Tag: shooting

Harrogate Informer or Raptor Persecution UK

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Remember the regular segment on the Harry Hill programme ‘TV Burp’ which involved setting two unlikely opponents alongside each other and asking “Which is better? There’s only one way to find out: FIGHT!”? We’re of course not suggesting that a local newspaper and the most respected blog on bird of prey persecution on the internet are or should be involved in a fight – but ‘Which is better?’ certainly came to mind when going through Google Alerts this morning.

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RSPB consultation on gamebird shooting: Wild Justice response and our thoughts

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Recently the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (the RSPB, once the UK’s only wildlife charity focussed entirely on birds, but now promoting itself as the organisation that gives nature a home – so the Royal Society for the Protection of Biodiversity perhaps?) held a consultation on so-called ‘gamebird shooting’ – the use of – er, birds as target practice. They have drawn up seven draft principles, ostensibly to help determine whether/how the RSPB should review its policy on game bird shooting and associated land management.

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While we were in lockdown, the wildlife criminals were out in force

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It was feared (or suspected) that wildlife criminals would exploit the Covid-19 lockdown to ramp up illegal killing while monitors and field workers were obeying the rules and staying inside. Latest figures released by the RSPB show that the wildlife criminals have indeed been out in force, selfishly and illegally turning their guns and poisons on raptors. It seems they just can’t stop themselves. Which makes it way past time we stopped them instead.

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Solastalgia – a quiet mourning

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Solastalgia describes, according to philosopher Glenn Albrecht, the man who coined the term, “the feeling of distress associated with environmental change close to your home”. It seems to be a perfect word to describe a sadness that I’m sure many can feel sneaking up on us as we come out of lockdown, as we hurtle into a ‘new normal’ that I don’t think will look much different to the ‘old normal’.

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What do we do with a problem like Malta?

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Malta. For some a small, fiercely independent island in the Mediterranean with a rich culture and a proud population. To others a holiday destination that offers sun, sea, and sand. For yet more of us, it’s ‘that place where migrant birds die‘, a seemingly lawless rock where shooting Turtle Doves, Quail, and Honey Buzzards is a vile, outdated hobby practiced by a thuggish minority supported by yet another bunch of trigger-happy hunting lobbyists who think that ‘tradition’ outweighs international conservation concerns, EU law, and the right to life of species that simply can’t survive yet another pressure inflicted upon them by us humans…

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New ‘protection’ for stoats?

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As of today, stoats here in the UK have gained a small measure of protection for the first time (Ireland gave stoats legal protection under their Wildlife Act 1976 / 2000). That should be good news for Britain’s stoats because they are killed in massive numbers by gamekeepers (no-one knows how many because no-one is required to keep a tally). But, as Charlie Moores writes, protection for any animal that the shooting industry wants rid of is rarely straightforward…

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