After 150 years of being treated as a quaint rural pastime, grouse shooting is now under the microscope – unless it reforms it is doomed, and it may drag other country sports down with it. On Saturday, the start of the grouse shooting season, the social media hashtag #inglorious12th was trending, and a social media […]
Tag: pesticide
POLL: Should wildlife-killing “cyanide bombs” be banned?
Just weeks ago, a teenager in Idaho almost lost his life and had to watch helplessly as his dog died in front of him. That senseless tragedy was a result of the government’s war on wildlife, with its continued use of deadly devices — otherwise known as M-44s, or “cyanide bombs.” Unfortunately, and worryingly, the […]
POLL: Should there be a total ban on bee-harming pesticides?
The world’s most widely used insecticides would be banned from all fields across Europe under draft regulations from the European commission, seen by the Guardian. The documents are the first indication that the powerful commission wants a complete ban and cite “high acute risks to bees”. A ban could be in place this year if […]
POLL: Should Trump ban the use of lead ammunition in hunting?
His head twisted almost upside down and his body all but paralyzed, the bald eagle sat on its haunches, talons clenching, while two humans neared to put him in a cage. They could not save the bird from lead. The eagle was the third this year to die from lead poisoning at the Blue Mountain […]
The Vanishing: Europe’s farmland birds
The Head of Conservation for BirdLife Europe & Central Asia explains how intensive agriculture has made farmland birds one of the most threatened bird groups in Europe. Once upon a time, they were all around us – sights and sounds as familiar as the dusky skies their flocks danced in or the wind whistling through […]
POLL: Should there be a complete ban on neonics to save our bees?
The most widely used class of insecticides in the world is facing a slow death. Called neonicotinoids, or neonics, these bug killers have long been used to treat millions of acres of farmland in the US. But research showing that they sicken or kill bees and other pollinators means neonics could soon lose their grip […]
Can we bring vultures back to Thailand?
It’s the most dramatic bird decline ever recorded – faster even than those that robbed our planet of the Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius or the Dodo Raphus cucullatus. Since the 1990s, a staggering 99% of the vulture population in Asia have disappeared – a drop from several million to just a few thousand. As a […]
First US bumblebee species listed as endangered after numbers plummet
The rusty patched bumblebee, a prized but vanishing pollinator once familiar to much of North America, was listed on Tuesday as an endangered species, becoming the first wild bee in the continental United States to gain such federal protection. One of several species facing sharp declines, the bumblebee known to scientists as Bombus affinis has […]