“Peregrines & Hen Harriers last about a week, then they’re shot”

UK’s largest bird of prey returns to English skies for first time in 240 years

The white-tailed eagle became extinct in England early in the 20th century due to illegal killing, but now these birds, which spend hours perched on a lookout before soaring to high altitudes, have made a comeback
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uks-largest-bird-prey-returns-21967507

White-tailed eagles disappeared from English skies in 1780, but held on in Scotland until 1916. Now these birds, which spend hours perched on a lookout before soaring to high altitudes, have made a comeback of late.
Also known as the fish eagle, they are the UK’s largest bird of prey with a wingspan of up to 2.5 metres. They became extinct here early in the 20th century due to illegal killing.
But thanks to Forestry England and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, who are leading a project to reintroduce them, releasing a group on the Isle of Wight last year, they may become a more frequent sighting in the skies near you.  They are currently GPS tracking four young birds making their first big trips. During winter, they were sedentary, but with better weather they have flown from their nests to Somerset, Kent and Norfolk. Two brave birds, G318 and G393, have flown up as far north as Yorkshire  to roost.  Campaigners are appealing to people for sightings and photos. The birds have black-ridged tails, a hooked yellow beak and golden eyes with yellow legs and talons.
Evidence from the Netherlands, where there is a small but growing population of white-tailed eagles, shows that the species will readily nest in densely populated areas, close to people.
As a generalist predator, an animal that thrives in a wide variety of environments and scavenges on dead animals, white-tailed eagles favour fish in spring/summer, with water birds in autumn/winter, but also take rabbits and hares.

SSPCA appeals for information after crow caught in illegal pole trap

Birds of prey become victims of crime -Channel 4 News 29 May 2020

Alex Thomson Chief Correspondent
They’re some of the most magnificent birds seen in British skies but birds of prey, like the hen harrier, are increasingly the victims of crime – shot and poisoned in some cases to the brink of extinction. – But residents in one village have had enough, as the grouse shooting industry finds itself under pressure to stamp out illegal killings. And a warning there are distressing images of dead animals throughout this report.

https://www.channel4.com/news/birds-of-prey-become-victims-of-crime

Surge in illegal bird of prey killings since the coronavirus lockdown:
RSPB is overrun with reports of kites, buzzards and owls being slaughtered

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8320507/Bird-prey-persecution-crimewave-coronavirus-lockdown.html

• RSPB has been inundated with reports of unlawful killings of birds of prey
• Targeted bird in the last six weeks include buzzards, red kites and goshawks
• Charity says criminals are using the lockdown to shoot the protected birds
• Intentional killing or injury of animals covered by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 comes with an unlimited fine or up to six months in jail

Raptor Persecution in the Forest of Bowland – a video interview with Terry Pickford

https://raptorpolitics.org.uk/2019/09/22/raptor-peresecution-in-the-forest-of-bowland-a-video-interview-with-terry-pickford/
Terry Pickford a founder member of the North West Raptor Group (1967), provides his views in the attached video of the ongoing raptor persecution taking place throughout Lancashire’s Forest of Bowland. Terry points out that the persecution of raptors in his opinion is currently much worse now than it was 40 years ago. Many followers will be astounded to learn that since 2006 Peregrine nesting pairs in the Forest of Bowland have been reduced from 18 to a single breeding pair, with many breeding territories completely destroyed making their future use impossible. No one will be surprised to learn both the Peregrine and Hen Harrier are now being forcibly restricted from settling to breed on all of Bowland’s privately owned shooting estates, being contained to one estate owned by United Utilities Plc.

Raptor Persecution In the Forest of Bowland | Terry Pickford Interview September 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=400&v=4yxcBi9iECY

Welcome to VFS Videos, this is a short video of Graham Clark interviewing Terry Pickford a founder member of the North West Raptor Protection Group discussing Raptor Persecution In the Forest of Bowland, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in the North West of England, United Kingdom. Terry talks about the plight of Peregrine Falcons, Hen Harriers, Goshawks, Short Eared Owls and other birds of prey in the Forest of Bowland. The interview was conducted just below the summit of Burnslack Fell. Click Link below to go to the North West Raptor Protection Group website:- https://raptorpolitics.org.uk/ Click the following link to subscribe to the VFS Videos Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/vfsvideos We can also be found on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/vfsvideos/ We also have a Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/grahamcvfs Thank you for watching this video. If you enjoyed this video please like the video and subscribe to our channel. More videos coming up.

2020: The Spring When Ash Dieback Devastated Unprepared Britain? Denial About Today’s ‘Dutch Elm Disease’

by Tony Gosling, Stroud, Gloucs. Both the BBC and the Daily Mail reported at the beginning of May that ash dieback disease was ‘being defeated’, ‘confined to only a few areas of the UK’. The headlines were ‘Some landscapes show resistance to Ash Dieback‘ and ‘Ash Dieback disease plaguing forests could be stopped by hedgerows and may NOT be as harmful‘ respectively.

Ash is one of the last trees to come into leaf in late April/early May and these articles were published as ash buds were opening. Only here in Gloucestershire many of them are not.

Round Cheltenham, Stow-on-the-Wold and Evesham roughly three-quarters of even the most mature ash trees, estimated age around 200 years old. have new growth on less than half their branches. In the ash woods, and in much Gloucestershire woodland ash predominates, you can see only sky which would normally be entirely blocked out by new green leaves. Many of the ash trees have no growth whatever, looking no different to their winter adornment. entirely grey and bare.

So is 2020 the year it became clear that rather than having been beaten by science, ash dieback could be every bit as bad as the dutch elm disease that wiped out Britain’s elm trees in the early 1970s, apart from a few thousand on the south downs and one the queen was looking after in Edinburgh.

Guardian: The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala’s rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19

A model response. But, like New Zealand, does this not lock Kerala in to Bill Gates’ ‘vaccine or bust’ #ID2020 Big Brother digital ID, over a virus only about as deadly as a bad flu?

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), of which she is a member, has been prominent in Kerala’s governments since 1957, the year after her birth. (It was part of the Communist Party of India until 1964, when it broke away.) Born into a family of activists and freedom fighters – her grandmother campaigned against untouchability – she watched the so-called “Kerala model” be assembled from the ground up; when we speak, this is what she wants to talk about.

The foundations of the model are land reform – enacted via legislation that capped how much land a family could own and increased land ownership among tenant farmers – a decentralised public health system and investment in public education. Every village has a primary health centre and there are hospitals at each level of its administration, as well as 10 medical colleges.

This is true of other states, too, says MP Cariappa, a public health expert based in Pune, Maharashtra state, but nowhere else are people so invested in their primary health system. Kerala enjoys the highest life expectancy and the lowest infant mortality of any state in India; it is also the most literate state. “With widespread access to education, there is a definite understanding of health being important to the wellbeing of people,” says Cariappa.

Shailaja says: “I heard about those struggles – the agricultural movement and the freedom fight – from my grandma. She was a very good storyteller.” Although emergency measures such as the lockdown are the preserve of the national government, each Indian state sets its own health policy. If the Kerala model had not been in place, she insists, her government’s response to Covid-19 would not have been possible.

A walk-in test centre in Ernakulam, Kerala. Photograph: Reuters

That said, the state’s primary health centres had started to show signs of age. When Shailaja’s party came to power in 2016, it undertook a modernisation programme. One pre-pandemic innovation was to create clinics and a registry for respiratory disease – a big problem in India. “That meant we could spot conversion to Covid-19 and look out for community transmission,” Shailaja says. “It helped us very much.”

When the outbreak started, each district was asked to dedicate two hospitals to Covid-19, while each medical college set aside 500 beds. Separate entrances and exits were designated. Diagnostic tests were in short supply, especially after the disease reached wealthier western countries, so they were reserved for patients with symptoms and their close contacts, as well as for random sampling of asymptomatic people and those in the most exposed groups: health workers, police and volunteers.

Shailaja says a test in Kerala produces a result within 48 hours. “In the Gulf, as in the US and UK – all technologically fit countries – they are having to wait seven days,” she says. “What is happening there?” She doesn’t want to judge, she says, but she has been mystified by the large death tolls in those countries: “I think testing is very important – also quarantining and hospital surveillance – and people in those countries are not getting that.” She knows, because Malayalis living in those countries have phoned her to say so.

Places of worship were closed under the rules of lockdown, resulting in protests in some Indian states, but resistance has been noticeably absent in Kerala – in part, perhaps, because its chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, consulted with local faith leaders about the closures. Shailaja says Kerala’s high literacy level is another factor: “People understand why they must stay at home. You can explain it to them.”

The Indian government plans to lift the lockdown on 17 May (the date has been extended twice). After that, she predicts, there will be a huge influx of Malayalis to Kerala from the heavily infected Gulf region. “It will be a great challenge, but we are preparing for it,” she says. There are plans A, B and C, with plan C – the worst-case scenario – involving the requisitioning of hotels, hostels and conference centres to provide 165,000 beds. If they need more than 5,000 ventilators, they will struggle – although more are on order – but the real limiting factor will be manpower, especially when it comes to contact tracing. “We are training up schoolteachers,” Shailaja says.

Once the second wave has passed – if, indeed, there is a second wave – these teachers will return to schools. She hopes to do the same, eventually, because her ministerial term will finish with the state elections a year from now. Since she does not think the threat of Covid-19 will subside any time soon, what secret would she like to pass on to her successor? She laughs her infectious laugh, because the secret is no secret: “Proper planning.”

06 May 20 – Small farms and market gardening

Farming Today
The Ecological Land Cooperative says small farms could and should play an important role in the future of our food system. It buys agricultural land, then divides it into small-holdings, gets planning permission for houses on each one then sells or rents the plots at well below market value. The idea is to allow new entrants into farming without the need for huge capital. We find out more and visit a vegetable farm in Devon that grows more than 50 varieties of veg on less than an acre.
Presented by Anna Hill
Produced by Heather Simons
download/listen https://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/https/vpid/p08cc14w.mp3

BBC link – expires in 24 days time (stupidly)  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hvmf

ELC 2020 Share Offer

https://ecologicalland.coop/2020investor
Small farms, big solutions — join the ELC as an investor member

Shockingly perhaps nearly half the land in the UK is owned by just 25,000 people – less than 1% of the population. And much of that land is dominated by industrial methods of production that come at great cost to the natural world. Yet there is another way. There is huge potential for the growth of agroecology – agriculture that works together with natural ecology.

NFU 2013: Solar photovoltaic electricity in agriculture

If 10 GW of solar power were ground-mounted (half the national ambition for 2020 set by DECC), this, would occupy at most 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) – just 0.14% of total UK agricultural area (18 million ha) with a negligible impact on national food security. Solar farms are a temporary and reversible use of farmland – the modules are typically mounted on screw piles, to be removed at the end of the 25-year planning consent period, enabling land to return to agriculture.

Solar farms receive more cash from green subsidies than selling the energy they produce

• British energy producers were given generous handouts to introduce solar farms
• But many make the majority of their cash from the ‘green levy’ on taxpayers’ bills
• Total subsidy provided to solar electricity generators last year was about £1.2bn

By COLIN FERNANDEZ ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL PUBLISHED: 01:14, 9 April 2018

Britain’s biggest solar farms receive more cash from green subsidies than from selling the electricity they produce, figures reveal. Energy producers were encouraged to start solar farms with generous handouts funded by a ‘green levy’ on taxpayers’ bills. But many of them now make the majority of their cash from the subsidy – instead of the electricity they produce.

The total subsidy provided to all generators of solar electricity last year is estimated to be about £1.2billion. This was part of the £5.6billion subsidy paid to green energy producers, which critics say inflates household energy bills. Figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) following a Freedom of Information request show ten of the biggest solar farms in the country pocketed more than £2.5million each in eco-subsidy last year. The payouts were offered to help increase the amount of ‘green’ energy produced in the UK.

The solar subsidy is responsible for around £15 a year on a household power bill. However the system – which guarantees the handouts for 15 or 20 years – has been overly generous. Treasury officials have stopped new deals being made with solar farms in a bid to stop haemorrhaging huge amounts of cash. But farms with existing deals are guaranteed generous handouts until the end of their contracts.

Last year’s biggest beneficiary was the Owl’s Hatch Solar park, in Herne Bay, Kent. The 200-acre site generated just over 54,000 MWh of electricity, worth around £2.5million, but was given a handout of £3.8million. The farm is owned by Cubico Sustainable Investments, which has seven other smaller solar farms in England.

The nation’s largest installation, Shotwick Solar Park, in Deeside, North Wales, was handed a £3.5million subsidy, which was pocketed by owner Foresight Solar Fund. It also generated electricity worth around £2.5million.

Dr Lee Moroney, of the Renewable Energy Foundation charity, said: ‘The moratorium on new subsidies to renewables was the right thing to do, but it is a classic case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. ‘The legacy subsidies are themselves so high … that Government must consider retrospective cuts to reduce what is an unreasonable burden on the consumer and the wider economy.’…

Vancouver city council has unanimously voted to acknowledge that the city is on unceded Aboriginal territory.

Mayor Gregor Robertson declared a ‘Year of Reconciliation’ last summer, in the hopes of building new relationships between Aboriginals and Vancouverites.

“Underlying all other truths spoken during the Year of Reconciliation is the truth that the modern city of Vancouver was founded on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations and that these territories were never ceded through treaty, war or surrender,” reads part of the motion from the city.

The city says it will now work with representatives from the Aboriginal community to determine “appropriate protocols” for conducting city business.

First Nations’ traditional territories in the Greater Vancouver area
Katzie; Musqueam; Squamish; Tsawwassen; Tsleil-Waututh
http://www.johomaps.com/cht/na/canada/bc/vancouver/firstnations/firstnations.html

by Patrick Barkham, The Guardian, 11th February 2020
Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/feb/11/walkers-urged-to-help-save-historic-footpaths-before-2026-deadline

Walkers are being urged to help identify 10,000 miles of historic footpaths that are missing from the map in England and Wales and could be lost for ever.

All rights of way must be identified before a government deadline of 2026, after which it will no longer be possible to add old paths to the official record.

The walking group Ramblers is calling on walkers, historians and map enthusiasts to use its new mapping site to identify missing footpaths.

The online tool divides the official map into 150,000 1km squares so users can compare historic and current maps side by side, spot any differences and submit missing paths.

Once mapped, Ramblers will recruit volunteers to make applications to restore paths to local authorities before the 2026 deadline.

Jack Cornish, the project’s manager, said: “Our paths are one of our most precious assets. They connect us to our landscapes – ensuring we can explore our towns and cities on foot and enjoy walking in the countryside – and to our history and the people who formed them over the centuries.”

“If we lose our paths, a little bit of our past goes with them. This is our only opportunity to save thousands of miles of rights of way and time is running out.”

Some lost paths are still in use, while others have become overgrown, but all were omitted from the “definitive” maps of 140,000 miles of paths that councils were required to draw up in the 1950s.

Some walkers are already applying to local authorities to recognise lost paths but fear there are many more than the government’s estimate of 10,000 miles: a survey in Cornwall alone identified 3,000 paths that had fallen out of use.

Paul Howland discovered a lost path called The Markway, in Hampshire, which ends abruptly in some undergrowth. The path was temporarily blocked during the second world war and by the time it was reinstated in 1956 it was overgrown and forgotten.

Howland has calculated that in his area he would need to make two applications a week to register all the paths before 2026.

Under English common law, rights of way do not expire but the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 required all rights of way to be recorded. The Ramblers are calling on the government to extend the deadline for registering historic paths by at least five years.
[end]

Read also: Ramble on: the fight to save forgotten footpaths & Memory lanes: the ramblers trying to save 10,000 lost footpaths

[Notes – 1. this is a 18-19 century throwback see Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the 1723 Black Act etc. 3. Gypsies and travellers are protected under international law and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 3. trespass has been a crime in the USA for around fifty years – TG]

The trespass trap: this new law could make us strangers in our own land

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/15/tresspass-trap-law-land-travelling-people-rights

see also: Tories fanning flames of racism (Dec 2019)

A government consultation being framed as a crackdown on travelling people is an assault on all citizens’ freedoms

George Monbiot – @GeorgeMonbiot Wed 15 Jan 2020 06.00 GMT

Every government of the past 30 years has promised freedom, and every government has taken it away. The general ‘freedom’ they proclaim turns out to mean freedom for billionaires, the City of London, and the tax-avoiding, labour-exploiting, planet-poisoning chancers whose liberty is our captivity. Meanwhile, through further restrictions on housing, benefits, immigration, protest and dissent, they have snatched freedom from those who need it most.

Boris Johnson’s government intends to sustain this ignoble tradition. Its consultation document on unauthorised encampments proposes to criminalise the lives of some of Britain’s most vulnerable and persecuted groups. By enabling the police to confiscate the homes of ‘anyone whom they suspect to be trespassing on land with the purpose of residing on it’, Gypsies, Roma and Travellers will be left with nowhere to stop.

Even the police oppose this legislative cleansing: 75% of police forces and police commissioners believe that existing powers are sufficient to address any harmful behaviour by members of these groups. The government’s sweeping proposals would amount to collective punishment. This is Conservatism at its cruellest and meanest.

But when you examine the proposals more closely, you begin to realise that they don’t stop at the persecution of travelling peoples. The way the questions are framed could enable the government to go much further than the official purpose of the consultation, potentially launching one of the most severe restrictions on general freedom in the modern era.

The consultation is everything such exercises are not supposed to be. It is confusing and heavily slanted. It is pitched in such a way that, however you might answer the questions, you are forced to agree with a profoundly illiberal idea.

For example, the first question asks: ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree that knowingly entering land without the landowner’s permission should only be made a criminal offence if it is for the purpose of residing on it?

It’s a perfect trap. If you agree, you consent to the curtailment of the traditional rights and lives of Roma and Travellers. If you disagree, you consent to the criminalisation of something much wider, which, throughout English history has been a civil matter: trespass on land.

Is this the intention? To sneak in, under the cloak of a populist attack on a small minority, the criminalisation of walking on the great majority of England’s land? We have a parliament in which, in both houses, landowners are massively over-represented. We have a wider political and economic system in which ancient, landed power still carries immense weight. There is nothing some landowners would like more than to set the police on those who dare to venture into their vast estates. And there is nothing that tells us more clearly that freedom for one is captivity for another.

Even while it remains a civil matter, the offence of trespass informs us that we are strangers in our own nation, unwelcome on the great majority of its acres. This is why Scotland introduced its comprehensive right to roam, enabling people to venture on to almost all uncultivated land except gardens, sports grounds and the land immediately surrounding houses, schools and other buildings. Despite dire predictions, it works well, with scarcely any conflict. The Scottish government, and the campaigners who pressed for this reform, see access as an essential component of citizenship. When you are treated as a trespasser across most of your nation, the message you receive is that you don’t belong.

To criminalise trespass would be to make strangers of us all. The police become internal border guards, defending the fabric of the nation from us, the alien horde. In most parts of the country, this will leave us fenced into tiny areas. The right to roam in England extends to just 10% of the nation, generally far from where most people live. Some counties have only pocket handkerchiefs of land where we may freely venture.

To be adventurous in many parts of Britain, to explore more than a few glorified dog toilets, is to trespass. To stick to the footpaths and the pockets of access land is, for many of us, to feel unbearably trapped. Already we must tiptoe across our nation, trying to remain unseen. Does the government now seek to criminalise us? As the same confusing framing applies to several of the questions in the consultation, it seems unlikely to be accidental. The Conservative manifesto stated, without qualification, ‘we will make intentional trespass a criminal offence’.

The harder you look, the more disguised powers appear to be lodged in this consultation. Even if new trespass laws are aimed only at those residing on land, they will affect not only Gypsies, Roma and Travellers, but also rough sleepers. David Cameron’s government criminalised squatting in empty homes. This too was previously a civil matter. Thousands of homeless people found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Some have been imprisoned for using property abandoned by its owners. Johnson’s government would do the same to people living in tents or bivvy bags. There will be nowhere to turn.

Any new laws are also likely to be used against protesters. We’ve seen how previous legislation – such as the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, the 2000 Terrorism Act and the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act – has been immediately deployed against peaceful protest, in some cases after the government promised that it would not be used for this purpose.

In view of the statements this week by the home secretary, Priti Patel, attempting to justify Extinction Rebellion’s temporary inclusion on a list of extremist ideologies, we cannot trust her to protect our rights to dissent. People seeking to reside on land for the purposes of protest, as anti-fracking and anti-roads campaigners have done to great effect, are likely to be criminalised from the outset.

But in casting the illiberal net so wide, the government might accidentally have created a coalition. Rather than allowing Roma, Travellers and homeless people to be picked off, all those of us who fear the criminalisation of trespass should join forces with them, protecting their rights while we defend our own. In responding to the consultation, which closes on 4 March, we should refuse to be trapped in the government’s framing. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with its proposals, we should state under every confusing question that we reject all attempts to criminalise trespass.

History shows that attacks on general freedoms often begin with an attack on the freedom of a minority. It teaches us that we should never allow a government to divide and rule. An attack on one is an attack on all.

Insecure Britain – we are two and a half pay cheques away from homelessness on average

A new survey finds three quarters of Brits worry that if their financial situation changed in just one way, they might end up losing their home, or evicted.

by Ben Gelblum – January 8, 2020 https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/property/insecure-britain-we-are-two-and-a-half-pay-cheques-away-from-homelessness-on-average/08/01/

see also: Half of households facing homelessness in Knowsley have jobs

Insecure Britain – we are two and a half pay cheques away from homelessness on average

The average Brit believes they could only pay their rent or mortgage for two-and-a-half months if they lost their job, according to a survey.

It suggests that many adults are just a couple of pay cheques away from facing homelessness, with three in four worrying that they could end up losing their home if their financial situation changed.

The survey also found that nearly half (45%) of those polled agree that anyone could become homeless and it just takes a run of bad luck for it to happen.

More than a third say they have had to leave their home because they couldn’t afford to live there.

The most common reasons for someone losing their home were because they lost their job and could not afford their housing costs (18%) and a relationship breakdown forcing someone to move (18%).

Almost half say they know at least one person who has lost their home.

Beam.org, the social enterprise which commissioned the poll, said the “sad reality” is that many people find themselves on the streets for reasons outside of their control.

The poll, which questioned 1,500 British adults, calculated that the average time that someone could pay their rent or mortgage if they lost their job was 2.5 months.

Three quarters of Brits said they worry that if their financial situation changed in just one way, they might end up losing their home, or evicted.

Of these, 31% said they worry about this all the time, and 45 per cent worry about it sometimes.

Almost one in five said that if they did lose their home because they couldn’t afford housing costs they would have nothing to fall back on.

Almost a third said they have savings to fall back on, while half could turn to family and 16% to their friends.

Alex Stephany, founder and chief executive of Beam.org, said: “Whether it’s mental health related, a relationship breakdown, or losing one’s job, the sad reality is that many people become homeless for reasons outside their control.

“But often, the difference between people tipping into homelessness or not comes down to the strength of their support networks.

“The people we support at Beam come from a variety of backgrounds but they usually lack this ‘scaffolding’ in their lives.

“At Beam, we’ve seen that a combination of upskilling homeless people and providing them with an online support community is vital.” The survey questioned just over 1,500 British adults in December.