One snowy dawn in March, I went hunting for squirrels in the Lake District. In the silent and empty woods beneath the Aira Force waterfall, the only thing moving was a solitary red squirrel, balanced on a nut-filled feeder hanging from a tree. If you grew up, as I did, with the grey squirrel, seeing […]
Tag: trapping
POLL: Should Alaska’s refuges be opened for hunting again?
Sprawling over 77 million acres, Alaska’s 16 national wildlife refuges are peppered with iconic animals, from grizzly bears and black bears to wolves and coyotes. But these predators, which have enjoyed increased protections since this past summer, could once again be hunted using controversial methods such as trapping and baiting. A measure passed by the […]
POLL: Should wildlife crime be enforced by tougher legislation?
Almost 200 reports of shooting, trapping and destruction of birds of prey were received by the RSPB in 2015, the charity said. Some 64 out of the 196 reports were confirmed, including the shooting or attempted shooting of 46 birds of prey, including 16 buzzards, 11 peregrines, three red kites, one red-footed falcon and one […]
POLL: Should birds be killed around airports to avoid bird strikes?
Nearly 70,000 gulls, starling, geese and other birds have been slaughtered in the New York City area, mostly by shooting and trapping, since the 2009 accident in which a jetliner was forced to land in the Hudson river after birds were sucked into its engine. It is not clear whether those killings have made the […]
POLL: Should there be a worldwide ban on fur farms?
Fur seems to be making a high fashion comeback, the September issue of National Geographic reports. “The current revival is a story of the fur trade responding to its critics and often outmaneuvering them, combined with increased demand from the newly wealthy in China, South Korea, and Russia,” writes Richard Conniff. After the animal welfare […]
POLL: Should France enforce the law protecting the Ortolan Bunting?
The French population of the Ortolan Bunting (Emberiza hortulana) has declined by 50-75% in the last 30 years. This, despite hunting of the species being forbidden by law since 1979. It was even made a protected species in 1999. However, each year, about 30.000 Ortolan Buntings are illegally trapped and killed during the autumn migration […]
POLL: Should the trapping of bobcats and beavers be banned?
When I think of fur trappers, I imagine a frontiersman in a coonskin cap paddling his canoe full of beaver pelts down the Hudson River. But when reporter Tom Knudson thinks of trapping, it’s a guy trudging into a forest in Nevada, or some other Western state, to set a steel-jaw trap for a bobcat. […]
POLL: Should the European Union squirrel cull be stopped?
Politicians from the European Union have introduced a new law obliging the United Kingdom, Ireland and Italy to organise the killing of hundreds of thousands of grey squirrels, every year from 2016, using methods that include poisoning, bludgeoning to death or trapping and shooting. This horrid and inhumane “programme” is to be sponsored from the […]