Sometimes it feels like we only started this blog yesterday, and sometimes it feels like we’ve been writing it for years. It turns out we have – seven of them.
The number of blog hits received in the last year almost doubled from the previous year and we’re now heading towards three million views. That’s very satisfying and is undoubtedly a result of an increased social reach on twitter and facebook. Thank you to everyone who reacts and spreads the word either by re-tweeting or sharing. Thanks also to those who comment on the blog, and on social media – it makes it all the more interesting, for us and for other readers.
Our top ten most read blogs from the last year are as follows:
- Natural England issues licence to kill buzzards to protect pheasants (here)
- National Trust pulls grouse shooting lease in Peak District National Park (here)
- Queen’s Balmoral Estate accused of mountain hare massacre (here)
- Faking it (here)
- More mountain hares slaughtered in the Angus Glens (here)
- More mountain hares massacred in the Cairngorms National Park (here)
- The illegal killing of birds of prey in the Cairngorms National Park (here)
- Chris Packham has a message for Marks & Spencer (here)
- Mass raptor poisoning in Wales: location revealed (here)
- Catastrophic decline of breeding hen harriers on grouse moors in NE Scotland (here)
This year, an incredibly generous sponsor has stepped forward to help pay for the time it takes to research and then write this blog. We’re massively grateful for this support, not just as a vote of confidence in what we’ve been doing, but because it will allow us to do so much more.
And there’s plenty more to do.
Here’s to another year of it.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Excellent work, keep the pressure on the message is spreading .
Happy Birthday!
A very Happy Birthday to you blog. I look at every blog, read many of the comments, well done.
That’s an impressive curve and predicts at least 500,000 for year 8. Well done, you are badly needed.
Congradulations. Thanks for your excellent work. Please keep presenting the facts. Please keep revealing the crimes.
Happy birthday and keep up the amazing work….
Simply the best! Wonderful friends of the wilderness.Never stop.
Such an excellent and necessary blog, keep going!
Brilliant blog by the scourge of the Raptor criminals. Long may it continue!
All the years I’ve been reading this, I’ve never found anything that was proven to be inaccurate; and this is what is working – presentation of facts without embellishment, then opinions based on evidence.
Contrast that to the mis-information spouted by the various shooting interests and idiots like Ian Botham, the media and the general public are coming here for the facts – and hopefully by also reading the opinions will start to realise that there are 2 sides to the picture – and that one side tells the truth and wants the laws of the country to be upheld, while the other wants to conceal the facts and is in denial about the level of criminality that is part of the shooting business model.
Keep it up!
Happy 7th. Whatever did we do before you started your excellent work? Speaking personally I was very naïve about the amount of criminality in our British countryside in general and the grouse moors in particular. Long may you continue.
Thank you for speaking up on behalf of our wildlife and keeping us informed.
Together we WILL bring about change.
Keep up the good work – it’s much appreciated.
Your blog is excellent, well researched and informative. It is increasingly influential. It also helps to bring people to account for their actions.
Where would we be without you?
Keep up your good work.
Regards
Mike
One of the few effective voices against the wildlife criminals. Great work.
Happy birthday !
Keep up the pressure !
ps Things really can change for the better in the end.
Raptor success in the UK away from the grouse moors & other hotspots for criminality has been transformed during the 5 decades in which I have been lucky enough to be active in their conservation & research.
Keep up the excellent, and massively important, work.
A wonderful experience to have a voice for our Birds of Prey and wildlife conservation and welfare in general. It heralds a revolution in giving a forum for the many, many people who are angry and frustrated having to witness criminal behaviour on our wild landscape; a form of behaviour condoned by a hegemony that is an embarrassment to humane and progressive thinking people. SRP is a slap in the face to the politicians who condone anachronistic blood sports. We now need to move into getting a humane education input installed in our schools, to assist producing a new generation that should be more able in changing the mindset of certain politicians, and others, who have stalled in a backward and callous attitude towards the other forms of life with which we share this planet. This new year should herald a programme to getting our message out to the students in our colleges and universities, with their large numbers of foreign students. This would augment the growing awareness world wide about the severe threat to the natural environment and wildlife. I would recommend a gathering of proactive people to decide on a plan to augment our essential outreach to a larger number of people. Scotland could become a major focal point for conservation, and in changing that part of countryside “management” that is cruel and abhorrent. Andy Wightman has kicked off with his wanting more powers to go to the SSPCA with regard to challenging those who poison and in other ways vile, in killing our Birds of Prey. Also, for us all to sign the petition found on the Government Petition site to introduce a humane education programme in our schools, for animal welfare and conservation.
Yes-7 great years of work and getting the message out there. It gives us all the hope and determination to keep on fighting for a better world for our birds and wildlife.
Looking forward to the day that you can change your name to Raptor Celebration UK
Wonderful but I find it so so sad there is a need for a group like you :( you do a wonderful job and I do share every one on a facebook that I am admin on
It is sad that a group like this is needed, but you are. So keep on doing what you do. The gamekeepers, estate owners and their supporters clearly hate this site. To my mind the more they rant and rave about it the better. It means that you are exposing more and more of their actions and cruelty to more and more people. Great work and thank you so much for doing it.
A very happy birthday and well done on all the good work you’ve done to benefit all the wildlife and peoples of Scotland and the UK. Nil illegitimi carborundum!
Happy Birthday.
I’m sure Raptor Persecution UK are making way, for a better future. This includes making the public more aware of the criminals that kill our raptors, the inadequacies of the law and those that should enforce it, the mass cruelty handed out by idiots with guns, snares, traps and poisons.
Keep up the pressure and make the criminal “custodians of the countryside” cringe when they hear us coming for them.
One day we will win.
Doug
It is so good that you have kept the information flowing and it encourages me to do what I can to prevent the slaughter of birds and mammals. I support all that you have said.
Happy Birthday and thanks RPUK!
well done, and a BIG THANK YOU for all your hard work. You have certainly opened my eyes, and helped to educate me.
I can’t begin to imagine how much work goes into this. Thank you.
Whoever decided to set up this blog in the first place deserves massive thanks and appreciation. It is now the ‘go to’ primary source of information for so many of us. Very well done. Bet the dark side wishes it has something at least half as good!
Happy Birthday… Great to hear you continue to reach a larger readership…So important to have well-researched, fair and thorough coverage of these issues….Kudos and all the very best in future…Massive respect : )
Congratulations, 7 years of excellent work bringing the criminal activities of the shooting fraternity, in particular the grouse shooting estates to the attention of the general public. Don’t let up, keep hammering at them for all you’re worth, we will get there and grouse shooting will be banned one way or another !!!
Huge thanks for all the research and campaigning you do. Delighted you’ve a sponsor, thank you to them also.
Social media & website blogs are powerful tools in the conservation campaign tool kit, long may you continue to provide the powerful ‘ammunition’ we are then able to use to further the cause for address of illegal persecution, etc.
THANK YOU RPUK
once again all the best guys, please keep up the pressure and brilliant news about the sponsor, that levels the playing field just another little bit more. 7 years old thats seven drinks tonight to celebrate ;-)
Hearty congratulations on such a fine job of delivering well researched and written topics. It has all been said by others in their comments but it does cause me to reflect on how slow, limited and biased information on raptor persecution was before you came along. The amazing effort and commitment which you put in is a great source of inspiration as well as information to all of us. Thank you and so, so well done.
Thank you for your excellent work and keeping people informed, in unsparing detail, about what really goes on.
Happy Birthday and ‘Well Done’! Keep turning the screw on them!
Happy birthday,you’re doing a brilliant job….keep up the vital work.
I would like to say a huge thank you for the team at RPUK, the tireless work you do to raise the profile of raptor crime and other upland issues is extremely important. Without the work you do, most of these issues would never see the light of day and certainly not given the attention they deserve.
Happy Birthday, and a big thank you,- also to your sponsor).
Happy Birthday and well done ! The Angus Glens are under close scrutiny and any malpractice by these shooting estates is forwarded to the local MSPs.
Happy Birthday.
Many many THANKS for all the wonderful work you do.
without you this world would be a poorer place.
Keep up the good work and more power to your elbow.
We WILL destroy the evil in this world, BUT we need the power of The Almighty on our side.
I pray He will help us in our deliberations.
RPUK is undoubtedly doing a fantastic job in raising awareness of raptor crime, but we’ve a long way to go before we make a significant change. Sadly it appears that the national conservation agencies are too conservative to respond in any way but very slowly. Hopefully it won’t be another seven years before we start to make real progress.
Such brilliant work. Happy Birthday and maybe one day the title will change (here’s hoping!)
Well done but sadly there is still so much to do, even the Queens, Balmoral estate comes in for criticism when it should be setting an example. It really is time for landownership to be changed for ever.