Newly-elected Scottish Greens MSP Mark Ruskell has hit the ground running by lodging a series of parliamentary questions relating to wildlife and wildlife crime:
Question S5W-00044, Mark Ruskell (Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Green Party); Lodged: 09/05/2016:
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the culling of mountain hares on estates practising driven grouse shooting.
Question S5W-00043; Lodged 09/05/2016:
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the reintroduction of the European beaver to Scotland.
Question S5W-00042: Lodged 09/05/2016:
To ask the Scottish Government how many European beaver autopsied since January 2016 were (a) pregnant and (b) lactating.
Question S5W-00029: Lodged 12/05/2016:
To ask the Scottish Government when it will announce its decision regarding the reintroduction of the European beaver and what steps it has taken to ensure that the decision complies with the EU Habitats Directive.
Question S5W-00031: Lodged 12/05/2016:
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S40-05291 by Aileen McLeod on 21 January 2016 (Official Report, C8), what plans it has to implement each of the recommendations of the Wildlife Crime Penalties Review Group and when it will do so.
Question S5W-00030: Lodged 12/05/2016:
To ask the Scottish Government when it will announce its decision regarding extending the powers of the Scottish SPCA to tackle wildlife crime.
The answers to all these questions are due 26/05/2016.
Mark Ruskell MSP was already on our radar as someone who’d be likely to stand up for the issues we care about (e.g. see here) so we’re pleased to see, now he’s been elected, he’s getting down to business and applying some political pressure.
The new Environment Minister (yet to be appointed) had also better be prepared to hit the ground running.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Just what we were all hoping to hear. Surely it cant all be ignored again.
wheel him out…..the more help the better
A great set of questions, I shall look forward to hearing the replies in due course.
Great news if he can avoid the rich and powerful getting him sacked.
Think having Roseanna as Cabinet Secretary is a good move for the environment too.
As someone who has often defended the SNP’s policies in the past, based on what I’ve been told in private, I want to hear some damn good answers to these questions too. I was often told stuff along the lines of ” we need to get past the election” and that it was to keep the northern landlords from revolting (insert your own pun here) so now it is past the election. I want to know if they were just bullshitting me, or whether they are going to deliver. As Scottish Labour have learned to their cost, you cannot keep on bullshitting people and stringing them along, I expect to see a lot of solid change. Not just in wildlife and rewilding, but in land reform, social policies, and rent controls. The SNP have a lot to live up to. They can start by answering Mark Ruskell’s questions fully, honestly, and in a timely manner.
Great news that this MSP has asked relevant, and I hope embarrassing questions. For too long, has the majority of the Scottish common folk been offended and ignored by the old boy network that wants to keep their country one that endorses gross animal abuse, in various forms of cruelty that are unnecessary. My friends and I in the animal welfare and species conservation movements, have campaigned in the streets of the towns in the Central Belt, and found there that in the poorer areas, with high unemployment and deprivation, the greatest response to our exposure of sanctied abuse of animals, both domestic, farm and wild. Our politicians have got away with it by blandishments of “people come first, and we have no time”; our advisers have stated that the best conditions prevail in slaughter houses, so no need for CCTV cameras, and “fish farms are big exporters and bringers in of foreign currency, so seals and birds have to be killed.” Then we get the blurb coming from the landowning and gamekeeper associations, that they provide jobs (low paid, servile and seasonal), and contribute to the quality food supplies of the nation, aye, full of lead shot with a big label not stating how many Birds of Prey, Mountain Hares have been blootered.
If the Greens can keep up the pressure, and if our Scottish conservation and animal welfare charities could unite on the occasion, to fight for more action on animal crime, then we could rise above the old Scottish tribal behaviour of dissension and lacking cohesion on important matters. Scotland needs to ensure its politicians are free to exercise their ethical concerns, and not be whipped into following a party line, which could be much influenced by those with strong vested interests, in keeping the anachronistic status quo, with regard to respecting the other creatures we share the world with. The Greens should set the example to the Conservatives, who have slavishly followed the medieval English Tories with their blood sports. Labour, down South has some cracking MPs who have valiantly stood up for animal welfare and wildlife conservation, but up here we seem to have got a mealy-mouthed response from their counterparts. Let us make Scotland a model for the world to copy and remove all forms of abuse of living creatures, and expose those who would prevent us from doing so, with spurious excuses. Our schools should have visits from trained officers who have an ethical message to put across. Much of the aborrent violence we have in Scotland is linked to the poor quality attitudes/mindsets of those brought up in environments bereft of compassion. Our prisons are a disgrace in the UK, and we should be applying ethical education there also. Those in prison who have worked with animals such as horses, have become better people due to that association. Weed out the old academic dead wood in Government, our schools/universities etc and bring in a policy of respecting our environment and all forms of life.
Well said!
Cld you poss add the twitter share icon back in to your blog as well as the FB one? Thanx Nikki
What a brilliant start. More power to your arm Mark. Thank you for bringing hope to all of us who have been despairing for so long.