorkshire. A region blighted with grouse shooting estates. A region on its way to becoming synonymous with wildlife crime. Even the local newspapers recognise the appalling record for raptor persecution of this part of the UK: In July last year the Yorkshire Post printed a list of SIXTEEN raptor persecution incidents from just January 2018 to July 2020 under the heading ‘North Yorkshire – a black hole for raptors‘. In October of the same year the Post quoted a frustrated Guy Shorrock, a senior and highly-respected member of the RSPB’s Investigations Team, saying that “North Yorkshire sadly has a diabolical reputation for the illegal shooting, trapping and poisoning of birds of prey. I have been picking up the bodies of raptors for nearly 30 years, and in the current ecological emergency, this cannot continue. Our wildlife needs better protection.” Our wildlife needs better protection. But as yet another bird of prey dies in North Yorkshire, just how convinced are campaigners and activists that anything will change anytime soon? Not convinced at all.

North Yorkshire | Yet another Buzzard found shot

Posted on January 20, 2021January 21, 2021 by Charlie Moores

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…

RPUK | FOI request reveals more ‘missing’ Hen Harriers

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Charlie Moores

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.

North Yorkshire | Peregrine falcons found poisoned in quarry

Posted on October 22, 2020May 21, 2021 by Charlie Moores

What on earth is it with North Yorkshire and birds of prey. As a frustrated Guy Shorrock puts it in this report from the Yorkshire Post (and kudos to the Post, which once described North Yorkshire as a “black hole for raptors“, for writing about the targeting of raptors in their home patch), “North Yorkshire sadly has a diabolical reputation for the illegal shooting, trapping and poisoning of birds of prey. I have been picking up the bodies of raptors for nearly 30 years, and in the current ecological emergency, this cannot continue. Our wildlife needs better protection.” Yes, yes it does. Better protection, better enforcement, and an end to the grouse shooting industry that has been eradicating raptors in North Yorkshire for decades…

Channel 4 News exposes ‘wilful blindness’ of grouse shooters

Posted on September 22, 2020October 27, 2020 by Charlie Moores

“No-one seems to know about it…”, says Channel 4 News reporter Alex Thomson as yet another grouse shooter on The Duchy of Lancaster’s Goathland Moor walks away claiming to know nothing about the illegal killing of a Goshawk by a gamekeeper on the very same moor just a few months ago. The superb Raptor Persecution UK popularised the term ‘wilful blindness’ to characterise the head-in-the-sand attitude of the entire shooting industry when confronted with wildlife crime and boy was it ever on show last night…

Hen Harrier ‘disappears’ in the Yorkshire Dales

Posted on September 17, 2020 by Charlie Moores

Another day and yet another appeal for information after yet another Hen Harrier disappears in the raptor sinkhole that is the Yorkshire Dales while shooting lobbyists issue yet another piece of classic obfuscation: “Just because yet another Hen Harrier disappears somewhere on a glorious grouse moor in the glorious Yorkshire Dales doesn’t mean we had anything to do with it. Anyway, it could still be alive – there was that one time, you know, when that one bird wasn’t dead, I’m sure I read about that in a memo once…” Etc etc etc…Grouse shooting. It’s nothing but the ritual massacre of wild birds, the slaughter of countless hares, foxes, corvid, mustelids, and an industry’s absolute unwillingness to sort out the infection of criminality that ensure this disgusting hobby is and always will be first in the frame when Hen Harriers ‘disappear’ on a moor in one of the worst places in the country for illegal raptor persecution.

The Law and using decoys to shoot birds (applies even in the Yorkshire Dales)

Posted on September 17, 2020September 21, 2020 by Charlie Moores

Brazen. Some criminals just don’t care who sees them. That’s perhaps hardly surprising given how incredibly difficult it is to get a conviction in court. But in yet another tale of everyday wildlife criminals working in one of our so-called ‘national parks’ (many of which are actually essentially privately-owned grouse shooting moors, you know those things you can visit under a generous ‘exemption’ the government gave to its donors) a ‘man’ was filmed using a tethered bird as a decoy which is illegal under the Wildlife and Countryside Act Section 5 (d) – despite what some people would like to claim on social media. Well, we’re always pleased to help, so in case this issue crops up again, here’s what the law says (and we’ve even bolded the relevant text for people who are just too busy killing foxes, weasels, or birds of prey to read the whole page).

Yorkshire Post | Mural protesting raptor persecution

Posted on September 2, 2020September 2, 2020 by Charlie Moores

North Yorkshire. How sad that for many of us the very name of what is undoubtedly a beautiful and evocative part of the UK, has become synonymous with the illegal persecution of birds of prey. Persecution to protect Red Grouse which moorland landowners flog off to the ‘have gun, will travel, don’t especially care what we shoot, and don’t especially care about your missing Hen Harriers‘ crowd. It’s such a shame. It’s become so bad that even local newspapers like the Yorkshire Post (a daily broadsheet published in Leeds and covering the whole of what used to be Yorkshire as well as parts of north Derbyshire and Lincolnshire) appear to have become highly irritated that wildlife criminals are turning their corner of the country into a byword for raptor persecution.

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