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It is now four months since we raised concerns about Detective Inspector Mark Harrison of the National Wildlife Crime Unit lending the authority of his office to the Friends of the Dales' Eyes on the Skies campaign. At the time, we observed that a serving police officer delivering an hour-long prosecution brief against an unconvicted community, on a campaign group's webinar, raised serious questions about due process, fairness, and the proper limits of policing. DI Harrison h

In a pre-recorded film released to promote the National Trust's work on its High Peak Estate, General Manager Craig Best made a series of claims that range from the misleading to the demonstrably false. The most revealing was his attempt to bracket controlled burning alongside Victorian industrial pollution as a driver of damage to the peatland landscape. "The peat in this landscape has been damaged from the Industrial Revolution because of acid rain," Best said. "And a whole

Stand on the right patch of the north Pennines at dawn this week and you will witness one of the most extraordinary wildlife spectacles still on offer in England. Male black grouse, glossy black with snow-white under-tail feathers fanned and scarlet wattles inflated, are gathering at traditional lek sites to burble, hiss, jump and posture for the females watching from the heather edge. It is loud, it is choreographed, it is older than any of us, and it is happening on a scale

The huge wildfire that burned across National Trust ground in the Peak District last week was on what we might charitably call Wet and Walk Away land. Nine fire crews, nearly a square kilometre of moorland in flames, the A57 Snake Pass closed in both directions, a helicopter overhead, smoke rolling down into Glossop, Mountain Rescue called out, and gamekeepers from neighbouring estates working through the night to stop it spreading. All of it on a moor that was, according to

A wildfire continues to burn across moorland off the Snake Pass near Glossop, in a fresh reminder of the risks posed by unmanaged upland habitat during dry spells. Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service was called to the scene at 20:58 on Thursday and has confirmed that the fire is now affecting an area of 1,500 by 300 metres. Five fire engines remain on site, supported by two water carriers, a command support unit, a welfare unit and a rural unimog. The Fire Operations Group and

Three campers, three warning signs, one drop in the wind. That, more or less, is what stood between an SSSI moor near Heptonstall and a major wildfire this week. The bones of the story, as reported in the Keighley News, are these. Gamekeepers in Calderdale spotted a group lighting campfires on protected ground. They called the fire service, put the flames out before they spread, and the campers will now receive Public Spaces Protection Order notices for their trouble. A day o

What can the Labour Party's disgraced 'Prince of Darkness' have in common with eagles? Both are case studies in putting the cart before the horse. The latest Mandelson chapter began with the Government announcing him as 'Our Man in Washington' before he had been vetted and (not) cleared. Cart, horse, catastrophe. Which brings us to the eagles. The Government has announced the reintroduction of golden eagles into Northumberland, with a generous budget of at least £1 million. I

When the Wildfire Commission convened in London on 23 April, something quietly remarkable happened. For perhaps the first time in years, a major discussion about wildfire policy in the UK was dominated not by lobbyists, campaigners or self-appointed countryside commentators, but by fire service chiefs, operational commanders, fire behaviour scientists and the academics who actually study how moorland burns. The conversation was about data. It was about facts. It was about fue

The Peak District Moorland Group's response to Sunday's Countryfile is well worth a read, and it deserves amplifying. The episode was titled "Custodians of the Peak". On the evidence of the hour that aired, the BBC's definition of a custodian is a narrow one. We will not rehash the Moorland Group's post in full, but the shape of their complaint is familiar to anyone who has watched rural affairs coverage on the BBC drift in one direction over the last few years. An episode

This week's Derbyshire Times story on Peak District gamekeepers being turned away from council tips while clearing public litter should be read twice. Once for the immediate absurdity of it, and again for what it reveals about how our uplands actually function. The men and women loading those pick-up trucks with other people's fast food wrappers were not paid to do it. They gave up their weekends. They used their own vehicles, their own fuel, and in some cases their own money

In a recent interview with The I , Springwatch presenter Chris Packham told readers he gets up in the morning "so I can spend money fighting for causes I believe in", and that he has "made a big financial loss in that process". He added that "a lot of it comes out of my own pocket, including many conservation campaigns", and framed money itself as "a tool to get me environmental justice". The Express picked the line up under the headline "Chris Packham suffers big financial

The chief executive of the Peak District National Park Authority, Phil Mulligan, thinks the "easiest" and most "obvious" way to fund national parks is for the taxpayer to hand over more money . A 10 per cent uplift across all ten parks, he points out, would cost each of us a mere 8p a year. That framing is revealing. It treats public funding as cost-free and assumes, without argument, that the bodies currently receiving it are doing a good job with what they already have. Nei

The National Trust’s Rosie Holdsworth says the wildfires tearing through Marsden Moor have been "demoralising" for those managing the land, but the National Trust should take a long look at themselves before seeking public sympathy. Three hundred hectares of moorland have been reduced to ash. Again. Moorland managers who helped tackle the blaze have already said what needs saying: this did not have to happen at this scale. Fuel breaks and proper management would have stopped

This week the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds issued new guidance on garden bird feeding. From 1 May, it says, people should take their feeders down. Flat bird tables should be retired permanently. Water should be changed daily. Feeders should be cleaned weekly and moved regularly to prevent contaminated debris accumulating beneath them. It is, on the face of it, sensible advice. The problem is that the RSPB has known it should be giving this advice for more than fi

Three more fires on the Marsden and Saddleworth moors yesterday. Three more incidents that could have been prevented. Three more times that gamekeepers, the people our policymakers would rather sideline, stood in the breach alongside West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Services and got the job done. The scene will be a familiar one. Flames tearing across molinia-dominated moorland, rank and dry and dense after years of under-management, with no effective fue

Late last night, a wildfire broke out on Wessenden Head Moor, the stretch of high ground locals know as Goodbent. As was reported by the Peak District Moorland Group earlier today, the estate gamekeeper and his team were among the first on the scene, working alongside West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service as crews from Todmorden brought specialist equipment to bear on a fire that had every advantage over the people fighting it. Steep terrain, strong winds and a hillside ca

On Monday evening, a wildfire tore across Howden Moor in the Dark Peak, on land owned by the National Trust. This has happened many times before and it will likely happen many times again.. What makes this incident remarkable is not its scale but its timing and its ending. After a wet winter and elevated water tables, fewer than seven days of drier conditions and strong winds were enough to prime the surface vegetation to burn. The fire spread rapidly through areas of longer

The news from Rathlin Island deserves genuine celebration. After a 74% decline in puffin numbers since 1999, the completion of the LIFE Raft project, which has eradicated feral ferrets from Northern Ireland's largest seabird colony, is a great conservation achievement. The return of Manx shearwaters to breed for the first time in two decades is the kind of result that makes the effort worthwhile. Nobody serious disputes that. But conservation achievements do not exist in a va

As anyone who has spent time on a managed grouse moor in the spring can attest to,the curlew's call is one of the most evocative sounds in the British uplands. A haunting, bubbling cry that has defined the moorland landscape for generations. Close your eyes on a Yorkshire moor in spring and it is possible, just briefly, to believe that little has changed. That the countryside remains as it was. That the birds are doing fine. They are not. And that illusion, where it still exi

Earlier this week we published an article into Friends of the Dales and the question of who is really driving its "Eyes on the Skies" campaign. We documented, in detail, how a small Yorkshire charity with a pleasant-sounding mission appeared to be functioning as a public-facing vehicle for a coordinated national lobbying operation that relied on RSPB evidence, RSPB speakers, and RSPB political objectives, while presenting itself to the public and the Charity Commission as in