Game hunters and gun club members around Ireland are up in arms over a decision to prevent them from going out shooting in the course of their traditional activities. The start of the annual pheasant shooting season, which was due to begin yesterday, has been delayed under Level 5 Covid-19 restrictions after gardaí announced that […]
Tag: Pheasant
Activists sue ministers over release of game birds for shooting
Conservationists are suing the UK government over the release of millions of game birds on to land that is home to rare and threatened species. The campaign group Wild Justice has accused ministers of breaching their legal duties to protect sites of high conservation value in England by failing to control the use of large […]
Defra challenged over ‘unlawful’ release of 57m game birds in UK
Environmental campaigners have issued a legal case against the government to try to halt the release of more than 50m non-native game birds this summer, saying the birds could damage Britain’s most important wildlife sites. Wild Justice, a campaign group led by the environmentalists Chris Packham, Mark Avery and Ruth Tingay, said the annual release […]
Country diary: farmed pheasants are little more than free-range livestock
Out of breath and panting heavily, I breasted the summit of the Lion’s Haunch, paused, then turned, slowly. A stiff pull up a frozen path through low gorse had brought me to the lesser peak of Arthur’s Seat, the extinct volcano that looms above Edinburgh. I stopped to feast on the view, my gaze sweeping […]
Game birds subject to ‘cruel’ conditions, undercover footage shows
Pheasants whose chicks are destined to be shot in the UK are having their septums pierced in order to attach plastic masks to their beaks, according to an undercover film released by activists this week. The method of restraint is illegal in the UK. The video, shot on a farm in Poland, also appears to […]
Fighting Pheasants
This is just so typical of wildlife photography! Two cock Pheasants were on the lawn having a right go at each other in the garden of the house I was working on a couple of weeks ago. This was something I’d wanted to photograph for a long time but I was unable to get any […]
Ground-feeding birds in Southeast Asia may be going extinct outside protected areas
Nature reserves in large parts of Southeast Asia may be the last strongholds for charismatic ground-feeding birds such as quails, partridges and pheasants, together called galliforms, according to a recent study in Conservation Letters. Researchers estimate that five species of galliforms no longer survive outside protected areas in Sundaland, a region comprising the Malay Peninsula […]
POLL: Should the slaughter of grouse on the “Glorious Twelfth” be banned?
With a the start of the grouse-shooting season on the “Glorious Twelfth”, animal rights groups have a new target in their sights – the Ministry of Defence. The government department is one of many public bodies that are coming under pressure to ban the shooting of birds for sport on their land. The League Against […]