Blogs

Recent high-profile incidents of raptor poisonings have brought the gamekeeping sector’s use of rodenticides under increased scrutiny. 

On-going research led by Associate Professor Andreas Heinemeyer at York University into upland management systems is beginning to show that the results of earlier research based on pre- and immediately post-burning evidence are too simplified; and even wrong when it comes to judging the carbon consequences of managed burning.

We have been waiting with increasing frustration for the publication of a draft Soil Health Action Plan for England (SHAPE) – a policy document that was promised in early 2021 during the debates over putting soil on the face of the Environment Bill (now Act).

It will come as a welcome relief to the farming industry that Defra’s announcement on the 26^th of January finally puts a significant amount of detail into the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) tier of the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme. 

We provide an update on the Hunting with Dogs Bill, snaring, Avian influenza and the Wildlife Management (Grouse) Bill consultation.

This Monday (9 January), the Petitions Committee debated a recent e-petition calling for a ban on the use of snares. Nick Fletcher, who brought the petition, gave a detailed account of how a humane cable restraint, pioneered by the GWCT, differs from a traditional snare.

the Petitions Committee is set to debate ““Make the use of free-running snares illegal for trapping wildlife” on 9^th January and the GWCT has briefed Nick Fletcher MP who will lead the debate as well as other MPs who might be involved.

In the run up to the commencement of COP15 the role of protection in wildlife conservation has been promoted by a number of eNGOS so we thought it useful to consider whether nature benefits from protection – and therefore whether more is the answer.

You would think that there would be a single term to describe the removal of surface vegetation such as scrub, heather and grasses using fire. But this is not the case. There are regional terms, legislative terms and then just plainly incorrect terms resulting in nine possible descriptors for a single practice.