‘National Parks’ in name only

Long-term subscribers to the Protect the Wild and End Bird Shooting Substacks may have noticed that we often use lower-case and quotation marks when we write ‘national parks’. We do so because the UK’s parks are a long, long way from being the “protected area of land, recognized for its exceptional natural beauty, diverse wildlife, […]

RSPB: Number of Hen Harriers killed or missing reaches new high

A new RSPB report – titled unambiguously Hen Harriers in the firing line – shows record numbers of Hen Harriers being illegally killed or going missing in suspicious circumstances over the past five years, and that the majority of the 102 incidents occurred on or near grouse moors. Hen Harriers are a rare, protected bird […]

Two Hen Harriers ‘missing’ from RSPB’s Geltsdale Reserve

The RSPB has reported this week that two male Hen Harriers have suddenly ‘disappeared’ from their nest sites at Geltsdale in Northern England. The birds vanished within a few days of each other. Another Geltsdale male Hen Harrier was found shot dead on neighbouring land in spring 2023. A Red-listed species in the UK due […]

THREE more Hen Harriers ‘disappear’ on grouse moors

The RSPB has posted a press release today which describes how THREE more Hen Harriers (one of the UK’s most persecuted birds of prey) have ‘vanished’ on grouse moors in northern England. All three of them have been killed within days of the ‘Inglorious 12th’, the start of the 121-day blood-soaked season the industry uses […]

Raptor persecution: if we think ‘shooting’ first who can blame us?

The recent discovery of the bodies of five dead young Goshawks dumped in a wood in Suffolk drew an instant response that shooting estates and their gamekeeper employees were likely to be involved. That feeling was compounded by x-rays that showed shotgun pellets in all five birds. Shooting lobbyists like BASC (the British Association of […]