Month: April 2020

The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s (GWCT) reputation took another nosedive yesterday when it launched an extraordinary (and unsubstantiated) attack on Bradford Council.

Video footage had emerged on Twitter of a tractor being used to cut heather on Baildon Moor at a critical time for ground-nesting birds. The moor is owned by Bradford Council.

GWCT was tagged in to the tweet and Andrew Gilruth, Director of Communications, went from nought to nasty without any apparent hesitation or pause for thought.

The video was posted on the GWCT’s YouTube account (here), a blog was posted on GWCT’s website (here) and a string of bullying tweets spewed forth to Bradford Council. The council was directly accused of causing the damage.

Bradford Council responded by saying it had not authorised the heather cutting and had reported the incident to Natural England and to the police. A councillor (Alex Ross-Shaw) also confirmed these details. GWCT then started to backtrack (although noticeably didn’t apologise) but the harm had already been done to Bradford Council’s reputation, not least thanks to Andrew Gilruth’s rather unpleasant sneering and spin-doctoring.

It’s not hard to understand the trigger for such nastiness. Many of you will recall it was Bradford Council that banned grouse shooting on Ilkley Moor in 2018 after a concerted campaign by locals (see here) and last year it threatened legal action after allegations that grouse shooters were driving red grouse off Ilkley Moor on to a neighbouring moor to be shot (see here).

For those of you not on social media here is a taste of the content:

Interestingly it looks like someone’s had a quiet word with the GWCT  – perhaps it was Bradford Council’s lawyers, because this morning the GWCT blog has been carefully edited to remove the baseless accusations previously levelled at the council. The changes are underlined in orange:

Funniest of all, at the foot of the revised blog is this appeal for cash, to help GWCT continue its so-called ‘vital work’ (that’ll be smearing the reputation of those who don’t support grouse shooting).

 

 

Last summer a local community got together to investigate the feasibility of buying part of Langholm Moor, to turn it from a knackered grouse moor into a nature reserve for the benefit of everyone, after the Duke of Buccleuch announced his intention to sell (see here and here).

A crowdfunder was launched to help pay for an initial feasibility study (here) (to which many RPUK blog readers contributed, thank you) and Kevin Cummings, who is leading the community buyout project, has written a couple of interesting guest blogs about the process, one for Mark Avery’s blog (here) and one for the Revive coalition (here).

Yesterday, those who contributed to the crowdfunder received an email from the project, as follows:

This is an update to the kind donors to our crowd funder. Something hopeful in these straitened times.

The feasibility study you helped fund is now complete and showed that the Langholm Initiative can sustainably manage the land and provide the significant community and environmental benefits we hoped for. It provides a hugely exciting vision, creating the ‘Tarras Valley Nature Reserve’ covering about 10,500 acres of moorland, woodland, farmland and including nearly 7 miles of the Tarras Water. 

We have a unique opportunity to create an ambitious legacy for the future. Langholm Moor, a special place with huge cultural importance and populated with some of our rarest and most beautiful wildlife, could become a community-owned nature reserve, supporting positive climate action, native woodland creation, small-scale renewable energy and sustainable business development.

You can read the details of our plans developed through the feasibility study here.

If you want to keep up to date and show support for our work you can join the Initiative.

Full membership is available to those living within DG13 and DG14 postcodes, associate membership for those living outside these areas   

Efforts are now underway to secure purchase funds, through an application to the Scottish Land Fund, and by seeking private donations in due course.

ENDS

Well worth taking a look around the project website (here) and reading the summary reports, starting with this prospectus (here) and this summary of the feasibility study and business plan (here).

When Wild Justice announced last week that it was launching a new fund to support police officers investigating the illegal persecution of birds of prey in the UK (see here), not everybody welcomed the initiative.

That was hardly a surprise. Criticism was fully expected from those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, i.e. those who benefit the most from the difficulties faced by police forces in bringing the raptor-killing criminals to justice. The existence of this new fund will hopefully increase the opportunities available to the police to secure sufficient evidence against these criminals to proceed with prosecutions, so of course there’d be some who would try to undermine it from the outset.

However, one particularly vocal critic emerged, on twitter and on this blog, who hid his identity behind the pseudonym ‘EXWCO’ [ex-wildlife crime officer, for those unfamiliar with the lingo] whilst making thinly-veiled accusations against Wild Justice as well as against Police Supt Nick Lyall (Chair of the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group, RPPDG) and the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) as both had been named in Wild Justice’s original announcement. For those who missed ‘EXWCO’s’ comments on this blog, please see here.

To be honest, it was difficult to understand exactly what ‘EXWCO’ was objecting to – his criticisms were a bit all over the place but what was clear was that he disliked Wild Justice (fair enough), that he thought that the NWCU’s impartiality would be ‘compromised’ if it administered the new fund (because the money had come from Wild Justice – no, me neither) and that Nick Lyall’s credibility was undermined because he’d given a supportive quote (no, me neither). As has been pointed out by blog reader Gareth Jones on the earlier post, the NFU and other organisations fund / lend /sponsor equipment for a number of police forces so why should the Wild Justice fund be treated differently?

Yesterday, ‘EXWCO’ decided to reveal his identity to the public at large – it’s a guy called Pete Charleston, a former police wildlife crime officer and someone who has held other related roles since retiring from the police. He’s perhaps best known for his work with the Bat Conservation Trust and his role as Chair of the LINK Wildlife Crime Group, which is how I know him as I represent Wild Justice in that partnership and is why I’m so surprised that he’s chosen to behave as he has in response to Wild Justice’s new fund. I’m pleased to see that he has now resigned from his leadership position at LINK because, in my opinion, it’s clearly untenable in light of his online behaviour in recent days.

[Pete Charleston, photo by Charlie Moores]

As well as setting up his twitter account, Pete has also set up his own blog and written an introductory post which takes a few pot shots at RPUK, Wild Justice and Nick Lyall – see here.

It’s good to see he has also referenced his direct involvement in game shooting. That explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Just a couple of points. Pete has done his best (but failed in my opinion) to cast himself as an impartial observer and has questioned the impartiality of the NWCU and the credibility of Nick Lyall. He’s got some brass neck to be raising questions of credibility when you see what he sent around to a number of colleagues a few days ago:

So he sends around an email attempting to distance himself as being the author of the new ‘EXWCO’ twitter account, but a few days later he admits on his very own blog that he created the account:

And for even more evidence of the shiniest brass neck in brass neck land, have a look at this tweet, sent from Pete’s account and addressed to the Countryside Alliance, BASC, NWCU, RPUK and Wild Justice:

Integrity and credibility? Yeah, right.

What a shame.

And all because Wild Justice chose to establish a fund to help police officers bring wildlife criminals to justice.

Following last week’s announcement of Wild Justice’s raptor forensic fund, which aims to provide financial assistance to support police officers investigating the illegal persecution of raptors in the UK (see here), the fund has been boosted by further contributions.

The Northern England Raptor Forum (NERF) has made a substantial donation of £1,000 to support the fund.

In a press release issued to announce its support, NERF said,

‘Unfortunately every one of our member groups has experience of raptor persecution within their own study areas. Many of us have also been involved in cases where the search for forensic evidence, vital to support the case, was not pursued because of lack of funding thereby resulting in the investigation being abandoned prior to trial. We believe that this initiative will make a very significant impact on the investigation of raptor related criminal cases‘.

Steve Downing, NERF’s Chair said:

“As a former Wildlife Crime Officer I fully appreciate the complex decision making process that is used to assess competing applications for funding the forensic analysis of potential exhibits. Every application for forensic funding is justifiable, however it is understandable why some crimes take precedence over cases of raptor persecution. This raptor related forensic analysis fund is a very valuable tool that will make a tremendous difference in the battle to detect wildlife crime and Wild Justice is to be commended for introducing the scheme“.

To read NERF’s full press statement, which is excellent by the way, please visit here

In addition to NERF’s donation, the fund has also received a substantial donation from an individual member of the public who wishes to remain anonymous.

If anyone else would like to contribute to this new fund, please get in touch with Wild Justice by emailing admin@wildjustice.org.uk and entering ‘Raptor Forensic Fund’ as the subject header.

Thank you

As many of you will be aware, the launch of this fund has caused quite a bit of criticism from one individual in particular, who has used the pseudonym ‘EXWCO’ [ex-wildlife crime officer] to hide his identity whilst making some thinly-veiled accusations and threats. For those who haven’t read these, have a look at the comments thread on the previous blog post about this fund (here).

‘EXWCO’ has now revealed his identity and we’ll be examining this individual’s motivations and credibility later today.

Wild Justice has launched a new fund to help support the police investigate wildlife crime.

Specifically, the fund is being made available to police forces across the UK to support forensic analyses in cases relating to the illegal persecution of birds of prey.

Enforced police budget cuts and lack of resources can sometimes preclude the swift analysis of evidence in these types of investigations and where speedy evidence gathering is essential, these delays can lessen the opportunities for a criminal prosecution to proceed.

Wild Justice has committed a £5K start-up contribution and is calling on other organisations to add to the fund. Police Superintendent Nick Lyall, Chair of the Raptor Persecution Priority Delivery Group (RPPDG) will be encouraging partner organisations to contribute.

Watch this space.

For further details please read the Wild Justice blog here.