Somewhere bleak and unforgiving in Scotland, a golden eagle is suffering an agonising death. The young bird of prey was photographed last week with a metal trap clamped around its leg in the Crathie area of Deeside in Aberdeenshire. The tourist who took this distressing image sent it to the police who expressed serious concerns […]
Tag: persecution
New chicks raise hope for hen harrier survival … but shooters take aim
A row has broken out between conservation groups over the wellbeing of one of Britain’s most critically endangered birds of prey: the hen harrier. The dispute reveals a basic divide between experts on how to save the birds from eradication in Britain. Natural England announces on Sunday that 2019 has been a record year for […]
The Chain Reaction on Nature of a Lack of Education or Knowledge
Everyone loves to get close to wild animals right? That feeling of wow am I really doing this, is that wild *animal* really that close. That’s what goes through my mind when something is a reasonable size to see the detail in hair/ feathers/ scales in my 300mm +1.4 converter (I’m incredibly short and a […]
POLL: Should buzzards be killed to protect pheasants?
Tim Boxall points at a shape in the field bordering the seven-acre wooded pen where he keeps 1,500 pheasants. “Here you are,” he says. “Look! There’s one over here.” He bends down and prises the remains of a pheasant from the long grass. “That’s a buzzard kill, you can tell by the way it’s been […]
Eight tagged golden eagles disappear in Scottish Highlands
Scottish grouse moor owners have been warned they face much tougher regulation after an inquiry was launched into the disappearance of legally protected golden eagles in the Highlands. Roseanna Cunningham, the Scottish environment secretary, ordered the review after eight golden eagles vanished in an area of the Monadhliath mountains known for its grouse shooting, south […]
POLL: Should the coyote continue to be exterminated?
The howl of the coyote is America’s “original national anthem,” says Dan Flores, author of Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History. A totemic animal in Native American mythology, the coyote has lived in North America for more than a million years. But since the early 19th-century, when Lewis and Clark first encountered them, coyotes […]
Long-awaited plan to save England’s hen harrier gets green light
Landowners, shooters, gamekeepers and conservationists have backed a long-delayed government plan to resolve a deep-rooted conflict over England’s most threatened bird of prey. The fate of the hen harrier in the English uplands has been of serious concern following years of illegal persecution by gamekeepers who have used poisoned bait to protect the grouse-shooting interests […]
POLL: Should the National Wildlife Crime Unit be properly funded by the British Government?
There is a crime wave cascading through Britain that the government doesn’t appear much to care about. In Lincolnshire alone, police have arrested or reported for summons 152 people for hare coursing since September 2015, compared with just 65 for the entire “season” last year. Across the country, the Badger Trust logged 441 incidents of badger […]