Protect the Wild news round-up 15/09/2023

News stories and opinion pieces we've written between 04/09 and 15/09 that you may have missed.

Scotland: Avian Flu confirmed in pheasants

If the deaths of birds bred to be killed at a few months old isn't horrible enough, Avian Flu has also been ripping through wild bird populations. First detected in the vast poultry sheds of East Asia over a decade ago, the virus has now spread around the world and may have killed millions of birds.

---

Scotland has banned fox hunting, so why are cubs being hunted right now?

Scotland passed the Hunting With Dogs (Scotland) Bill in January 2023, and it became an Act on 7 March 2023. So why are saboteurs catching hunters pursuing foxes red-handed?

---

Here’s why Chitterne Parish Council needs to ban the Royal Artillery Hunt from parading this Boxing Day.

Every year fox hunters across the country gear up for their biggest PR exercise of the hunting season: the Boxing Day or New Year's Day parade. So Protect the Wild has teamed up with Action Against Foxhunting to campaign for councils to ban hunts from parading on their land at the end of December.

---

Men plead guilty to poaching grouse in North Yorkshire

Three men pleaded guilty in Teesside Magistrates Court on 7 August 2023, charged with a number of poaching offences.

---

Newly released figures show the badger cull is far from winding down

The government has published the number of badgers it wants to kill this year as part of its cull to reduce bovine TB (bTB). Despite having announced that the badger cull is winding up, the figures remain gut-wrenchingly high.

---

Defra public consultation on hedgerows

The Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra – or ‘Deathra’ as it’s increasingly known as it piles misery on misery upon England’s badgers) is holding a public consultation on hedgerows. The short online questionnaire takes just minutes to fill out

---

• Protect the Wild is proud to support people up and down the UK who are on the front line protecting wildlife. We are able to buy the equipment we give out because of paid subscriptions on Substack. While all our content is free, any money we do receive from paid subscriptions is ringfenced and used to buy equipment to put ‘eyes in the field’. It’s a simple idea – but the best ideas usually are! If you’d like to know more we have explained it all in our post “What do we mean by “Empowering people to protect British wildlife“?

  If you are working in the field to protect wildlife and would like to apply to our fund please read our T&Cs here first and use the online application form on the same page.